Lifestyle
Year In Review: 12 months of Tesla ownership
A year ago this month, my husband and I picked up our brand new Model S after a 108 day wait. It has been quite a ride and I wanted to share the experience for any potential owners who wonder if the “wonder” wears off, new owners who are still in the honeymoon phase and veteran owners who have plenty of stories of their own.
In May of 2014, I convinced my better half we should test drive a Tesla. He was looking to replace his 4-door Jeep Wrangler. In a bright “Mango Tango” orange paint with large wheels, it was right at home at both the beach or in the snow. It did not, however, know how to keep speed up a hill. Or go fast. At all. The decision process that brought us to that day in August when we finally ordered the car is for another post entirely. (Spoiler: The Tesla is a pretty expensive car and most owners really have to think about it before dropping that kind of cash.)
Thanks to delivery schedules, our east coast pickup location and the announcement of “the D” our order-to-delivery time was pretty darn long. And we felt every single day of it. So when the excitement of the day finally arrived, we could hardly contain ourselves. In fact, we were so excited that we forgot to hand over the check for the car and had to go back to the service center after having already left. That little gaffe aside, delivery went exactly as planned. The car was nearly flawless. A few scuffs we thought we saw turned out to be glue residue. They were quickly cleaned up while our delivery specialist gave us our tour. She was pleasant and knowledgeable, which was consistent with our experience with show room employees at the showroom location of our test drive 6 months earlier.
It was already dark for our ride home so we didn’t go for too much of a joy ride, but my husband pulled the car over halfway and let me finish out the drive. (He actually offered me the fob when we first left the service center, but I passed.) We set the regenerative braking to the higher level despite my initial plans to ease into it. For those on the fence, the one pedal driving is the best feature you didn’t know to look forward to. Trust me. The car performed exactly as we hoped and our cheeks were sore from smiling the whole way home.
3 weeks later, Christmas was our first trip away from home. We visit a town about 110 miles north of where we live for holidays. That 110 miles is over and past mountains so range always suffers. The Supercharger location we anticipated being built in Allentown, PA in 2014 never happened so we ended up charging with a combination of extension cord on a 110V outlet and a level 2 charger a 10 minute drive from where we were visiting. (Little did we know that we would end up having to deal without an eastern PA Supercharger for another 12 months.) We outfitted the car with all weather mats pretty quickly and would recommend them to anyone. The trip was great and the car has all the room one could need for two passengers, luggage, holiday gifts and a 55-pound pup.
Our first service center trip happened rather quickly. We never actually noticed that the rear passenger door handle didn’t present until we started showing off the car to family around Christmas. We scheduled the service visit for a future day that a loaner was available because this issue was very minor and we weren’t in a rush at all. Service was swift and without issue.
Two months in we had our first real road trip planned. Our ultimate destination was Savannah, Georgia with a one night detour planned in Charleston, South Carolina. As is always a risk with winter traveling where we live, a pretty sloppy snow and ice storm thwarted our plans to depart Philadelphia around midnight. We ended up waiting until closer to 5am but despite the horrendous road conditions that the City had not yet dealt with (it was a Sunday morning) the Tesla performed wonderfully. We took it easy of course and never felt unsafe. That trip is where my whole perspective on road trips changed. The requirement to stop and charge means you get plenty of rest room breaks, chances to stretch your legs and really convenient markers to swap driving responsibilities every 2 hours or so. Neither one of us felt tired and we both agreed that the trip felt much shorter than it really was. It was also on this trip that we began to look forward to the car’s potentially efficiency in warm weather. Getting the car in December we were in for a bit of a surprise at how much range suffered and regen was limited.
Though winter felt long as they often do, spring gave way to warm temperatures, better efficiency and lots of reasons to open the panoramic roof. Our initial disappointment over how much our electric bill went up the first month with the car leveled off as the car started driving much more efficiently. We made a few additional changes at home such as LED bulbs and a “smart” power strip for our basement entertainment center and now find ourselves using the same amount of electricity as we did before we replaced an old bar refrigerator and washer/dryer pair, which was also before we had the car.
