Toothy smiles, boisterous laughter, and eyes filled with joy cover the nooks and crannies of Rivian’s story, making it more than just another EV startup. A glance through its website, and you won’t just find vehicles. You’ll see people. People having fun, exploring, basking in the sun, and, most of all, enjoying the outdoors.
When Rivian invited Teslarati to its First Mile tour event in the Bay area, we were excited to get a small taste of the outdoor adventures the company promises with the R1T. And we wanted to share the experience with our friend Arash Malek. After all, Rivian is also about community.
“Meaningful change happens when people come together. That’s how we’ve built Rivian, and that’s how we want to build our community.” – RJ Scaringe
At the event, Tanya greeted Arash as if she was greeting a friend. He was met with welcoming smiles and a promising day with the R1T ready to hit the beaten dirt path.
Rivian’s Roots
Arash was pleasantly surprised by Rivian’s R1T pickup truck, pointing out its impressive handling and traction. “The grip on the dirt feels like grip on pavement,” Arash told Teslarati.
The R1T ripped through muddy paths amid a backdrop that looked straight out of The Lord of the Rings‘ Hobbit village. Out in the open greenery, it was just Arash, driving the R1T with a few cool people who were egging him on to tear through the dirt paths.
And that is what Rivian wants to bring to customers. The promise of adventure with friends, family, and a tiny bit of calculated danger.
Rivian Today
Rivian’s IPO happened recently, making history as the sixth-largest listing ever on a US exchange. RIVN is also the biggest listing of 2021, and a few analysts and investors are stumped by it.
The company’s historic IPO could be attributed to what Rivian actually provides as an automaker. When it comes to the R1T, Rivian isn’t simply selling the first all-electric pickup truck on the market. It’s giving people an opportunity.
Rivian Tomorrow
The Rivian R1T starts at $67,500 before tax credits. At that price, the R1T appears to compete with the likes of the Ford F-150 Raptor and Ram 1500 TRX. However, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe stated before that he wants the R1 vehicles to have a “Patagonia-like feel of enabling adventure,” referring to the iconic premium sustainable clothing line.
The Patagonia brand has been renowned for decades among outdoor explorers. Given its history, it’s easy to see why Rivian wants its sustainable R1 vehicles to reach Patagonia’s heights.
Global Expedition Vehicles, which specializes in overlanding vehicles for adventurers-at-heart, launched a Patagonia-inspired expedition vehicle that starts at $700,000. It is fully equipped for comfort in the outdoors, with a kitchen, dining area, bathroom, and bedroom. It even has a tough zombie-apocalypse-level exterior to boot.
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- A $700,000 overlanding vehicle complete with a wide range of creature comforts. (Credit: Global Expedition Vehicles)
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- A pickup truck fitted with aftermarket overlanding equipment. (Credit: TacomaBeast/YouTube)
A $700,000 overlanding vehicle may be too much for some. So, other outdoor and overlanding enthusiasts typically buy pickup trucks and equip them with overlanding gear. An overlanding buildout can range from a few thousand dollars up to $100,000 or more. Labor is usually the most expensive part of outfitting an overlanding vehicle.
The R1T treads the line between all-out deluxe setups like the $700,000 Patagonia-inspired expedition vehicle and the simpler overlanding pickup truck setup. Rivian’s R1T gives owners a premium, comfortable outdoor experience. But in a more natural way, similar to outdoor experiences in a pickup truck outfitted with overlanding gear. The R1T also happens to be electric, so it doesn’t harm the environment it explores either.
“It’s like glamping but for off-roading. Glamroading,” Arash commented after his R1T drive.
At its price point, the R1T makes that premium overlanding experience accessible, attainable to more families, friends, and communities. And after a year indoors because of the pandemic, who doesn’t want to embrace the outdoors?
With the R1T and R1S, Rivian is coaxing more people to go out on the open road and explore the natural world while maintaining the simple comforts we’ve built as a society. Rivian knew it years ago. People need to experience nature, its majesty, its serenity, and its unity.
Rivian encourages people to use their R1 vehicles out in nature and bond with others. After all, isn’t human connection the best Chicken Soup for the Soul? Rivian is giving people the opportunity to create their own adventures and share stories around a camp fire–or in Rivian’s case, the Camp Kitchen.
The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, reach out to me at maria@teslarati.com or via Twitter @Writer_01001101.
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 reveals Optimus Academy, where robots teach themselves
The Starship moon landing number NASA and Elon Musk can’t agree on
