Lifestyle
Social media and Musk’s vision continues to upend the automotive business model
There is a thin line between success and failure in the automotive business, which is especially the case when your company’s business model upends an entire industry. From the beginning, serial tech entrepreneur Elon Musk knew the power of social media and used it to introduce his vision for the future through Tesla and SpaceX, instead of through lavish, broadcast advertising.
Musk presents his vision in many mediums, such as participation in global causes and Q&A sessions with the public, but most importantly via social media. The guru of social marketing did it again recently when he responded to a girl’s suggestion to consider fan-submitted commercials for Tesla, now known as Project Loveday.
Thank you for the lovely letter. That sounds like a great idea. We'll do it! https://t.co/ss2WmkOGyk
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 2, 2017
Project Loveday is brilliant marketing and shows Musk’s humanity. The tweet’s subject matter reminds me of the classic Coke commercial featuring Mean Joe Green and a kid receiving a jersey from the hobbled warrior.
For old-school Tesla freaks, Tesla’s CEO has been working the Twitter feed since the infamous “Tesla breakdown” back in 2012. This centered around a contributing writer at the New York Times and his test drive of the Model S for the publication. His name was John Broder and the main photo that ran with the article was a Model S on the back of tow truck. The car’s battery was dead. Broder ran out of juice.
However, the car logs showed the vehicle doing loops around the city instead of going directly to its destination in Connecticut. Musk shot back at the author and the story gained huge traction in social and traditional media.
Fast forward nine months later, I attend the first Supercharger unveiling in Illinois and meet a non-Tesla owner, in his late twenties, that came with other Tesla owners to have lunch. This fellow was a software engineer and told me how he became a reservation holder after the John Broder incident blew up on social media.
This millennial marketing style works because the message cuts through the daily noise and is very authentic. Why don’t more automakers take this cue?
High-five from Elon Musk himself at Century City for the #Model3. Now THAT's a CEO!! pic.twitter.com/cwE38kmxp8
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) March 31, 2016
Recently, electric car advocate Chelsea Sexton mentioned this in a recent Facebook post about how some European fans (or team?) created a Gigafactory 2 in the Minecraft platform. If you have a kid under 12, then you know about Minecraft and its 3-D virtual world, where you can build massive, visual environments via tablet or computer.
Sexton, who did time with General Motors some years ago, mentioned that “this is the umpteenth example of how much the EV industry and movement are missing out by not better leveraging the driver and enthusiast communities.” Sexton should know as she was there when GM killed their first electric car in the nineties.
Even crusty Bob “could have been a contender” Lutz feels CEO visibility is necessary for our fast-moving media landscape. “I do not see the media, or open media exposure, as a negative, says Lutz in his self-congratulatory book, ‘Car Guys vs. Bean Counters.’ “A frank, open, and candid approach, with lots of easy access to the CEO, is a winning strategy.”
The irony of crusty Bobby Lutz — paired with gruyere is fantastic — is that he once said that Tesla is “almost like a religious cult” due to the company’s promise of future growth and commanding presence across social media. I think of Apple and their burgeoning cult from the 1990s and early 2000s.
How did that turn out?
Lutz is envious; he never was the top guy at any of the big automakers. Barra at GM doesn’t get it and Marchione does to some degree, but he talks industry consolidation or the “chicken tax” during his media forays. And, dont’ get me wrong, industry consolidation is smart for big automakers but misses on some crucial points: lack of an exciting vision (future), the car consumer and any feeling.
My take is Musk won’t be denied and I’m worried about other U.S. carmakers as they realize how fast the game is changing and don’t have the culture to “think on their feet.”
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.
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