Around the 6 month mark, my passion was every bit as strong as it was when we were waiting for delivery. I decided to do a local car show and can barely describe what a fun day that was. I spoke to hundreds of people non-stop and unexpectedly came away with a trophy after being softly scolded by a judge for not knowing the car show protocol of being required to have your trunk and hood open. One embarrassing problem was that our rear passenger door handle started to act up again. This time, the door was actually popping open when the car unlocked. It was a hassle because most days the car is driven solo and the driver had to walk all the way around the car to close it. On the day of the car show I had my fob on my person so walking back and forth around the car meant the door popped open many times. Curious onlookers raised eyebrows as the car’s “trick.” That issue also required a service visit, but again we waited until a loaner was available. Other than having to take it to service at all, the experience was great.
By July, it was time for our second road trip. This time the plan was camping not far from Virginia Beach. We had been told many times that charging at RV parks is easy so we barely thought a thing about rolling into our destination with low mileage and no live Superchargers nearby. As it turned out, that RV park was rather old and our site had an older outlet. We needed an adapter, which the campground’s general store thankfully had. The adapter still led to disappointment as the car still wouldn’t take a charge from anything other than a 110v outlet. A trickle charge wasn’t going to work – we had two day excursions planned while we were in the area. After consulting the Tesla Forums, I learned enough about the outlet situation to ask the campground if they had 14-50 outlets at some of their larger sites. Fortunately they did and a camp employee gave me the old “you didn’t hear it from me but…” when describing their one site that they never rented out. We were able to park the car there overnight twice to get all the range we needed. If you do plan on RV charging, I suggest making sure they have the more modern hookups. You should also leave yourself extra time for picture taking. The Model S makes a beautiful addition to a scenic view.
Not very long after getting home from that trip I started charting out our next. I’ve never been to Chicago and really want to but figured out that trip would be a little longer than we were willing to take off work at that time. New England it was. The only three states I hadn’t yet been to on the East Coast were Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. I fully intend for the Tesla to carry me to all the states I haven’t seen. I have a long way to go. Our trip to Portland was easy enough on the supercharger network. We snuck an extension cord out the window from our second story AirBnB apartment to trickle charge overnight and got just enough juice to take us to our next charging opportunity on the way to Portsmouth, NH. Our last stop, Burlington, Vermont, had a public Level 2 charger just a block from where we were staying so we happily parked, checked into PlugShare and charged just enough to get us to the first Supercharger on the way home. Another Tesla was not so kind. We noticed a black Model S with New Jersey tags park there later that day and stay overnight. Even at 0 miles left on the battery, he couldn’t have needed to stay that long. I was very disappointed, as I saw not one but two other Teslas circling the area, presumably needing a charge. With the Burlington Supercharger since online, I imagine this won’t be an issue going forward. That’s the real beauty of the Supercharger network; it changes weekly. In fact, from the time we planned our route to the time we embarked, an additional charger popped up in New Hampshire. We didn’t need it but it was a nice surprise.
A full year after Autopilot was announced, it finally went live with an over the air update. The timing of our order was pure luck and our car was delivered with the hardware in place. The implementation of AP has been everything I expected and more. In fact, that very thing inspired me to make this video, which I never imagined would be watched by more than a few dozen Tesla forum members.
Further delays with an Allentown, PA Supercharger location meant we faced another potential winter where skiing at our preferred mountain near Scranton, PA would mean taking a gasoline powered car. I’m thrilled to say that as of this past week, ground has finally broken. And while we will still end up having to charge creatively over Christmas because it won’t be live yet, the end is finally in sight. 16 months after we ordered the car and were told a charger in that much-needed location would be built “soon,” it’s finally happening.
