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Tesla Model 3 declared by 96-year old auto veteran as his favorite car ever

Photo courtesy of Joyce Mordenti

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We loved reading the inspirational story about Wesley, age 83, driving his silver metallic Model 3 from California to Florida. My dad Walt Mordenti, age 96, lives in San Francisco. He picked up his red Model 3 (VIN 001388) at the Tesla Factory on December 23, 2017, which possibly makes him the oldest Model 3 owner.

Walt was born in 1921 and began working on cars in 1935 when he needed to help support his family. Since that time, Walt has driven nearly every make and model of American-made cars, and he tells everyone that his Model 3 is by far his favorite car.

 

Above: Walt picking up his Model 3 at the Tesla Factory (Photo courtesy of Joyce Mordenti)

Walt is a skilled car mechanic, renowned for his knowledge of Hudson automobiles. Some folks refer to him as Doc Hudson, and he was a racing legend in his own right. Walt lived in Connecticut and raced on the East Coast from the 1940s to the 1980s. He is probably best known as an owner/builder/mechanic, who also drove the tow truck and served as the pit crew, usually by himself.

In 1948, he bought a red Kurtis Kraft midget racer with a Ford V8-60 engine. On February 27, 1957, Walt’s #78 Kurtis Kraft midget racer set the fastest time in the Flying Mile on the sands of Daytona Beach with a speed of 118.421 mph, beating the Offenhausers!

Above: Walt accepting the first-place trophy in 1957 with chauffeur Ronnie Evans at Thompson Speedway, CT; Walt on left, Ronnie on right (Photo courtesy of Ronnie’s son John Evans)

In the 1940s and 50s, he also wrenched on Hudson stock cars with other Waterbury friends: the Mordenti-Mordino-Mambrino trio. I remember the #12 Hudson stock car, affectionately known as The Tank!

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Later, when Walt was in his 50s, he added “driver” to his resume at the 1/2-mile high-banked dirt track at Lebanon Valley Speedway, NY in his #36 open-wheel, big-block, AMC-powered, super modified stock car (he used Gremlin and Rambler American bodies, because the body had to match the motor). With great joy, he accepted trophies for rookie of the year and most improved driver!

Above: Walt sharing a moment with Margaret during one of their cross-country Hudson adventures. Note the vanity plate on his Hudson, “OUR 53 HH.” The gentleman from New York who bought Walt’s Hudson also put a vanity plate on the car—“WALTS 53”—in honor of the famous Hudson mechanic Walt Mordenti (Photo courtesy of Joyce Mordenti)

Between 1992 and 2016, Walt and my mom Margaret made 19 trips across the USA in a 1953 Hudson Hornet that he restored. Walt told friends that he could not drive the Hudson after my mom, his co-pilot of 71 years, passed away in March 2017 at age 94.

Above: Walt proudly displaying his Tesla vanity plate (Photo courtesy of Joyce Mordenti)

He sold his Hudson in November 2017 to make room in the garage for his Model 3.

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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com by Joyce Mordenti — Joyce contacted us to relay the remarkable story of her 96-year old father, Walt Mordenti, after seeing the story of 83-year old Wesley traveling cross-country in his Model 3.

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EVANNEX carries aftermarket accessories, parts, and gear for Tesla owners. Its blog is updated daily with Tesla news.

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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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