Tesla vanity license plates - clever ideas for a custom plate

@smarlo35

When we get a new car we love to add those little touches that make it our own. Tesla owners are no different, except you’ll probably find a higher percentage of serious ride-pimpers amongst Tesla owners than other car brands.

And there are so many options. Want to organize the vast central console space more efficiently? Need to protect the boot carpets from your wet skis? Even upgraded hard drives for Sentry Mode and in-car refrigerators are available.

But all these perks and polishes are best appreciated by you, inside the car. What about projecting your personality to those around you? A custom wrap or a paint job is nice, but there’s another way. License plates.

What better way to let your sense of humor show, give a gentle ribbing to the gas guzzlers following you, or make a serious point about why you went green. Let’s take a look at some of the options you might want to consider for a custom plate.

Many countries allow you to purchase a license plate with your own choice of letters and numbers. Sure, you could go for your name or something that means something to you alone.

But why not lean into the Tesla vibe with your plate, and make a statement! Here are five genuine plates already out there.

LOL OIL

While quite a nice sentiment at the best of times, the recent skyrocketing of oil and gas prices has probably made this Tesla owner more ROFL OIL than a mere LOL.

3VOLVED

@Lucybri83

This Model 3 owner shared her new plate on Twitter, and admitted that she reserved this plate 2.5 years before getting hold of the car itself. That’s dedication to the cause: in this case throwing out a cleverly ambiguous statement that could be taken as an observation on Teslas, EVs, or EV owners’ level of evolution. Nice twist on replacing the E with a 3, a la Model 3.

THX 3LON

@sampagnepapi_

Continuing the ‘Tesla E’ theme of throwing in the number 3 instead, this owner knows who is responsible for this slice of happiness. I wonder if it’s appreciation for the vision and achievements of Elon Musk and his team, or whether the car was a personal gift from Elon?! Probably not the latter.

BUY TSLA

@sampagnepapi_

You don’t need to be a certified financial advisor to offer this advice. This Model X owner is clearly playing the long game, in more ways than one. Looking at the healthy level of dirt on the bodywork, this license plate is a commitment to the stock market strategy of going long on Tesla, and the owner doesn’t look like they’ll be changing their advice any time soon.

NOPLANETB

@smarlo35

Straight to the point, if you’d rather not beat around the bush with the environmental message through gentle humor, lest the message be lost, you could take a leaf out of this Australian owner’s book.

Unfortunately, some folk can’t get a vanity plate and are forced to go with a regular random assigned plate. Where I am in Switzerland, you can choose your number from a catalog, and it looks like that’s the case for @thevoltmonkey in Germany too:

Quite an inventive way of proclaiming this Tesla as not just any old Tesla, but ‘Dah Tesla’.

So maybe you can see if one of these options are available in your area, or perhaps you can think along some other pun lines. Model Y owners can have some fun with Y OH Y, Y BE MAD, or YNOT. Or any Tesla owner could consider an electricity pun, for example, OHM RUN, PLUG IN or SAY WATT.

There’ll be some limits, depending on where you are. There’s usually a minimum and maximum number of characters allowed. Often, nothing that can appear obscene or offensive will be allowed, and there are stories of people in Canada and some US states retrospectively being ordered to give up their plates due to bad language or perceived discrimination against an ethnic minority group. In the UK, you can’t have a Q at the start of your number (they are reserved for kit cars) or display a number that could appear to show the car as younger than it really is, as standard plates include the year of registration - so including ‘22’ on a car manufactured in 2020, for example.

Of course, whether or not you’ve got the perfect plate, there’s nothing stopping you from making a little nod to your likes and wants through the plate holder…

Now, when the full self-driving revolution is complete, will there still be a need for license plates anyway? If there are no more driving infractions, and the Robotaxi fleet means the end of parking fines, do the authorities need the plates anymore? Or will every car be identifiable through a unique identifier broadcast by the computer?

In the meantime, make the most of those customized plates.

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Tesla Launches Faster 320kW Superchargers in New Public Trial

TesLatino

As part of an interesting new Tesla engineering trial, Tesla has increased the power of some Superchargers to 320kW+.

That’s a large improvement, as Tesla’s Superchargers have historically only supported a maximum of 250kW – with some turbo-ing to the 260-270kW range, depending on temperatures. @TesLatino on X found one of the trial sites.

Supercharger V3+

Tesla seems to be conducting this engineering trial on V3+ (V3.5 on the plaque) Superchargers in the United States right now. Kyle Conner, from Out of Spec Studios, who does reviews and road trips on EVs, noted that these posts are probably running at 900 amps or higher to get to that 320kW+ number, given that they don’t appear to be running at higher voltages than normal.

In terms of amperage, the highest that has normally been seen is about 700 amps, and this is significantly higher. The Cybertruck will likely be able to achieve 330kW once 950V support comes to Superchargers – right now they’re running at around 390V. That voltage increase will also drop the overall current, thereby dropping temperatures and increasing charge speeds.

