Lifestyle
Tesla seemingly does the most Elon Musk thing ever by drawing a giant “doge” in the Giga Texas site
Elon Musk is known for many things. Apart from being a noted innovator with a penchant for attempting what is otherwise conventionally considered impossible, Musk is also known for his witty and sarcastic humor. The CEO’s humor and playful nature could be found in Tesla’s products, from fun Easter eggs on the car itself, and more recently, it seems, in the construction zone of Gigafactory Texas.
Musk has noted that he loves to use Twitter as a way to express himself, similar to how other people use their hair to show the world who they are. This was particularly evident recently as Tesla started embracing Bitcoin by investing $1.5 billion in the cryptocurrency. Musk, for his part, has focused his cryptocurrency-related tweets on Bitcoin’s more meme-worthy sibling—Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency initially created as a joke.
Giga Texas Westward expansion is no joke!
Also a very busy spectator day at the site – ALL the who’s who were there! Haha 😆 Have a great evening !
📷 @peterdog15 pic.twitter.com/fLbj3wCHFy— Gail Alfar (@GailAlfarATX) April 1, 2021
Musk has expressed his love for Dogecoin and its mascot, a Shiba Inu fondly dubbed in internet meme culture as a “Doge.” Over the past weeks, Musk has mentioned that he would be getting an actual Shiba Inu for himself. And on April Fools’ Day, Musk tweeted that SpaceX would be putting a “literal Dogecoin on the literal Moon” in a future mission. The CEO’s Dogecoin payload to a Moon mission may likely be a joke, of course, but Musk has also joked about sending a car to space in the past, and we all know how that went.
What was somewhat unexpected, however, was that Tesla seems to have hidden yet another big Doge-related Easter egg in its Gigafactory Texas site. The construction of the massive facility has been progressing at an extremely rapid pace, and every step of its development is closely monitored by Tesla community members who regularly conduct drone flyovers of the construction site. It was in one of these flyovers that Elon Musk’s latest Easter egg may have been discovered.
Large DOGE is spotted at Tesla Giga Texas this afternoon near Austin on far west side #DogecoinRise #dogecoin #technoking #NoJoke
📷 @peterdog15 pic.twitter.com/5ZaCzStIEG— Gail Alfar (@GailAlfarATX) April 2, 2021
As could be seen in a recently captured drone footage, part of Tesla’s construction in the Giga Texas area involved clearing some new ground at the far west side of the facility. Interestingly enough, an aerial view of the site shows that the soil has been moved around in such a way that part of the area, when viewed from an angle, resembles an outline of a dog, complete with a mouth, a tail, paws, and ears. This was highlighted by a rather humorous post from the Tesla Owners Club of Austin, which noticed the apparent, massive Easter egg hidden in plain sight at the Giga Texas facility.
Granted, the massive figure could have simply been created by accident, or it may have been a playful joke by some of Giga Texas’ workers. However, such jokes or Easter eggs do fit the characteristics of some of Elon Musk’s classic humor. If any, it does provide a rather lighthearted reminder that while Giga Texas’ construction is aggressively progressing at lightning speed relative to projects like Gigafactory Nevada, Tesla is still a company with a ton of personality. And that’s precisely one of the reasons why it enjoys so much support from people across the globe.
Watch Jeff Roberts‘ recent flyover of the Gigafactory Texas site in the video below.
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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.
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.
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.