In a world inundated by negativity, controversy, and now, war, tales of people and small acts of kindness matter. They may not hold a lot of never-before-seen information, nor do they include the latest shocking thing that today’s influencers are engaged in, but they do, from time to time, tell a remarkably human story. The tale of late Hollywood legend Gene Wilder’s home, and how it made it back to the actor’s family under a surprising turn of events, is one of these stories.
Back in 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that he would be offloading all his residential properties in California as a way to trim down his possessions. Musk, who owned Wilder’s house, noted that whoever purchases the late actor’s home would have to preserve it. Musk did make improvements to the home like a Tesla Solar Roof installation and Powerwall batteries, but for the most part, the property still retained the spirit it had when Wilder was still living in it.
Filings eventually revealed that the estate was sold to an LLC whose sole manager was listed as Elizabeth Hunter, a screenwriter and TV producer who happens to be married to filmmaker Jordan Walker-Pearlman, who is Wilder’s nephew. Walker-Pearlman recently shared with The Wall Street Journal that his purchase of his late uncle’s home from Musk had been a rather unique experience. The filmmaker stated that he actually spent summers in the Bel-Air home with his uncle, and his experiences in the house made him intimately familiar with the property.
As it is with many stories involving Musk, Walker-Pearlman’s journey into acquiring his late uncle’s home started with a dose of misinformation. According to the late actor’s nephew, he was initially told that the home had been demolished, which made him mourn the house. But while he was in the neighborhood one day with his wife, the filmmaker was pleasantly surprised to see the house still standing. Tesla CEO Elon Musk owned the home then, and a large party was underway. Quite surprisingly, the security guard in the property opened the gate for the couple so Walker-Pearlman and Hunter could peek inside.
It took about a year later when Walker-Pearlman saw the tweet that would effectively change the fate of Wilder’s quirky Bel-Air home. Musk’s stipulation was perfect for the filmmaker, as he would actually want to keep the property and all its quirky characteristics preserved. However, there was just one issue: the home had appeared on forsalebyowner.com with an asking price of $9.5 million. Walker-Pearlman knew that he personally could not afford the property’s $9.5 million asking price, but Musk’s tweet provided him with some optimism that something could be arranged.
And so four months of negotiations started. Fortunately for the filmmaker, the Tesla CEO proved quite understanding, with Musk bringing down the price of the late actor’s Bel-Air home to $7 million, together with what was dubbed as a “long form deed of trust and assignment of rents.” Even more surprisingly, Musk agreed to lend Walker-Pearlman and Hunter $6.7 million to finance the home. It was a surprising twist on the story of Wilder’s house, as its new owners were able to effectively move into a home initially listed for $9.5 million with a $300,000 downpayment.
It was a gesture that was well appreciated by Walker-Pearlman. “He could have sold it for so much more. His sensitivity to me can’t be overstated,” he said. Hunter, for her part, told the Journal that she is quite thrilled to have the chance to reside in such a beautiful home in a neighborhood that she and her husband would otherwise not be able to afford. “It’s magic,” she said.
Interestingly enough, Walker-Pearlman closed the sale with Musk in October 2020. It was perfect timing since the filmmaker was shooting a movie called “The Requiem Boogie,” which was produced by his production company, Harlem,Hollywood. Wilder’s home ultimately became the set for the film, which is a rather autobiographical tale that features a middle-aged former child actor mourning the loss of his movie-star father. Considering the personal nature of the story, having the movie shot in the Wilder’s Bel-Air home is something that was likely a fairly spiritual experience for Walker-Pearlman.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
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.
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.
Tesla owners who tap Emergency Drive Away for fun are in for a surprise
Elon Musk calls Earth’s data centers “peanuts” next to what SpaceX is planning in orbit
