Episode 504: Special Guest: Unplugged Performance’s Ben Schaffer
Ride the Lightning: Tesla Motors Unofficial Podcast
Ryan McCaffrey
4.8 • 988 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2025
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tesla mod shop Unplugged Performance's president and founder Ben Schaffer joins me for an interview about the company’s approach to modifying the Cybertruck, the new Model 3 and new Model Y, as well as their big bet on making Tesla police vehicles through their UPfit program. Enjoy!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On this week's episode of Ride the Lightning, the Tesla and EV podcast, Tesla Mod Shop Unplugged Performance's president and co-founder Ben Schaefer joins me for an interview about the company's approach to modifying the cyber truck, the new Model 3 and the new Model Y, and their big bet on making Tesla police vehicles through their upfit program. Enjoy. What's happening, friends? I, of course, am Ryan McCaffrey, and joining me, as always, is the great Daisy the Boxer, snoozing away. We had a big walk today. Good day for Daisy. Good day for me too. It's beautiful outside. Spring has sprung. |
| 0:56.3 | And with that, my daughter goes on spring break. And we have the very privileged fortune this year to be able to take a spring break trip. |
| 1:09.0 | In fact, I may have said this last year because we did the same thing, |
| 1:13.0 | but I'll just a little life pro tip that maybe is helpful to you. And maybe everybody but me |
| 1:20.2 | already knew this and I just stumbled on it last year. But just in case you don't already know |
| 1:26.0 | this, as I didn't until a year ago, flying |
| 1:29.6 | midweek is way cheaper than flying weekend to weekend. And the reason that I stumbled upon |
| 1:37.5 | this is last year is my daughter's school has a two-week spring break. And somehow we were trying to figure out what to do last year, |
| 1:46.6 | and we were fuzzling around with flights, and where do we want to go, and oh, let's just see what |
| 1:50.7 | it looks like on this day since we, anyway, I came to find out that if we flew midweek to mid-week, |
| 1:58.8 | the airfare was so much cheaper, And so we're doing the same thing again |
| 2:03.9 | this year. We're out midweek to midweek. I'm very grateful to be able to take that time. |
| 2:09.8 | It's not something that I take for granted. And so here I am recording episode 504 for you quite early. |
| 2:18.8 | And as always, with these what I call vacation shows, |
| 2:22.7 | I've prepared something in advance for you that I hope you will enjoy. |
| 2:27.2 | As you'll hear momentarily and as you already heard from the top, |
| 2:30.9 | it is an interview, the second interview here on the podcast with Ben Schaefer. |
| 2:35.0 | He's the founder, I erroneously said co-founder in the top of the show. That's my bad. |
| 2:41.0 | The founder of Unplugged Performance, the Tesla Mod Shop. |
| 2:45.8 | So I've got a conversation with Ben coming up. We didn't repeat any ground that we covered the last time he was on |
| 2:52.8 | almost three years ago, because unplugged performances had so much new, cool stuff going on that I find |
| 2:59.4 | interesting that I wanted to talk to Ben about. So I thought this was a great opportunity to do that, |
... |
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