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Why Tesla’s Supercharger Credit Program is a win-win for everyone

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Paid access to Superchargers will likely have an imperceptible impact on most current and new owners. 400 kWh of complimentary charge or approximately 1,000 miles of road trippin’ annually will satisfy most everyday owners. Improper Supercharger etiquette is nearly as bad as ICEing. With the looming onslaught of new Tesla owners, the company had no choice but to establish a workable set of guidelines that will enable the best experience for everyone.

This was an excellent and very diplomatic move by Tesla to help mitigate local Supercharger abuse. It’s really a win-win-win for everyone involved.

  • Current owners will not be affected
  • New owners will still have some free and fair access
  • Tesla will be able to grow and maintain the charging network

Perhaps the most magical aspect of owning a Tesla is the ability to charge at home or work. You don’t have to go out of your way to find a gas station or Supercharger on a regular basis. Everyone’s habits are different, but you really only need Superchargers during an extended road trip.

Remember the numbers that were relentlessly quoted at the onset of modern EV adoption? 95% of American drivers traveled 30 miles or less every day. This is obviously well within any Tesla’s range.

Tesla offers home charging equipment that is, in many cases, unnecessarily fast at 11.5 kW and beyond. A 7.2 kW Level 2 charger can replenish roughly 22 miles of range per hour and would suffice for most owners. Why would anyone go out of their way to abuse a Supercharger, just to get a free charge when you can charge at your home for the evening and slip into your comfy pants ASAP!?

How much is your time worth anyway? Is it really worth it for someone to go out of their way to find a Supercharger, plug-in, wait, and then drive to their next destination? When all you need is to drive from point A to B, and one or both of those points has a plug waiting for you, there is no reason to add a point C.

This shouldn’t deter most new owners from using their Teslas for periodic longer road trips. With the complimentary 400 kWh of Supercharger use, and an expected low-cost rate thereafter, most owners will hardly notice the difference. It will still be the best and cheapest fuel alternative.

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I almost want to go on an environmental tangent. A fair amount of owners already have solar installed on their homes. The Tesla solar roof will hopefully become a popular option. Superchargers to-date widely depend on grid energy that comes from the traditional mix of generation methods. Charging at home gives you greater control over your carbon footprint. If you have the option to generate your own power or purchase renewable energy, you have a social and environmental responsibility to charge at home.

Tesla’s move to paid Supercharger use will encourage better management of our resources. You will still get 400 kWh of FREE Supercharger use EVERY YEAR. You’re going to want to use that wisely. It won’t be that difficult for most owners.

I have a passion for all that is clean, green, responsible and logical. Because of this, I am a big Tesla enthusiast and future owner.

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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.

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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.



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.

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Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi’s real advantage won’t be the ride service

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Concept art of a Tesla Cybercab in Las Vegas Strip as rendered via Grok

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?

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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.

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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.

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Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)
Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)

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 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.

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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.

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