Tesla is looking for a Chief Designer to oversee its production of China-specific model releases in the country. The company’s efforts to open a Design Studio in China have been well-known, but the search for someone to help design cars that will be geared toward the Chinese market in specific continues.
Tesla has been manufacturing its electric vehicles in China since late 2019, while the first public deliveries began in January 2020. Since then, the automaker has seen overwhelming growth, which has been driven by incredible demand in China. The Tesla Model 3 is coming off of a highly-successful 2020 where it dominated sales figures for the full year. The Model Y also began production in late 2020 in Shanghai at its manufacturing plant, but the two cars are not all the company has in its plans.
Sources familiar with Tesla’s operation in China told Reuters that the company had started a full-fledged search to find the person who will design China-geared designs moving forward. According to the sources, recruiters and human resources representatives have worked diligently for four months to find a “bi-cultural” candidate with at least 20 years of experience. It will require a subjective sense of automotive design and familiarity with Chinese tastes. Even though Tesla has done relatively well in the Chinese market with its cars, the company plans to attack the market with designs that will speak to local citizens, which should drive sales figures through the roof.
A handful of potential candidates have been interviewed by Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s Chief Designer, but it is unknown how many people Tesla has talked to thus far.
In June 2020, Teslarati reported that Tesla was requesting that everyone, regardless of design experience or automotive craftsmanship, design an all-electric car that would appeal to China’s masses. “Even if you are not a car designer, you are welcome to submit. It’s more than just a car designed for you,” Tesla stated. “Please think of China in your Tesla design work.”
This request from the automaker followed a January 2020 Reuters report that revealed Tesla’s plans to design a “Chinese-style” vehicle.
Tesla is coming off its biggest year as a company, successfully delivering 499,650 of its over 509,000 produced cars. Q4 2020 was the company’s biggest quarter yet in terms of production and deliveries, as the company worked diligently to attain the 500,000 vehicle guidance it set for itself well before the COVID-19 pandemic slowed production lines.
Chinese-Style Tesla Vehicles (Source: Tesla China WeChat)
The mission to increase the number of EVs on the road is far from over for Tesla. Now, it seems the automaker will begin adapting body styles to every market, looking to cater to each consumer base individually, instead of planning to release a universally-accepted vehicle that doesn’t require revisions. While Tesla’s cars have been successful in countries other than the U.S., there is still work to be done. With more cars on the road in China than any other country globally, focusing on China could ultimately lead to long-term success for Tesla and may lead to a more prolonged domination of the sector than originally anticipated. CEO Elon Musk has openly stated that other companies will catch up in terms of EV development, but Tesla would be able to remain in their lead due to manufacturing efficiencies.
Once a Chief Designer is hired, Tesla will begin to build a team that will turn renderings into clay models. This will eventually lead to new EV designs being built and a broader range of body styles for consumers to choose from.
It is unclear if the development of new Chinese designs has anything to do with the $25,000 vehicle that Tesla plans to manufacture in China soon. Tesla detailed this vehicle at the company’s Battery Day event in September, where Musk stated that a $25k, fully autonomous car would be available in 3-5 years.
Right now, China is swallowing up demand for small, compact cars, even if they are not electric. The Toyota Corolla and Volkswagen Golf are two of the most popular, and Shanghai-based consultancy group Automotive Foresight says that a compact vehicle could be Tesla’s key to dominating the country and beyond. “A compact Tesla car would do well in China, as well as the rest of Asia and Europe,” Automotive Foresight’s Yale Zhang said. “It could potentially put a serious dent in sales of cars like Toyota’s Corolla and the Volkswagen Golf.”
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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