Lifestyle
Lucid Motors is ‘making an appearance’ during Elon Musk’s SNL episode
Elon Musk won’t be the only thing related to the quickly-growing electric car industry to make an appearance during Saturday Night Live this evening. Tesla rival Lucid Motors will also be making an appearance during the famous television program, likely in the form of a commercial.
Musk’s appearance on SNL has been a heavy point of focus for the past week in both pop culture and the electric vehicle industry. It was announced recently that Musk would be co-hosting the May 8th show with Miley Cyrus in what is sure to be one of the most viewed episodes of the show that started nearly 46 years ago.
Elon Musk shares update on SNL appearance, says everyone is being friendly
It appears that the hype surrounding the episode may have drawn some attention from big-name companies who will purchase air time in the form of advertisements and commercials during the show. With Musk being on the air, plenty of electric vehicle enthusiasts will likely be tuned in to see what humor Musk brings with him. However, competing companies of Tesla view this as an opportunity to plant seeds in viewers’ minds, and Lucid Motors is one of them.
Lucid announced yesterday, on May 7th, that it, too, would be making an appearance on SNL. How? It seems that Lucid will advertise the Air, its first-ever sedan. With an all-electric powertrain and an already considerable number of pre-orders and support, Lucid definitely has some momentum in the sector. However, its planned and coordinated effort to derail Musk’s episode through a commercial during his hosting of SNL seems to be a continuation of some very contentious and somewhat abrupt drama between both Lucid and Tesla. The two companies, and their CEOs, have made several comments and strategic moves through the past few months that have seemed to hint toward a potential rivalry in the EV sector.
Guess who is making an appearance during #SNL tomorrow? #LucidAir #Firstto500 pic.twitter.com/aXquKSEND6
— Lucid Motors (@LucidMotors) May 7, 2021
Interestingly, Lucid tested its Tri-Motor Air variant at the Laguna Seca just two days before Tesla’s Battery Day in September 2020. It was rumored to be running laps several seconds faster than the Model S Plaid ran at the same raceway nearly a year earlier. It seemed that Lucid was almost teasing Tesla and Musk to release the Plaid variants to customers, or at least release more details regarding the Plaid Powertrain to the public.
Tesla eventually obliged, but not at the Battery Day event. Tesla announced the Plaid Model S in January 2021 and plans to begin deliveries in the coming months. However, the animosity between the two companies has gone past that.
In a recent Tweet, Musk clarified what Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson’s job title was when he was employed at Tesla. It has been said in the past that he was Chief Engineer of the Model S, but Musk is not willing to give him that credibility because of what his actual job responsibility entailed. While Rawlinson did handle the Model S body engineering phase, he did not handle any issues related to powertrain, battery, software, production, or design. He left “before things got tough,” which seems to be a thorn in Musk’s side.
Rawlinson was never chief engineer. He arrived after Model S prototype was made, left before things got tough & was only ever responsible for body engineering, not powertrain, battery, software, production or design.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 3, 2021
Interestingly, Rawlinson’s LinkedIn tells a different story. He lists his time at Tesla from 2009 to 2012 and lists his job title as “Vice President & Chief Engineer for Model S.”
What Rawlinson’s actual job title was at Tesla remains to be confirmed. However, a 2010 press release from Tesla lists Rawlinson as “Vice President and Chief Vehicle Engineer” and says that he was “responsible for the technical execution and delivery of the Model S.
Nevertheless, the rivalry between Musk and Rawlinson rages on, and in 2021, the two CEOs are still combating for the overall domination of the EV sector. However, one thing is clear: Tesla is light years ahead. Lucid will begin delivering its Air sedan during the second half of 2021.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026

