Lifestyle
‘EVTripping’ launches app to enhance the Tesla road trip planning experience
Planning a road trip with the Model S and Model X is as easy as plugging in a destination address through the vehicle’s onboard Nav, getting in the car, and then going. At least that’s what Tesla’s Trip Planner aims to do, but the truth of the matter is, it falls short on some areas that I find critical when planning for a long distance all electric road trip.
Having gone through a busy summer of traveling, with one Tesla road trip taking me as far as Boston to South Florida, and another trip to Alaska – though this one I flew to, I’ve had time to think about additional features that I myself would like to have access to when planning for an EV trip. I figured that if these are features I felt a need for, there certainly has to be other folks within the Tesla community sharing the same sentiment.
So I decided to build it. EVTripping.com
Existing EV Planning Tools
Let’s start by highlighting some of the popular services out there: PlugShare, Teslarati’s Interactice Supercharger Map, OpenChargeMap, and the popular EVTripPlanner. Each service has its own specific purpose, and they all provide a wealth of information for trip planning. But still I wished I can somehow combine features from each service into one app, but also add to it with additional features.
I’ve compiled a wish list of features that I hope to address with EVTripping.
- At present time no app or service that I know of, outside of the existing Tesla navigation system, is able to predict charge times needed for charging stops. Tesla does it but they tend to be overly optimistic about how much charge time is needed. (EVTripPlanner has since added more realistic charge times which is very helpful)
- We need to be able to see true elapsed time for the trip in order to better predict where one will be at any given time
- It would be nice to be able to see points of interest along the journey such as destinations for food.
- Being able to export the trip planning details in digital form or print it out as a PDF would be a nice to have.
- Weather is a variable that can change along your journey. This should be reflected when planning for a Tesla road trip.
Creation of EVTripping
I’m proud to announce that less than 6 months after I conceived the idea for a new online trip planner, EVTripping.com was born.
If you want to learn more about the sequence of events that led to the launch of EVTripping.com, follow along and check out the timeline which describes everything that’s being worked on.
Response to the site has been overwhelmingly positive despite very limited coverage so far. We’ve added over 200 1000 registered users in less than a week and routed almost a quarter million miles on the production site.
I’ll speak of the site in terms of “we” and “our” because, while I’m the chief cook and bottle washer for the site, I see this as a project for and by the community. Many of you are already helping by filing bug reports, suggesting feature requests and sharing ideas.
We’ve been busy this first week of launch. We’ve fixed bugs, added international support, adjusted time based on a user’s geography, built multi-language support, added foreign character support, and continue to refine the routing intelligence. Early users of the app have been super helpful and supportive so I’d like to thank each and every one of them.
Free Tesla Monitoring
I’ve written an open-source tool before that allows me to take control of my Tesla while also monitoring my SolarCity production. EVTripping adds much of the same functionality when it comes to notifications. The app will monitor your Tesla and remind you when it’s time to rotate your tires, how much you’re driving, the efficiency you’re getting, and more.
I’m focussed on building the tools I need for my Tesla lifestyle and will share them with the community along the way.
The Future
We’re not done yet with EVTripping. I call this stage the “minimum viable product”. Where we go from here will depend on you and others within the EV community. Though I have plenty of product level ideas, we can decide on these together.
One of my big dreams for the site is to add support for other EVs beyond Tesla. I’m defining an EV as an electric vehicle capable of taking a road trip using Superchargers, CHAdeMO, CCS, etc, versus one that you can take trips in, but have to plug in for many hours each time you stop.
There’s no shortage of media outlets covering Tesla, and fantastic podcasts like Ride the Lightning and Talking Tesla, but my focus since I began writing was to talk about the lifestyle component of owning, and living, with a Tesla. It’s been a fun journey thus far and I’m excited about what the future holds as I continue to build out EVTripping for you and the greater EV community.
Elon Musk
How to use Grok Bot to block spam calls and texts
Musk told users to ask Grok Bot to scrub their phone numbers from spam lists.
Elon Musk has a new use case for Grok Bot, and it is the spam call. On Thursday he replied to an X user named Arash with a short instruction: “Ask your @Grok @Bot to remove your phone number from spam call & text lists!” Arash had said he got tired of the calls, had an AI bot find his number on listing sites and file removal requests, and packaged the process as a free skill for others.
The skill is called Spam-Call Scrubber, which is described to find a phone number on people search sites and data brokers, submits the opt outs, completes the confirmation emails those sites send back, and rechecks on a schedule the user picks. Using it requires the Grok Bot app. The pitch is time saved, since most broker opt outs sit behind separate forms on separate sites.
Ask your @Grok @Bot to remove your phone number from spam call & text lists!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2026
Musk said Grok Bot now gives each bot its own email address, and that it can detect scam emails. On Thursday he also said SpaceX would make users whole if the bot botches a purchase or leaks a card, then told users to shop away from Amazon after the retailer blocked the agent, as Teslarati reported. The terms of service we reviewed at the time put responsibility for what an agent does on the user.
For Tesla owners, Grok Bot is not just a phone app. Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles on September 22, and we argued earlier this week that the Cybercab’s real advantage may be the errands it runs during a ride. Every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet has it enabled. The more routine tasks like this one become, the more a rider has reason to hand over something personal in the back seat.
The new Spam-Call Scrubber skill can be downloaded for free and works on sites that honor removal requests, while noting that listings can reappear, and illegal robocallers do not check any registry. Whether Spam-Call Scrubber cuts anyone’s call volume is something the first wave of users will find out, and Musk’s endorsement guarantees that wave is coming.
Lifestyle
Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi’s real advantage won’t be the ride service
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.

