Lifestyle
Elon Musk delivered Jay Leno his first Tesla and it’s still on his mind
Jay Leno’s legendary career in television led to him chasing his passion for driving and owning the fastest, most expensive, and most unique vehicles in the world. On April 19, Leno released previously unseen footage of a young Tesla CEO Elon Musk, bringing him the first production model of the Roadster.
Perhaps what is most impressive is that twelve years later, Tesla continues to quench Leno’s thirst for automobiles, despite owning some of the rarest and most sought after cars in the world. The 2008 Roadster ignited Jay’s interest in the next generation of high-performance and electrified transportation. Before taking the silent sports car for a spin throughout Los Angeles, Leno was educated on the vehicle’s finer points from Elon Musk himself.
Leno and Musk’s relationship started at the former late-night show host’s garage in Los Angeles. Musk delivered the first-ever Tesla Roadster to Leno during an overcast day in 2008, where the CEO of the then-named “Tesla Motors” took Jay through a crash course of how the electric vehicle startup was building its initial vehicle.
The Roadster’s design was based on the Lotus Elise but utilized no Lotus parts for its exterior. The body was made out of carbon fiber and manufactured by French supplier Sotira. The 6,831 battery cells were put into a pack with blades and powered the battery enough to give the car 244 miles of EPA estimated range when fully charged. The vehicle’s weight was roughly 30% heavier than its inspiration in the Lotus; it offered a longer body and a battery pack that contributed significantly to the increase in mass.
Leno was impressed by the instant torque, the aerodynamics, and the aesthetically-pleasing shape of the car. “I just want to say, it’s a real sports car, it handles good, it’s fast, and hey, if this is the future, I’m not that worried,” Leno yells into his microphone before speeding away.
Fast forward eleven years later in November 2019. In Hawthorne, California, at a rocket ship manufacturing facility, Tesla is at it again. This time, it was unveiling its sixth vehicle, The Cybertruck, which would inevitably end up in the hands of Jay Leno in January 2020, after it was spotted outside SpaceX headquarters during the filming a segment of Jay Leno’s Garage.
Leno’s collection of cars includes some of the best and most rare vehicles on Earth. Despite having a garage filled with automobiles that is worth an estimated $52 million, his commentary when describing Tesla’s vehicles speaks for itself.
A vocal supporter of the electric vehicle movement and Tesla in specific, Leno said his love for the electric vehicle company comes from a battery car’s clear-as-day advantage over internal combustion engines. “There’s no maintenance. They’re faster than the gas car. So there’s almost no reason to have a gas car unless you’re doing long-haul duty.”
Leno sees a future that involves more electric vehicles than internal combustion ones. His extensive knowledge of the automotive industry describes a transition that seems to be the equivalent of when gas cars took over in 1911,” he said to CNBC. “Steam ran everything from 1800 to about 1911. Then internal combustion took over from 1911 to right about now. And I predict that a child born today probably has as much chance of driving in a gas car as people today have been driving a car with a stick shift.”
In a world where any car is available to Leno, his decision to continuously mention Tesla shows the impressive nature of the company’s cars. Twelve years after the talk show host and comedian drove the Roadster, it remains on his mind. So much so that it incited him to share with the world footage that has not been seen before.
Watch Jay Leno’s throwback footage of the 2008 Tesla Roadster below.
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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