Did that particular charger, which was shown on the 2014 map sway our decision to buy the car? Absolutely. Did the long delay really grind our gears? You bet! Do we regret not waiting until it was built to get our hands on the greatest car ever built? Not a chance, so if you’re a potential owner on the fence, don’t wait. Every day you do is another day you are deprived the distinct pleasure of driving a car so amazing that it inspires me every single day.
By the numbers
- Miles in 12 months: 20,000
- Primary/secondary driver custody arrangement: 80%/20%
- Road trips over 500 miles: 3
- Lifetime Wh/Mile: 326
Elon Musk
Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map
Tesla confirmed it is building a feature that lets you teach your car where to go.
Tesla is building a feature that will let drivers talk to their car in plain language and teach it exactly what to do, with the vehicle remembering those instructions for every future trip. Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy confirmed it this week on X after a user pointed out one of FSD’s most persistent real-world limitations is that the system has no way to receive contextual instructions the way a human driver would.
“FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home. Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific context like that. Google Maps is also notorious for putting pins on houses that aren’t actually yours.” Tesla owner Chris further noted, “It would be so cool if I could talk to the car while going down my street and say something like, ‘It’s the white house on the left, just past that SUV,’ and then have FSD remember that for next time.”
FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home.
Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific…
— Chris (@ChrissGPT) July 8, 2026
This feature would carry more weight than it might seem. Grok has been available inside Tesla vehicles since July 2025, expanded to European vehicles in February 2026, and gained a hands-free “Hey Grok” wake word with location-based reminders and natural-language navigation in the Spring 2026 update. But up to this point, Grok has had no authority over how FSD actually drives. Lane changes, braking, speed, and parking maneuvers remain entirely within FSD’s autonomous decision-making loop. What Elluswamy confirmed is that the next step pushes Grok into a supervisor role, one that translates spoken intent directly into driving decisions.
Tesla teases greater Grok FSD integration and ‘Banish’ feature ‘in about 3 months’
Elluswamy acknowledged at a January 2026 conference that while fully integrated voice control is on Tesla’s roadmap, “it opens up an entire area of testing that we have to do. For example, you shouldn’t be able to tell the car to crash, and it shouldn’t crash.” Elon Musk subsequently confirmed on June 23 that Grok voice commands will pass to FSD’s planning layer by September 2026, a three month timeline from confirmation to deployment.
The deeper significance is what this does for Tesla’s AI training flywheel. Every time an owner corrects FSD with a spoken instruction and the car learns and remembers it, that interaction becomes a data point covering an edge case that no simulation or scripted test could have generated. A fleet of millions of Tesla vehicles crowdsourcing hyper-local contextual knowledge, which driveway, which gate entrance, which side of the street, builds a layer of geographic and behavioral intelligence that competitors without a comparable fleet simply cannot replicate at the same speed or scale.
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla’s Cybercab and robotaxi operations have expanded to Miami following the Austin launch, with rider profiles already collecting preference data. Voice-taught contextual instructions linked to individual rider profiles means a Cybercab could eventually know before it arrives exactly which entrance to use, where to wait, and how to navigate the final hundred feet of any trip it has made before.
Lifestyle
Tesla app update makes Robotaxi ownership make a lot more sense
Tesla’s app now shows a live indicator when your car is actively driving itself.
A recent Tesla app update, released last week (4.58.5), gives visibility on whether a vehicle is navigating in its semi-autonomous mode or being drive by a human driver. The updated app now displays a live “Self-Driving” indicator in bright blue text directly beneath the vehicle’s speed readout whenever Full Self-Driving is actively engaged, along with the signature glowing blue navigation path that FSD users see on the main touchscreen. It is a small visual update with meaningful implications for how Tesla owners monitor their vehicles remotely.
The feature was first spotted in the wild by X user Jordan Camina, who shared video of a Hardware 3 Model S displaying the new animation through the app while driving. That detail is significant because it confirms the update is not limited to newer HW4 vehicles. It works across hardware generations, and Tesla confirmed it will eventually support all vehicles regardless of chip platform once both the app and vehicle software are updated. The vehicle side requires software version 2026.20.6.1, which has reached nearly 40% of the fleet so far, as monitored by NotaTeslaApp.
