Tesla’s newest Quicksilver paint color, which was recently launched for the Model Y Long Range and Performance models in the United States, is expected to expand to the Model 3 lineup in North America soon.
Tesla teased the new color option for the Model 3 on social media, stating “Quicksilver for Model 3 now available in Europe, Asia and the Middle East — more markets coming soon.”
The Model X and Model S have the older, but similar Lunar Silver paint option available, but it’s not clear whether Quicksilver will also become available on those models.
Musk has previously talked about why Tesla has limited paint colors and like most things Tesla, it comes down to cost. When Tesla decides to offer a new paint color, it essentially has to support that color for many years.
Tesla launched Quicksilver and Midnight Cherry Red in Europe approximately three months ago for vehicles produced at Giga Berlin. There is no news of Ultra Red in North America being replaced by the new Midnight Cherry Red just yet.
Yesterday, Tesla started selling a Long Range version of the Model 3 in the U.S. Thanks to the government incentive, which isn’t available on the lower-end version, the new Model 3 becomes Tesla’s most affordable and longest-range Model 3 (363 miles) available, starting at $34,990 after government incentives.
Comparing Silver Metallic to Quicksilver
Tesla used to offer the Model 3 in “Silver Metallic,” but discontinued the color in 2018. The new Quicksilver color much darker and gray rather than silver. The new darker silver color matches Tesla’s black trim better, whereas Silver Metallic matched Tesla’s then chrome trim nicely. The video below compares the Silver Metallic paint color to the Quicksilver available on the Model Y.
Quicksilver Now Available in Canada
In Canada, the Quicksilver option is now available on the Model Y Long Range and Performance as of today. Further options will probably launch within the coming months, as color options for Canadian vehicles are dictated by what is produced at Giga Shanghai for the Model 3 and Model Y, and Giga Texas and Fremont for the Model S and Model X.
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Elon Musk provided a sneak peek into “Cortex”, Tesla’s new AI training center that has been under construction for quite a while at Giga Texas.
Previously, we saw some shots of the new wing for the massive water-cooled supercomputer cluster at Giga Texas, which was being built at the southern end of the Gigafactory.
AI4 Training
Cortex appears to be the name of the supercomputer cluster, and we can assume that it will be referred to that way from now on. Cortex will primarily focus on exploring and expanding FSD’s performance envelope to include AI4, which will begin to diverge from HW3 sometime soon. Tesla hasn’t yet unlocked the full potential of AI4, as it still runs HW3 in emulation mode, but with a few extra tricks that HW3 doesn’t have access to. These are mostly hardware compiler changes, but they make a significant difference in the speed of processing the AI model.
Tesla intends to continue supporting HW3, but it's already apparent that the FSD model for HW3 is smaller than the model for AI4. However, Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Autopilot program director, expects performance to be similar for the most part.
One other thing that Cortex will likely be tackling is not just FSD in cars – but FSD in Optimus. Optimus uses the same principal technology behind FSD for movement, as well as understanding and learning tasks, so we can expect to see plenty of improvements as Tesla is now getting Cortex online.
Video of the inside of Cortex today, the giant new AI training supercluster being built at Tesla HQ in Austin to solve real-world AI pic.twitter.com/DwJVUWUrb5
What’s most interesting is that this new supercomputer cluster isn’t Tesla’s Dojo Supercomputers. Instead, this Cortex cluster is instead based on Nvidia’s H100 GPUs. Dojo was supposed to be Tesla’s in-house designed and specialized AI GPUs, meant to focus on optimizing FSD.
Dojo isn’t dead – but delayed from the sounds of it. We’re excited to see where Cortex takes Tesla in the future, and when Dojo shows up to join the party.
Tesla has lowered the price for both the CCS adapter, as well as CCS retrofits for its entire lineup throughout North America. This includes a reduction in price for the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
CCS Adapter
Tesla has dropped the price of the CCS (Combo 1 – North America) from $250 USD to $125 USD ($345 CAD to $175 CAD). That’s a straight 50% price reduction, making Tesla’s OEM CCS Adapter one of the cheapest on the market.
CCS1 was the non-Tesla standard for EVs, prior to Tesla opening the NACS standard. Tesla vehicles that have completed the retrofit, or are built after the retrofit date, can use a CCS adapter to charge at any regular CCS station.
CCS Retrofit
The CCS retrofit enables Tesla vehicles before around September 2022 (depending on model and region) to charge at CCS stations using a compatible CCS-to-NACS adapter. Vehicles built before that date won’t be able to charge at CCS stations without this retrofit. The retrofit also comes with a complementary CCS adapter.
You cannot unbundle the CCS adapter from the retrofit purchase to reduce the price.
The retrofit has different pricing for the Model S/X and the Model 3/Y.
Vehicle
USD (New)
USD (Previous)
CAD (New)
CAD (Previous)
Model S / Model X
$300
$450
$415
$615
Model 3 / Model Y
$225
$350
$310
$475
How to Check If You Need a Retrofit
If you’re not sure whether your vehicle is CCS capable, you can go to Controls > Software > Additional Vehicle Information. It will show a line near the middle titled “CCS Charging and third-party NACS DC charging.” Next to it it will show whether your vehicle supports third-party CCS charging or whether you'll need a retrofit.
NACS to CCS
And that’s not all – Tesla has drastically increased the production of the NACS to CCS adapter for non-NACS vehicles that are Tesla Supercharger approved, hitting a new record of 8,000 units per week.
Tesla has made massive strides in bringing one standard and improving the efficiency and up-time of EV charging throughout North America, and we’re glad to see them continuing this trend as they move forward.
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