Lifestyle
Should you buy the Tesla Pre-Paid Service Plan?
After counting down the days until the much anticipated delivery of your Tesla Model S another timer begins – counting down 60 days from the time of delivery until the Tesla pre-paid service plan offer expires.
Tesla Service Plan Choices
MyTesla portal on Teslamotors.com outlines various service plan offerings under the section titled “MODEL S SERVICE SIGN UP.” A standard annual service from Tesla Motors (not pre-paid) is $600 when paying per visit or one can opt to purchase a pre-paid service plan as follows:
- 4 year plan – Tesla Service for four years/Up to 50,000 miles. Cost: $1,900. This represents a 21% effective discount from the base price.
- 4 year plan + 4 year extension – Tesla Service for eight years/up to 100,000 miles. Cost: $3,800. This too represents a 21% discount from the base price.
Both plans plans include an annual inspection or an inspection every 12,500 miles. Despite having a service plan option, Tesla still makes a bold statement stating that warranty is not impacted even if you chose to never bring your Model in for service.
Tesla Service Plan Value
Although you’re receiving a 21% discount by pre-paying, that doesn’t take into account the opportunity cost with shelling out the money in advance. Let’s first look at the basic 4 year pre-paid service plan and assume you can earn a relatively risk-free 5% gain on an investment. Pre-paying $1,900 is effectively $2,309 in future value 4 years from now. Paying $600 per year starting a year from now for 4 years adds up to $2,586 in future value. So, accounting for the time value of money, the pre-paid plan is about 11% less expensive given the assumptions above.
Following the same model on an 8 year pre-paid service plan we get a much different picture. A $3,800 pre-pay has a $5,614 future value assuming a 5% annual rate of return. Forgoing the pre-pay option and paying $600 per year as-you-go, has a future value of $5,729 which means you’re only saving 2% with the pre-pay plan.
Also see: Tesla Model S Service Plan – Is it Worth it?
Naturally these results will vary based on the rate of return of your investment and inflation rate at the time. In times of high inflation the pre-pay option is much more attractive. But if you can get a 10% return on your investment (buy TSLA stock!) the pre-pay option is less attractive.
Mileage Adjustment
Tesla service plans are based on an annual mileage of 12,500 miles. At my current rate of driving, I’ll likely reach 32,000 miles within a year which means that my 4 year plan is more like a 2.5 year plan and the 8 year plan is more like a 5 year plan, assuming I need to pay a visit every 12.5k miles. The shorter plans reduces my opportunity cost thus increasing the value of the pre-pay service plan.
For example, if I plan on driving 100K miles in my Model S and purchase the pre-paid service plan, I’m going to pre-pay $3,800 for the 100K miles worth of services which I must perform every 12,500 miles or so. If I pay as I go and pay $600 every 25,000 miles its going to cost me $2,400. Not even considering the time value of money, paying as you go is a clear winner for high mileage drivers.
Poll Results
Nearly 60% of owners are pre-purchasing service plans. Reading through forum threads it seems that owners are doing this:
- Buy shortest term pre-paid service contract
- Decide later on extending that for a longer term (it’s not obvious but if you pre-purchase only the 4 year plan and later want to extend that to the 8 year plan, you could.)
- Waiting until 30 days before standard warranty expiration (4 years/50K miles) before deciding/buying extended warranty.
Summary
The 4-year pre-paid service plan, for Model S owners that have annual mileages at or under the 12,500 miles per year, works out to be an approximate 10% savings.
So,what course of action did I take when selecting a Tesla pre-pay service plan, knowing that I will nearly triple the assumed 12,500 annual mileage? The answer, thanks to Tesla service’s recommendation, is nothing. I did nothing.
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.
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.
Tesla owners who tap Emergency Drive Away for fun are in for a surprise
Elon Musk calls Earth’s data centers “peanuts” next to what SpaceX is planning in orbit
