Tesla's Rebecca Tinucci Recognized in Time's Top 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders

Rebecca Tinucci at Tesla's Investor Day 2023

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As the Senior Director of Charging Infrastructure at Tesla, Rebecca Tinucci is not just a key executive in the company but also a pivotal figure in the electric vehicle industry. She has been recognized as one of the "100 Most Influential Climate Leaders in Business for 2023" by Time Magazine.

Well Deserved Recognition

Tinucci's notable achievement in 2023 was her successful negotiation with other leading EV manufacturers to expand access to Tesla's charging network across the United States. This strategic move involved integrating major automotive brands such as BMW, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Toyota into Tesla's charging ecosystem.

This expansion has made Tesla's charging standard the de facto choice in North America and opened new revenue streams for the company by welcoming non-Tesla EV owners to use its network. Additionally, it has positioned Tesla to benefit from federal charging infrastructure funding, from which it was previously excluded.

This strategic expansion under Tinucci's leadership signifies a monumental shift in the EV charging landscape. By creating a more inclusive charging network, Tesla has not only bolstered its position in the market but also contributed significantly to the broader adoption of EVs, reinforcing the company's commitment to sustainability and innovation.

Tinucci was a shining star among Tesla's leadership during the Investor Day 2023 event in March. She enthusiastically led the audience through Tesla's charging advancements and teased the future. Tinucci was the one to first hint at the Tesla retro diner that is now under construction in Los Angeles. She also gave a lot of ammunition to speculate about a possible charging pad.

Educational and Early Professional Foundations

After completing her Commerce, Finance, and Management studies at the University of Virginia, Tinucci embarked on her professional journey in 2008 as a Management Consultant at Kurt Salmon Associates in New York. In 2009, she ventured into entrepreneurship by establishing Evatran. This enterprise, known as Plugless Power in the market, specializes in the pioneering field of wireless EV charging.

Tinucci's career took a significant turn when she relocated to the West Coast in 2018 and joined Tesla in a pivotal role as a Senior Product Manager. She distinguished herself by forming and leading a team focused on developing Machine Vision technologies for advanced manufacturing processes there. Her ability to drive progress was quickly recognized, leading to her promotion to Senior Program Manager of the Energy Group within just four months, where she focused on software development and pivotal strategic projects.

Ascending the Ranks at Tesla

Tinucci's climb through Tesla's ranks was rapid and impactful. She soon took on the role of Staff Technical Program Manager, where she was responsible for overseeing critical initiatives throughout the engineering division. As the Senior Manager for Super Charging, she played a crucial role in Tesla's expansion, implementing innovative features such as integrating wait times into Tesla's navigation system for busy Supercharger stations and introducing variable charging rates based on the time of day at selected locations.

Her promotion to Senior Director of Charging Infrastructure marked a significant milestone in her career. Tinucci oversees Tesla's worldwide charging business units in this role, directing a team of more than 450 professionals. Her recognition by Time Magazine underscores her influence and the critical role she plays in advancing sustainable transportation solutions. As she continues to lead Tesla's charging infrastructure to new heights, her contributions are setting new benchmarks in the EV assigning domain.

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How to Create Your Own Custom Cybertruck Wrap for Visualizations

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One of the upcoming features of the 2024 Tesla Holiday Update is the ability for Tesla owners to make custom wraps for their vehicles. The wraps will be displayed in the vehicle’s visualizations and in the Tesla app. You’ll also be able to select one of the wraps Tesla has provided if you prefer not to make or download your own.

This feature will roll out to the Cybertruck next week with the Holiday update, but it will be available for other models in the future as well.

Making your own wrap is super easy and takes just a few minutes. It doesn’t even require any special tools or software because Tesla provided a template.

Making a Custom Wrap

We’ll walk you through the steps to create your custom wrap. All you’ll need is an image editing program and an image editing program.

Download the Template

Tesla has all the details on their Github repository for Custom Wraps, but you can simply download the template below and open it in your favorite image editor like Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or even Windows Paint on Windows 11. Any software that supports layers will work.

Image Editor

Open the template in your image editor and create a new layer on top of it. You’ll want to edit on this new layer, not on the template layer, which we’ll hide later.

The template, in all its glory.

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Create the Wrap

Go ahead and work your artistic magic—here, we’ve taken a graffiti rendition of Not A Tesla App and our logo and placed it within the template's bounds.

Flex those creative muscles!

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Hide the Template

Go ahead and hide the template layer - you can also delete the layer if you want. This standalone image doesn’t look like much, but this is what we need for the final step.

Looks a bit simple right?

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Export

You’ll want to export the image with transparency - so it needs to be a .png file. You'll be good to go as long as it's the same dimensions as the template. We’ve gone ahead and exported our custom NATA wrap here - feel free to download it and let us know how it looks once you get the 2024.44.25 update.

The completed product.

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A couple of technical limitations:

• The image must be 1024x768 pixels.

• File Size max is 1MB.

• You can’t use any special characters in the file name, and it must be shorter than 30 characters.

• PNG is the only acceptable file format

• You can load up to 10 images on your USB drive

Add Wrap to USB Drive

The last, and easiest step. Grab your USB drive, and create a folder called “Wraps” at the root level of the drive. Place your images in there, and you’re all set.

Load a Custom Wrap

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After placing the images on your USB drive and inserting it in your vehicle, you can then open Toybox > Paint Shop, and tap on Wrap. From there select your wrap from the custom list of images.

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Tesla Confirms Custom Wraps & License Plate Visualization Coming to Other Models

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Tesla’s upcoming Holiday update introduces exciting new personalization features, giving you even more ways to customize your vehicle.

Building on the existing Colorizer feature, which lets you change the car’s color, the update will allow you to add a custom wrap and a license plate to the vehicle’s visualization. Both of these features will affect the vehicle's visualization on the screen and in the Tesla app.

While these features were originally announced to be exclusive to the Cybertruck, Tesla has now clarified and said that they will be available for other models in a future update. We expect them to be introduced for the Model 3 (new and old), Model Y, and the redesigned Model S and Model X.

Wrap & license plate customization coming to other models in future updates

— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) December 3, 2024

Custom Wrap Visualization

Tesla announced custom wrap visualizations as part of the 2024 Holiday update for the Cybertruck. They’ve provided a template and instructions on how to design your own custom wrap and also included a few in-house designs, including the “unhinged” Doge wrap, the Cybertruck Graffiti wraps from the Baja Off-Road testing, and the Release Candidate wraps, amongst plenty of other simple ones. In all, it looks like Tesla will be providing 27 designs.

However, making your own wrap is actually very simple, and we’ll be providing instructions on how to create your own. Once these arrive for other vehicles, the instructions will likely be the same.

License Plate Visualization

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You’ll also be able to create custom license plates to show on your vehicle visualization. You’ll be able to choose custom text, and then also include a background - with plain colors, a stock image, or upload your own image.

If you have custom plates in real life, this is your chance to make your visualization perfectly match your vehicle.

Release for Other Models

Tesla hasn’t provided a timeline but said the feature would arrive in “future updates” in their post on X. It seems that it won’t be arriving with the upcoming Holiday update for all vehicles but will instead make its way to the S3XY lineup over the next few months.

We expect it to arrive sometime in early 2025. We’re super excited to see these come to more vehicles, so in the meantime, show us your best custom Cybertruck wrap on social media or our forums.

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