Lifestyle
How Tesla and Elon Musk subtly roasted ‘short’ sellers after Q3 Earnings
Tesla’s Elon Musk has a way of cleverly roasting those who are not on board with his company’s mission. Whether car companies are refusing to adopt any sort of EV plans for future vehicles, or hedge fund managers pump massive amounts of money into shorting Tesla’s stock, Musk always seems to come out with a witty Tweet, or a bright pair of perfectly priced short shorts, just to rub salt in the wound for good measure.
A week after his company reported its biggest quarter yet, which came paired with extending Tesla’s profitable quarter streak to five, the magical short shorts appeared once again. Those who weren’t lucky enough to receive the hilariously “short” jab at Tesla’s non-believers with the first truckload of S3XY shorts received their fulfillment earlier this week.
Priced at $69.420, which relates to Musk’s life in several ways, the S3XY short shorts were first available just before Tesla reported its fourth consecutive profitable quarter in Q2 2020.
- Credit: James Locke | Twitter
- Credit: James Locke | Twitter
If you wondered how those two childishly-funny digits relate to the Tesla CEO, they’re his favorite numbers. And coincidentally, his birthday is 69 days after 4/20, a day notorious for cannabis culture.
Somehow, when all the chips were stacked against Tesla, the automaker was able to pull through. Despite plant closures during the first half of 2020 in the U.S. and China, Tesla still was profitable. The company beat Wall Street estimates handily, which was a perfect segway into Q3, which would ultimately be Tesla’s biggest quarter to date. However, while Q2 saw more adversity than Q3, the well-timed second appearance of the S3XY short shorts complements another quarter where people said Tesla can’t and won’t. It was the exclamation point on top of its biggest three-month span in company history.
Bigger than a pair of shorts
Tesla has always been a little company with a big disadvantage. When the company decided to manufacture its first vehicle, the 2008 Roadster, it was entering a slumping automotive market that was being affected by the worst economic period since the Great Depression. Even still, the U.S. was recovering, and automotive jobs were attempting to regain some momentum as some of the car business’s biggest names were receiving government help to keep their doors open.
In arguably the worst time to start a company, Tesla was just putting its plan into place. It was battling in the worst economic time in the 21st century and attempting to completely change the tide of what was the “norm” for a car. Everyone knew that previous attempts at EVs went unsuccessful. So what was going to be different here?
Fast forward 12 years. Tesla is the big man on campus, even though it’s the youngest company in terms of “large-scale production” carmakers. Petrol-powered car companies are following Tesla’s lead in a desperate attempt to appear relevant. In a span of eight years, from the introduction of the Tesla Model S, legacy automakers have gone from “we’re not worried” to “full-blown panic mode,” all because people realized its better to pay for a charge than it is to pay for a tank of gas. Not only is it better for the environment, but it’s better for the wallet, too.
Tesla is proving that it is the most dominant company in the world that makes a car, and if you doubt the potential of its products, you’ll become apart of the inspiration for those short, red satin, gold-trimmed shorts.
Perfect time to wash the car with #Tesla short shorts 🤣 https://t.co/78mDTti3s7 pic.twitter.com/OtYeG8VQAS
— Sofiaan Fraval (@Sofiaan) October 28, 2020
Investors and analysts who have doubted Tesla since Day 1 are being proven wrong on what seems to be a daily basis. U.S. demand crumbling? No. European companies dominating Tesla in their own backyard? Not quite. No demand in China? Guess again.
Whether those short-shorts just so happened to become available after the company had its biggest earnings call will forever be a mystery, but the timing seems too good to be true. Whatever the case may be, people are getting their S3XY short shorts, and investors and analysts who have doubted Tesla are once again being taken for a whirl by automotive’s funniest man: Elon Reeve Musk.
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.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s surprise addition to the X Takeover lineup has fans talking
Elon Musk will join Saturday’s X Takeover at Giga Texas for a live virtual interview.
Elon Musk will join X Takeover at Giga Texas on Saturday for a live virtual interview, according to Sawyer Merritt, who shared the news late Thursday. Musk will not be on stage in Austin. The conversation is set to stream for free on the @teslaownersSV account on X.
Organizers had kept expectations in check. In a September update, Tesla Owners Silicon Valley said Musk had appeared at the event twice before but was not promising a third appearance, even as fans hoped he would walk the Giga Texas grounds in person. A virtual spot matches 2024, when Musk gave a surprise interview of about an hour to the crowd in San Luis Obispo, as Teslarati reported at the time.
Wasn’t expecting this 🫡
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 9, 2026
This year’s edition is a first in several ways. It is the first X Takeover held outside California and the first at a Tesla facility, with tickets selling out in eight days. Tesla provides the venue, but the event is produced independently by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley. The main event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT, followed by a drone and light show at 9 p.m. Maye Musk is the keynote speaker, Franz von Holzhausen is set for a virtual keynote, and Nicki Minaj is the special guest. Joe Tegtmeyer, whose drone footage Teslarati used to track the Optimus factory steel frame at Giga Texas, is also on the speaker list.
Musk’s interview topics have not been revealed, but the backdrop is busy. Tesla doubled its Cybercab fleet in Austin in late September, and last week Musk explained why Robotaxi hours only moved from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.. Merritt also reported Thursday that Texas DMV records now show 319 registered Cybercabs, up from 169. NHTSA’s deadline for Tesla’s sworn answers on Cybercab certification is October 30, and Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21.
Fans who cannot make it to Austin can watch the livestream on X. Musk tends to say more in unscripted settings than he does in prepared remarks, which is the reason this one is worth having open on Saturday.

