Lifestyle
The Ultimate Tesla Model S Autocross Enduro Race
5 laps of pure adrenaline – Tires and brakes cooking, power limiter kicking in – just a final push to the finish line and…breath again!
Enduro racing, when autocross just isn’t enough. How about 5 continuous laps of autocross? Do you want to see when your car starts to overheat the tires go gooey and brakes begin fading? Experience it all in Enduro!
RELATED: Autocross in a Tesla Model S
There have been complaints about power limitation when tracking a Model S. During the typical ~1 min autocross course the car will not become power limited no matter how hard you punish it. The tires just barely get warm and brakes keep tight, no worries about overheating. A 5 lap Enduro is a different beast entirely. Turbos break, hoses rupture, I have seen brakes glowing and smelled the death scents of tortured ICE cars. This is the Kart Track at the Jackson County Sports Park in southern Oregon and the last autocross event of the year put on by the Siskiyou Sports Car Club (SSCC) is the Fall Enduro.
Jackson County Sports Park- Kart Track
This event is a clockwise 5 lap race around the outside of the track, roughly 3.3 miles total. The ‘grid’ where cars line up to race is near the lower left corner, cars are launched from the green mark and the start/finish line is at the red line. A 2 second penalty is added to your time for toppling a cone (very few out there to worry about) and 10 seconds for putting all 4 wheels in the grass – don’t do that! Racers have the opportunity to practice several laps at a time on Friday and/or Saturday and then just 1 shot at the full 5 lap time trial on Sunday.
The track record for this Fall Enduro event is 3:39.12 set by a TUI formula in the A Modified class, an average of 43.824s per lap and 54mph! My best laps during practice were in the 52.0xxs range but I wasn’t that quick in the race. I drove a different race line from what I had practiced and feel that it was better but I just wasn’t faster (you can watch a set of practice laps here). Earlier this year in the Spring Enduro race I ‘drove’ off of the track once during practice laps so I became a little overly cautious about my braking points during the actual races. With such a heavy car the margin of error is pretty tiny when going from floored at 75mph+ to full brakes and into a turn.
This last fall I managed to break the F Street track record of 4:25.195 by over 2 seconds but then I was ‘ICEd’ by a mere 3/10ths of a second- so close! My local F Street class competition comes from a CTS-V and an M3 . The CTS-V driver has raced for years so I guess I feel ok about ‘letting’ him beat me (technically he was my ‘teacher’ at the race driving school I did, go figure.)
Vehicle Lap1 Lap2 Lap3 Lap4 Lap5 total time
’13 Cadillac CTS-V Coupe 53.146 52.684 52.265 52.502 51.976 4:22.573
’12 Tesla Model S 52.145 52.318 53.033 52.712 52.704 4:22.912
’13 BMW M3 53.393 53.026 53.264 53.400 53.091 4:26.174
During the race I was pushing close to 75 mph on the straight and used 6.5 kWhr at an average rate of 1.99 kWhr/mi. The S didn’t seem to become noticeably power limited until somewhere around the 4th straight. Through the first 3 laps there was enough power that I could spin the wheels on most of the track so keeping just at the edge of slipping and not dropping too much power can be tricky. Power limiting kicked in on the straights for the last 2 laps and the brakes lost a little confidence by the last lap. For these last laps I pretty much just mashed the throttle to the floor on corner exits, surprising how similar my lap times were…think it means I need to do a bit better in the first 3 laps, read:drive smoother and tighter lines! Driving faster isn’t always faster, taking smooth lines without a lot of slop is usually faster but from an observer it may look slow.
Before I headed out to the track I tried sketching a race line and checking turn radii. After practice and speaking with some locals I tweaked my planned line a bit and ended up with something a little different. My goal was to try and hit all of the apex points that I could on the backside, hopefully something like this
Next Siskiyou Sports Car Club event and the first race of 2015 is the SSCC Spring Enduro, Counter clockwise around the wide curve at the top, past the start line then a hard left and right into the lower loop clockwise up the gut and back around to the finish…
See you there!
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.
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