Lifestyle
Elon Musk’s ‘Cyberpunk’ Tesla Pickup Truck: Go, Tesla, Go! Or Why, Elon, Why?
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The Tesla Truck reveal is only a month away now, and a few more specifics about what it looks like have been revealed by Elon Musk. We already expected something cyberpunk, but now we also are to expect a military-styled armored personnel carrier as part of its inspiration. This all sounds very cool as a concept vehicle, perhaps, but will it sound cool to a large enough consumer base to be worth the time and effort to put in on the market?
Actually, another question has started to creep into my mind: What exactly is the point of the Tesla Truck?
Whereas other Tesla vehicles were designed to directly take on ICE cars and revolutionize the EV market in their own sporty or practical way, the pickup truck market seems to be more particular about what converts a potential customer into an actual customer. That said, a cyberpunk beast is an odd choice for a company that has proven so many EV myths false and arguably inspired a lot of legislation to be aimed squarely at legacy manufacturers. If Tesla can do it, regulators seem to say, so can you. But one area EVs really need to take on to truly be a completely mainstream option is pickup trucks.
That’s where Rivian seemed to be coming in, albeit their starting prices are a bit on the high side for the mainstream truck customer. It could all be proven completely worth the expense down the line, but when Tesla fired shots with an “under $50k” potential truck price tag, it certainly seemed like there was going to be a real shakeup that put an affordable and all-electric work truck on the road soon. The more I hear about the style of the Tesla Truck, though, the more I scratch my head. Yes, Rivian did their own style thing with the piggy-nose headlights, but that was really just one feature people have started to warm up to. The point of it was also so they would be very recognizable and distinguished as their brand. An entire vehicle going against the grain is a different matter entirely.
I know Musk has his mantra of aiming to design a vehicle that he would personally want to buy, and I respect the logic behind that. However, there’s also the other angle about him that doesn’t jive with Harrison Ford being behind the wheel of this kind of Tesla in a Hollywood production: Making EVs mainstream.
Sure, the Model S and even Model X aren’t really practical purchases for more fiscally-limited consumers (i.e., most of them). There’s an argument to be made for them, though. After proving that EVs could be amazing, the improvements that went into their manufacturing has now translated into the mass market Model 3. There’s already an existing parallel in the ICE world on this as well via racing. The US gas company Sonoco exemplifies this with their motto that their gas is the “official fuel of NASCAR” despite regular car fuel being totally different from racing car fuel. The thought is that if they know how to manufacture super performance gas, their fuel will have an overall higher level of refinement technology that your car will benefit from. I have no idea if it actually does, but that’s the message.
That said, maybe the Tesla Truck is supposed to be this beast that has amazing specs which inspire customers to crave a “normal” looking truck from Tesla to eventually be produced. The next question will be whether enough buyers will go along with the cyberpunk thing and justify the expense from all the tweaks that will inevitably be necessary to develop a mass market pickup truck to follow. The Model S was very expensive, but it was still a traditionally designed sedan which appealed to a large enough consumer base to help fund Tesla’s next developments.
The Tesla Truck is kind of an outlier on this thinking, too. It will be a somewhat inexpensive truck with an even smaller consumer base. Or, does Musk hope to change what people think of in terms of a pickup truck? I am a staunch doubter on this, period. If there’s one thing the pickup market doesn’t seem to be very open to, it’s that sort of radical change. I’ll gladly be proven wrong, but until that day comes, I can’t really entertain this possibility.
Maybe Musk isn’t going for a mass market pickup at all. Maybe he just wants to prove that he can make a truck, make it cheaper, and make it better.
Then again, the Taycan also wasn’t supposed to be a true Tesla competitor, either, yet here we are. Plaid Mode is capturing headlines and significant interest in the EV community. Would we be hearing about it so soon without the Taycan reveal? I have my doubts, but who really knows?
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
SpaceX wants to catch Starship for launch 14, Elon Musk says
Tesla to open source Model S and Model X designs and software
