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Your Tesla will become a humanless chauffeur, summoned via app
Your Tesla eases its way through the choked streets of Los Angeles and climbs the Sierra Nevada. It glitters with the lights of Las Vegas before continuing over to Yellowstone National Park, where the geysers blow and the buffalo stare from roadsides. Meandering through the Badlands and by Mount Rushmore, it pushes upward in elevation into the Rockies and then down to Denver. After the Tesla powers past the Midwest’s cornfields, it propels its way through Chicago’s multiple highway lanes, wedged between tractor trailers. In the final leg of the trip, the Tesla dips and zips through Pennsylvania’s rolling hills and maneuvers through the congested streets of Times Square, parking itself.
These Northern route stats: 3,241 miles in 54 hours, and your Tesla did all the driving for you. It was capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust, and two cars ahead.
That’s the vision, or Tesla Vision, rather, of the not-so-distant future as announced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk during a press conference call on Wednesday, October 19. Outlining a future of self-driving cars, Musk set a goal for Tesla to make a fully autonomous road trip from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017. The trip would occur “without the need for a single touch” from the driver, including recharging the car’s battery. Owners would be able to Summon their vehicle, through a press of a button on an app, and the car would drive itself to wherever they are and pick them up – even if it’s across the country. The vehicle would charge on its own along the way without human intervention using something similar to the Snakebot that Tesla revealed last year.
“Our goal— I feel pretty good about this goal — we’ll be able to do a demonstration drive of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York. So basically from a home in LA to, let’s say. dropping you off in Times Square, in New York, having the car park itself by next year. Without the need for a single touch, including the charger.”, says Musk.
When you want your car to return, tap Summon on your phone. It will eventually find you even if you are on the other side of the country
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 20, 2016
This Level 5 “full self-driving or driverless capacity” will now be available on the 2,000 cars a week that Tesla is currently manufacturing. That means the Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles in production as well as the upcoming Model 3 will have what Musk terms “Hardware 2,” which allows for full self-driving capability at “a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver,” according to Musk. The hardware includes:
- 8 surround cameras which provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range;
- 12 updated ultrasonic sensors that allow detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system; and,
- a forward-facing radar with enhanced processing that provides additional data on a redundant wavelength.
The system, which has been more than a year in testing, will see continual software updates as the system learns through data collected from ‘Shadow Mode’ and self-driving algorithms are refined. Musk said that it would be some time before Tesla’s software would advance to meet capabilities of Hardware 2, so it will be disabled until it “reaches parity following full validation with Hardware 1, probably in December.” Updates are likely to occur every 2-3 months thereafter. Nonetheless, and in lieu of required regulatory approval, Musk claims that the safety level of this autonomous driving will be at least twice that of a human, or better.
Tesla’s current Autopilot system has been replaced with a newer generation ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ that will leverage the new suite of sensors to provide more precise lane keeping, lane changes without driver input, the ability to exit freeways, and an overall smoother and safer experience. Enhanced Autopilot and the Fully Self-Driving Capability, autonomous mode, is being made available through Tesla’s Model S and Model X Design Studio as optional upgrades.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.
There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.
We’ve unified plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium.
Introducing The X Subscription. https://t.co/SvkrVvBa0p
— SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) October 12, 2026
The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.
That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.
The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.
The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
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.
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