The feature makes the most practical sense when viewed through the lens of Tesla’s expanding robotaxi operation. In a robotaxi context, the owner of a vehicle generating ride revenue has a direct financial and safety interest in knowing whether their car is operating under autonomous control at any given moment. The app’s new FSD indicator gives fleet owners exactly that visibility, the same way a logistics company monitors whether a delivery driver is following the planned route. It also carries implications for Tesla’s insurance model. Tesla’s own insurance product prices premiums in part based on FSD engagement rates, and real-time visibility into when FSD is active creates a feedback loop that could eventually tie directly into policy pricing. For individual owners who have opted their personal vehicles into the robotaxi network, the update effectively turns the Tesla app into a fleet management dashboard, one that tells you whether your car is earning money, whether it is driving itself to do it, and whether everything is operating the way it should from wherever you happen to be.
Tesla expands Robotaxi to Florida, marking its third state for autonomy
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla launched unsupervised robotaxi rides in Miami this summer, a milestone that makes a remote FSD status indicator significantly more practical than a cosmetic feature. When a vehicle is operating as a robotaxi without a driver present, the owner or fleet operator needs a reliable way to confirm autonomy is engaged. The app now provides exactly that.
As noted by NotATeslaApp, The update also arrived alongside a hint buried in the same app version that Tesla plans to use the cabin camera to verify driver identity before FSD can be activated. Pairing identity verification with a live autonomy status indicator points toward the infrastructure Tesla is building for a fleet of driverless vehicles that owners can monitor the way you would track a package delivery.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The Boring Company’s Prufrock MB2 is commissioned and ready to mine beneath Nashville’s streets.
The Boring Company’s second tunnel boring machine, Prufrock MB2, is officially ready to dig in Nashville. The company confirmed the news on X, posting: “Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here. Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start? And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August!”
MB2 arrives with meaningful improvements over its predecessor. Lessons learned from the launch and operation of MB1 have already been applied to MB2 to improve efficiency and prepare the machine for launch.
Traditional tunnel boring machines operate in a stop-and-go cycle, digging roughly five feet, halt, erect precast concrete segments to line the tunnel wall, then resume. That repeated interruption is one of the main reasons conventional tunneling is slow and expensive. Prufrock is designed to install the tunnel liner simultaneously with mining, eliminating the need to stop every five feet. The machine also skips the need for excavated launch pits. Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and launches into the ground within 24 hours. And when the tunnel is complete, it emerges from the ground and drives to its next launch site on a trailer, eliminating the need for expensive cranes or pit excavation. The machine is also fully electric and runs with zero people in the tunnel during normal operations, controlled remotely from a surface operations center.
Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here.
Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start?
And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August! pic.twitter.com/TTrMql2aRg
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) June 17, 2026
It won’t be long before we hear of another major update on The Boring Company’s Music City Loop project – a planned underground transit network beneath Nashville that would move passengers in electric vehicles through a series of tunnels at highway speeds, and bypassing surface traffic entirely. Nashville was selected in part because of its strong rock conditions that suits the Prufrock machines well, and relatively less regulatory hurdles.
Progress has been steady on multiple fronts. All 37 permits and approvals required ahead of tunneling have been obtained, out of 45 total. Key wins include a fully executed TDOT tunnel permit authorizing 25 miles of tunnel, unanimous airport authority approval for a Nashville International Airport station, and the city’s first residential station agreement serving downtown tower residents.
With MB1 already tunneling, MB2 now commissioned, and MB3 shipping in August, Nashville is becoming something of a live proving ground for scaled tunnel boring. The broader ambition is not limited to one city. The Boring Company’s stated goal is to make underground transportation a practical alternative to surface roads across major metro areas. Nashville is one of many cities, including a successful Las Vegas tunnel system, where that idea is being put to the test at real speed.
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