Wes Morrill, the Cybertruck Lead Engineer, noted that this test is being rolled out to several different states that have V3 cabinets and V4 charging posts – hence the V3+ or V3.5 monikers. We’re happy to see Tesla working on improving maximum charging speeds – the Cybertruck can theoretically reach up to 340kW, so this is well on its way there.

Future Charging

Part of this super-high theoretical maximum is the fact that the Cybertruck’s battery pack is actually split into two – so you can charge both packs extremely fast – resulting in faster overall charging, as the combined pack’s maximum charge speed is higher than either individual pack.

Even older Tesla vehicles – from around 2021+, can technically handle 300kW – as their bus bars are rated for it. A 50kW improvement over the old maximum of 250kW would be an amazing improvement, not only to charge times, but it would also help reduce congestion as vehicles would charge faster.

We’re looking forward to Tesla’s future charging innovations – and whether the two-pack charging system becomes the standard on future Tesla vehicles to help achieve even faster EV charging.

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Tesla's Dry Cathode 4680 Battery Cells Will Mean Cheaper, Better EVs

Not a Tesla App

During the 2024 Shareholder Meeting, Elon Musk announced that Tesla has made new innovations on the 4680 cell standard. Tesla has been working hard for several years to get a functional 4680 cell in production that either matches or beats the performance of the existing 2170 cell. The official Cybertruck account also shared an image (below) of the first 4680 dry-cathode process Cybertruck with its production crew on X.

We’re going to take a bit of a dive into the 4680, what exactly this new process and cell is, and then some of its possible advantages. So, grab your charging cable!

First prototype Cybertruck with in-house dry cathode 4680 cells – making it an all dry electrode vehicle pic.twitter.com/NzJxKQrRBp

— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) August 2, 2024

What is the Dry Process?

Dry Battery Electrode (DBE) is a different process overall from the current Wet Battery Electrode (WBE) that is common today. This dry process removes the highly toxic solvents and furnace baking processes from the equation, saving both time and space, while also being environmentally friendly.

The Dry Cathode we’re talking about specifically means that the electrode – the conducting terminal at the edges of the battery – is produced in a dry process. In the previous process, it was produced with a wet process.

Tesla’s 4680 cell suppliers – LG and Panasonic – have both been working hard to cut down on costs and ramp up their own 4680 cell production while Tesla works on their own internal improvements as well. If Tesla has found a means to easily scale the Dry Cathode method, it’ll make 4680 cells and the batteries that they are a part of - cheaper to produce.

The 4680 Cell

The 4680 cell - 46mm wide, 80mm tall

Not a Tesla App

Tesla has used the 4680 cells to make structural battery packs for the Model Y. However, these vehicles had poor charging performance and lower energy density, and they were quickly removed from sales. The sheer size of the 4680 cell made it difficult to cool, limiting its performance.

The updated 4680 cell was announced at the November 2023 Earnings Call as Cybercell, making a comeback for the Cybertruck. This new version was going to have better energy density, as well as improved charging performance.

Sandy Munro of Teardown Titan fame showed that this improved version has about a 12% energy density increase, a pretty significant improvement. You can watch his teardown of the Cybertruck below.

Tabless Design

The tabless design of the 4680 cell also has an impact on its production, and how easy it is to manufacture. Think of the tabs as the little nubs on the top of a regular small battery. The lack of tabs means that production of the cell body doesn’t have to pause to add the tabs, reducing the chance for defects with the elimination of a process, and making it faster to boot.

Removing the tab also helps in cutting down the distance that electrons have to travel to get in and out of the cell – this means less resistance, and less energy lost in the process, increasing overall vehicle efficiency.

Advantages

This new 4680 cell process has a few advantages – including an overall cost reduction of up to 50% compared to the current wet process. That’s in addition to the dry process being more environmentally friendly, which will also allow for manufacturing of the cell to scale quicker.

Tesla wants to move from the standard 2170 cell to the 4680 cell for several reasons. The biggest, by far, is cost savings. The 4680 cell is physically a bigger cell and can be used to structurally support the vehicle, meaning cost savings on both, the production of the 4680 cell and the structure of the vehicle.

Easy and Cheap

There’s more too – the 4680 cell will be easier to manufacture because of its bigger size. The 2170 cell is tall and thin, while the 4680 cell is wide and stout. In addition, its unique tab-less design is supposed to generate less resistance, improving charging speeds and cell performance.

Essentially, Tesla can fill the space taken up by 4,400 2170 cells with only 960 4680 cells. This results in a significant reduction in the material used to encase each individual cell, thereby saving space and maximizing energy density for the space the battery pack takes up.

All in all, that could mean a future price drop for the Cybertruck as well as increase the rate of production. Tesla has envisioned producing approximately 250,000 Cybertrucks per year, and they’ll need a lot of 4680 battery packs to do so.

In the future, we can see Tesla bringing the 4680 cell with all these improvements - and more - to the rest of its vehicle lineup, as they will eventually surpass the 2170 cell technology.

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