Lifestyle
Feeling Safe in the Tesla Model S
I won’t tell you that you can’t put a price on safety, or that surviving a serious car accident is worth all the money in the world. I won’t tell you that most people who can afford it are willing to pay a premium to be safe. I’ll leave that up to anyone who has ever been or known someone seriously injured or worse in a motor vehicle accident. They will tell you that safety is of the utmost importance.
I have only ever been in a moderate accident and can tell you that I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Just last week I discussed a rollover accident that a friend and his wife had just experienced in their SUV. They escaped with barely a bruise. When I asked if they felt any sort of indebtedness to their particular car, I was informed they had already purchased an exact replacement. You see, they had chosen it based on just two very specific criteria they considered to be non-negotiable: that it be a compact SUV and that it have a 5-star crash test rating from the NHTSA.
But what about those of us who have never been in a horrific accident or never will be? Perhaps for us, it’s the feeling of safety that’s worth it. Friday morning when I work up there was wet snow and slush on the ground. My husband looked over and said to me “Would you feel more comfortable taking Ellie?” Of course I would! The Tesla is great in snow, my other car is not. I’ve had a few bad winters in my Hyundai Genesis Coupe. It is a rear wheel drive sports coupe that can’t handle even a trace of snow, slush or ice without fishtails, slips and the overwhelming feeling that you have no control over the car. I’ve had many uncomfortable driving experiences with it: white-knuckles, stress and feeling that there’s no way I’m making it to my destination without an incident. It severely diminishes how good I feel on the road. In fact, it downright scares me. To me, just like how confidence in other arenas leads to success, feeling safe really means something. I’m happy that he let me take the car, as my commute is longer and his is a straight run on a major road. So there I was, driving along in my Telsa, feeling 100% comfortable; feeling 100% safe. I was feeling like the snow and slush that was on the road just wasn’t there. At no time during the whole commute did I slip or lose grip or take longer to stop than I would have on dry roads.
It’s hard to describe the comfort I felt that morning. I just knew that this car, along with safe and sensible driving would keep me from causing an accident. I also knew that if someone else who was not driving as sensibly happened to crash in to me, I would have had a very low chance of serious injury. That is what safety means. That is what Tesla has created. And that is what I had the privilege of experiencing that morning.
Safety in the Tesla goes far beyond good handling in snow and slush. The car was built from the ground up to exude safety in every measure. Recent software updates have even improved safety with additional features. Just this week I noticed that the color of the dash graphics on Autopilot enabled vehicles that show how close you are to another vehicle or object are more fluid than I originally thought. They don’t just go from white to yellow, then orange to red. In fact, those colors change slightly from white to pale yellow, become a more vivid yellow, then darken as they approach orange territory.
The right rear of the car shows the lightest yellow while right front shows a lighter yellow. On the left side of the car where a construction barrier was close by, the graphic darkened as I got closer.
While a sensor showing your proximity to objects may or may not have much an impact on the outcome of a serious crash, this is just one more feature that gives you the confidence to operate a Tesla and feel safe while you do it.
So again, we all value our safety. Now I think it’s time we also place as high a value on feeling safe.
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 Roadster owners to get “Flying Stunt Mode” and looping track access
How to use Grok Bot to block spam calls and texts
Tesla’s flying Roadster just revealed something bigger than the car
SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions
Elon Musk’s Boring Company lands a new Middle East deal, and Nashville is about to get faster
