Lifestyle
Legacy auto still has a chance to win on electric pickup trucks, but will they take it?
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A recent consumer survey conducted by Autolist.com revealed some interesting indicators about the future of electric pickup trucks. On one hand, there’s still time for legacy auto makers to read the memo about the future of their industry with regard to power source. Decades of branding and (mild) innovations could pay off for them because their customers are watching what they’re doing and extending some good will based on the reputation they’ve built. Tesla might be playing a big role in the industry’s directional change, but they don’t necessarily win customers by default because of that role.
On the other hand, car buyers (as expected) don’t seem to be that into radical changes when making a personal transportation choice, but they could be convinced over time. In fact, Autolist’s survey might show that if big truck companies either don’t play ball in the EV transition or they only play half-heartedly, their industry leadership could be chipped away until things collapse altogether.
Let’s look at the survey’s data to break down why I think these things are indicated.
Out of about 1,100 people surveyed to choose one of four electric truck options, of which there was a 50/50 split between those who’d currently/previously owned a truck and those who never had, GM’s still non-existent future truck was the highest-ranked. Ford’s F-150 and Rivian’s R1T came in the middle, and the Tesla Cybertruck was ranked last. Although GM’s vehicle is sight-unseen, the number one reason those surveyed made it their number one choice was due to their trust and existing preference for the brand. Ford’s F-150 was primarily chosen by those people for the same reason as well.
These replies indicate that the billions invested in marketing and production over the years could pay off for GM and Ford in the EV sector. However, their brands of trucks were also expected to have good performance and be reliable, the number 2 and 3 reasons they were chosen. In other words, just putting their name on a vehicle won’t be enough in the long term. In fact, the number one reason why the Tesla Cybertruck was the first choice of those people was the expected performance. The cyberpunk look of the pickup didn’t even rank, and Tesla’s other investments – Autopilot and their charging network – were tied for reasons number 2 and 3 in those customer choices. Interestingly enough, the styling of Rivian’s R1T was the number one reason it was ranked by those responders by a long shot (75%).
It seems that the traditional “look” of a truck is pretty much preferred by customers, as expected by many, but as also expected by many, the performance is important enough to turn heads in unconventional directions. I mean, this is all probably just preaching to the choir for lots of EV watchers and so forth, but seeing some data come in to validate the opinions is interesting.
Another interesting breakdown in the survey that somewhat validates both camps on whether Cybertruck can appeal to enough buyers to be considered successful is that among prior and current truck owners, only 14% preferred it over the other three options. GM’s unseen truck was preferred by 35% of respondents, Ford by 28%, and Rivian by 23%. I’d say that is definitely validation for people saying that “truck” people like their trucks to look like what they’ve come to think trucks should look like. Cybertruck, however, was the number one choice of those who’d never owned a truck before. But, I think there’s still a caveat here.
Cybertruck may have been the number one truck choice for first-time truck buyers, but that number one rank was nearly even with the other three choices. Tesla’s pickup came in at 25.8%, Rivian’s R1T was 24.8%, and the F-150 and GM trucks tied at 24.7% – all are within a percentage of one another. So, even among people that might be more open-minded about what a truck should look like, Cybertruck is still only appealing to a minority of consumers. Overall, it looks like 75% of even first time truck buyers want one that looks traditional, and 85% of current/prior truck owners want the old look as well.
Yet still, the “big guys” don’t really have the wiggle room to loose even the smaller percentage of people that want something different in a truck. As many commenters pointed out under Teslarati’s report on this survey, GM has some workforce headaches and retirement obligations that make its bottom profit line very thin.
Already, it’s tough for union-weighted factories to make significant changes to their product lineups because workers’ jobs are threatened by various parts of the innovations, thus strikes and shutdowns and bankruptcies are always looming. If GM and other companies with similar balancing acts can’t make enough changes to get their electric trucks to compete with the performance of Cybertruck (and perhaps the R1T), they’re going to leak customers where they just can’t afford to leak them, and when customers leave…so goes their money. Shareholders will only tolerate so much squeezing (or so it seems).
Tesla is already hitting hard with a $40k truck whose performance expectations are incredible. If their competition can’t play ball with those specs on something that looks traditional, losing money along the way, they could end up losing the “big” game (i.e., shut down completely) and have to bow out to Tesla and Rivian altogether. Tesla could also go in for the kill move, too, and just put something out there for the same price range and specs as Cybertruck that looks fairly “normal” to scoop up GM’s and Ford’s customer holdouts over style.
We shall see. Isn’t speculation fun?
Lifestyle
Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program
California just signed a $270 million EV rebate into law and it starts this summer.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 into law on Monday, July 13, 2026, creating a $270 million EV rebate program that delivers money directly at the dealership rather than as a tax credit applied months later. The program, called MyFirstEV, is funded equally by California’s state budget and participating automakers, with each contributing $135.5 million to make the math work.
The timing is directly tied to the loss of federal support when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ended, removing the most significant consumer incentive that had driven EV adoption in the U.S. California, which accounts for roughly one-third of all EVs sold nationally, moved to fill that gap with a state-level replacement.
The rebate structure is straightforward. First-time EV buyers can receive $3,500 off any new battery-electric vehicle with an MSRP up to $50,000. Used EVs priced at $25,000 or below qualify for a $1,750 rebate. The credit is applied at the point of sale, which removes the friction of the old federal system where buyers had to wait for tax season to see the benefit. The program goes live later this summer, with the California Air Resources Board expected to release full participation details next month.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
For Tesla buyers, the implications are mixed. The Tesla Model 3 RWD at $42,490 and the Model 3 Long Range at $47,490 both fall under the $50,000 cap and would qualify for the full $3,500 rebate for first-time buyers. The Model Y, which starts at $44,990 after Tesla’s recent price adjustment, also qualifies. The Model X, Model S, and Cybertruck all exceed the cap and receive no benefit. As Teslarati has reported, the program also includes a carve-out exempting California-based automakers like Rivian and Lucid from the price cap entirely, a provision that puts Tesla at a disadvantage since it relocated its headquarters to Texas in 2021.
