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German publication Das Spiegel came out with a very good analysis on the car industry in the country and how new technology is changing its landscape significantly. Yes, it went over how far behind the former auto industry leader is now in terms of electric vehicles, but what I found even more interesting were the details hashed out about self-driving technology.
German auto makers are woefully behind in the tech, especially compared to companies like Waymo; however, most of those companies are looking to license their products rather than compete with car companies directly (unlike Tesla’s Master of the Universe approach). We’ve heard about the promises that autonomous taxi networks will live up to, so now I’ve started to wonder.
How much is manufacturer branding going to matter in the long term? Will the auto industry head towards a future similar to the airline industry? As Das Spiegel puts it, “At the end of the day, people don’t fly with a brand like Airbus or Boeing, they do so with an airline like Lufthansa or Emirates.”
Additionally, is it going to matter how well everyone (i.e., legacy auto) keeps up with EV makers when transportation overall is going to change so significantly that the old sales models will no longer apply?
Citing Waymo CEO John Krafcik’s perspective on Autopilot-type programs as a prompt, the article explains, “…companies could be making money not only from the sale of vehicles but also from every single mile the customer travels… That will be even truer once human drivers, the greatest cost factor in an autonomous vehicle, are completely eliminated. Taxis without drivers, maintenance trips without staff, deliveries without deliverers — in this new world, there will be no salaries or benefits to pay and the machines only go on strike when they have technical problems.” What happens when humans neither impact the manufacturing and service decisions and play a much smaller role in the purchasing decisions?
It seems like German automakers have been very slow to come around to the EV future due, in part, to a nostalgia for what the driving experience used to be and still is for those who still pay premium prices for such ‘driving machines.’ If the future of car ownership is going to be handed over to merely what’s most efficient for place-to-place travel, though, what does that mean for this industry’s experience factor when the engine is eliminated for electric motors and passengers aren’t even paying attention to the feeling of their wheels on the road, the turning radius, the pedal response, etc.?
Sure, some of these things will matter. Using the airline metaphor, customers have serious opinions about the kind of plane they travel in. Small seats and shaky cabins get terrible reviews, but when you need a ticket to your family reunion and price is the biggest factor in your decision, how much input does a customer really have when it comes to the vehicle being used to transport them? Car companies today are appealing to consumers as individuals, but when the consumers start becoming just one number in a larger “base” of people hailing a ride, or perhaps individual business owners looking for the most cost-efficient vehicle to generate money while they’re not using it, what does that mean for the whole “driving experience” model?
Will companies like BMW and Porsche switch over to a pooling type approach, appealing to taxi companies and the like instead of the mom or dad that has kids? Will they purchase all of their parts for various suppliers and just concentrate on body design and tech offerings? Are subscription services similar to cellular companies? On ride-hailing apps, customers choose the size or general style of the car they want to take, but that’s obviously a starkly different decision process than seeing ads, browsing at dealerships, taking test rides, etc.
Tesla will probably be an initial bellwether for how customers will respond to the transition, but I do wonder how much the airline metaphor will play out. WiFi, drink selections, destination discounts, travel package offers, etc., combined with other in-car luxuries like individual temperature controls and so forth will come along I’m sure. But, still.
What happens to, “Because we promised you a Mercedes Benz, that’s why…,”?
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 buyers are buying for Full Self-Driving and not for the car, data shows
Tesla Cybercab gets a for sale date at last
