A lone camel wanders across the scorching dunes, pausing to gaze at a black sedan parked on rutted tracks in the Dubai desert. It’s a <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/tags/tesla/" target="_blank">Tesla</a> EV, brought over by the company’s field quality engineers for “extreme heat and durability testing” at temperatures of 50ºC. The company does its cold weather testing in Alaska. The line-up of cars tested in Dubai include the Model Y, the refreshed Model X and the Model 3, with the last recently fitted out with new LFP cells. The engineers possibly also monitored the performance of the new heat pump, introduced in the Model Y last year, which didn’t do as well as expected in frigid climes. Based on the images posted on Tesla’s Instagram account, the engineers took on sand, mountain roads and gravel-strewn tracks during the tests, the results of which have not yet been announced. Testing a car for durability requires it to be pushed to the hilt — be it in extreme temperatures, on treacherous terrain or flung across the bends of a racetrack — to gauge handling ability and suggest potential improvements. Tesla recently introduced a number of upgrades to its models, factoring in parameters such as ambient temperature, humidity, tyre pressure, cross wind and even phone charging — all of which were presumably tested in the deserts of Dubai. The <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/markets/2022/08/30/elon-musk-files-letter-to-terminate-44bn-twitter-deal/" target="_blank">Twitter debacle</a> aside, Tesla founder Elon Musk also made news this month when he announced he was <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/technology/2022/08/22/elon-musk-raises-price-of-teslas-full-self-driving-technology/" target="_blank">raising the price </a>of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (FSD) software in North America, from $12,000 to $15,000 from September 5, after the release of version FSD Beta 10.69.2 for the company’s driver assistance system. <b>See the video below on </b><i><b>The National</b></i><b>'s </b><a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/lifestyle/motoring/exclusive-testing-the-porsche-taycan-cross-turismo-in-extreme-weather-conditions-1.1238152" target="_blank"><b>test drive of the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo </b></a><b>in extreme weather conditions</b>