teslaway®
An independent AI wayfinder for Tesla.
Overview
An independent AI wayfinder for Tesla — live news, model data, and ownership answers with sources attached.
The problem
"Is my car eligible for the FSD update?" and "what did they actually say about Q3?" are the same class of question: current, sourced, and impossible to answer from a static page. But a naked chat box answers them confidently and wrongly. The design problem was building something that admits what it is — an independent third party reading public sources — while still feeling like a straight answer.
0→1
- 01
One question box as the entire homepage, with four seeded example questions doing the work of an empty-state tutorial.
- 02
A live news tier fetched server-side and cached for hours — not real-time, and the UI says so.
- 03
A structured layer of five model pages and ten learn guides covering FSD, Cybercab, Optimus, factories, Energy and safety.
- 04
A referral system that detects and lets you override your market across 40+ countries, with the affiliate relationship disclosed inline.
Under the hood
Retrieval happens server-side so the client never holds keys, with cached fetches to keep cost and latency flat under traffic spikes. Static content (models, guides) and dynamic content (news, chat) are separated so the static tier stays instantly cacheable and independently indexable.
Features & interaction design
- 01
The hero is the input
No carousel, no value props above the fold. The product is a question box, so the question box is the page.
- 02
Seeded questions instead of an empty state
Four real, current questions demonstrate scope faster than any onboarding copy — and each is a link that pre-fills the chat.
- 03
Freshness is stated, not implied
Every tile carries an "as of" date; the live headline says it's cached for several hours. Overstating recency is the fastest way to lose trust in an answer product.
- 04
Independence as a design constraint
"Not affiliated with Tesla, Inc." appears at every level — hero, each section footer, and the site footer. A legal necessity that turned into the brand's actual position.
Outcomes
- —A working answer engine with cited sources, five model pages, ten learn guides covering FSD through Megapack, a live news tier with trending topics, and a 40+ country commerce layer. Live.
- —Single entry point for news, ownership, and history questions
- —Clear independence positioning builds trust vs fan sites