Other qualifying vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox EV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.
Elon Musk
Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map
Tesla confirmed it is building a feature that lets you teach your car where to go.
Tesla is building a feature that will let drivers talk to their car in plain language and teach it exactly what to do, with the vehicle remembering those instructions for every future trip. Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy confirmed it this week on X after a user pointed out one of FSD’s most persistent real-world limitations is that the system has no way to receive contextual instructions the way a human driver would.
“FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home. Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific context like that. Google Maps is also notorious for putting pins on houses that aren’t actually yours.” Tesla owner Chris further noted, “It would be so cool if I could talk to the car while going down my street and say something like, ‘It’s the white house on the left, just past that SUV,’ and then have FSD remember that for next time.”
FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home.
Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific…
— Chris (@ChrissGPT) July 8, 2026
This feature would carry more weight than it might seem. Grok has been available inside Tesla vehicles since July 2025, expanded to European vehicles in February 2026, and gained a hands-free “Hey Grok” wake word with location-based reminders and natural-language navigation in the Spring 2026 update. But up to this point, Grok has had no authority over how FSD actually drives. Lane changes, braking, speed, and parking maneuvers remain entirely within FSD’s autonomous decision-making loop. What Elluswamy confirmed is that the next step pushes Grok into a supervisor role, one that translates spoken intent directly into driving decisions.
Tesla teases greater Grok FSD integration and ‘Banish’ feature ‘in about 3 months’
Elluswamy acknowledged at a January 2026 conference that while fully integrated voice control is on Tesla’s roadmap, “it opens up an entire area of testing that we have to do. For example, you shouldn’t be able to tell the car to crash, and it shouldn’t crash.” Elon Musk subsequently confirmed on June 23 that Grok voice commands will pass to FSD’s planning layer by September 2026, a three month timeline from confirmation to deployment.
The deeper significance is what this does for Tesla’s AI training flywheel. Every time an owner corrects FSD with a spoken instruction and the car learns and remembers it, that interaction becomes a data point covering an edge case that no simulation or scripted test could have generated. A fleet of millions of Tesla vehicles crowdsourcing hyper-local contextual knowledge, which driveway, which gate entrance, which side of the street, builds a layer of geographic and behavioral intelligence that competitors without a comparable fleet simply cannot replicate at the same speed or scale.
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla’s Cybercab and robotaxi operations have expanded to Miami following the Austin launch, with rider profiles already collecting preference data. Voice-taught contextual instructions linked to individual rider profiles means a Cybercab could eventually know before it arrives exactly which entrance to use, where to wait, and how to navigate the final hundred feet of any trip it has made before.
Lifestyle
Tesla app update makes Robotaxi ownership make a lot more sense
Tesla’s app now shows a live indicator when your car is actively driving itself.
A recent Tesla app update, released last week (4.58.5), gives visibility on whether a vehicle is navigating in its semi-autonomous mode or being driven by a human driver. The updated app now displays a live “Self-Driving” indicator in bright blue text directly beneath the vehicle’s speed readout whenever Full Self-Driving is actively engaged, along with the signature glowing blue navigation path that FSD users see on the main touchscreen. It is a small visual update with meaningful implications for how Tesla owners monitor their vehicles remotely.
The feature was first spotted in the wild by X user Jordan Camina, who shared video of a Hardware 3 Model S displaying the new animation through the app while driving. That detail is significant because it confirms the update is not limited to newer HW4 vehicles. It works across hardware generations, and Tesla confirmed it will eventually support all vehicles regardless of chip platform once both the app and vehicle software are updated. The vehicle side requires software version 2026.20.6.1, which has reached nearly 40% of the fleet so far, as monitored by NotaTeslaApp.
The feature makes the most practical sense when viewed through the lens of Tesla’s expanding robotaxi operation. In a robotaxi context, the owner of a vehicle generating ride revenue has a direct financial and safety interest in knowing whether their car is operating under autonomous control at any given moment. The app’s new FSD indicator gives fleet owners exactly that visibility, the same way a logistics company monitors whether a delivery driver is following the planned route. It also carries implications for Tesla’s insurance model. Tesla’s own insurance product prices premiums in part based on FSD engagement rates, and real-time visibility into when FSD is active creates a feedback loop that could eventually tie directly into policy pricing. For individual owners who have opted their personal vehicles into the robotaxi network, the update effectively turns the Tesla app into a fleet management dashboard, one that tells you whether your car is earning money, whether it is driving itself to do it, and whether everything is operating the way it should from wherever you happen to be.
Tesla expands Robotaxi to Florida, marking its third state for autonomy
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla launched unsupervised robotaxi rides in Miami this summer, a milestone that makes a remote FSD status indicator significantly more practical than a cosmetic feature. When a vehicle is operating as a robotaxi without a driver present, the owner or fleet operator needs a reliable way to confirm autonomy is engaged. The app now provides exactly that.
As noted by NotATeslaApp, The update also arrived alongside a hint buried in the same app version that Tesla plans to use the cabin camera to verify driver identity before FSD can be activated. Pairing identity verification with a live autonomy status indicator points toward the infrastructure Tesla is building for a fleet of driverless vehicles that owners can monitor the way you would track a package delivery.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.5 Early Impressions: new features and early performance
Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program
