Lifestyle
Tesla Cybertruck reservation holder publishes children’s book about the ‘Ugly Truckling’
Long-time Tesla customer Diego Martinez published a children’s book about the Cybertruck titled The Ugly Truckling: The Story of My Cybertruck.
Before Christmas, Martinez talked with Teslarati about his new book, The Ugly Truckling. He specifically spoke about his inspiration for the children’s book and why it was so important to publish it.
“The Ugly Truckling: The Story of my Cybertruck is about integrity. It’s about being who you are and having the guts to act on what you observe. If everyone did that, the world would be a better place. We all just need to keep working towards the future. We have a bright, beautiful future here on Earth. It’s been a joy to get this book into people’s hands, both Cybertruck fans and haters,” he told Teslarati.
For Martinez, The Ugly Truckling is a book for any age. He emphasized that the book allows adults to see the Cybertruck through a child’s eyes.
When it was unveiled a few years ago, the Tesla Cybertruck drew all kinds of attention—and not all of it was good. Many criticized the design of the Cybertruck and still do to this day. But not many of those critics are children. Like with many things in life, society often forgets to consider the opinions of children. Martinez’s The Ugly Truckling delves into the thoughts a child would have about the Cybertruck.
“I feel this book is special in that it gets you to see this incredible truck through the eyes of a child, so it’s great to introduce this book around Christmas time. We get to see how it changes and makes the main character see the world a little bit differently. I’m so happy when people read this story. lt’s like I have a part in changing the world a little bit,” commented Martinez.
Martinez is no stranger to Tesla and the company’s work to bring electric cars into the mainstream car market. He was reservation holder #580 for the Tesla Model S after an email from Elon Musk about Project White Star. Years later, he reserved the Cybertruck on the first day it was available.
Martinez is also no stranger to children since he is an award-winning public school educator in southern Colorado. He understands how children absorb knowledge and how they perceive the world. As a teacher, Martinez is on a quest to contribute to a modern education system emphasizing proficiency-based learning.
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In a sense, Martinez brought two of his greatest interests—electric cars and education—together in The Ugly Truckling, hoping it would bring more joy, love, and understanding into the world.
Speaking about people’s reactions to his book, Martinez said:
“There is a little less hate in the world. There’s more understanding and more love. I’ve heard haters say, ‘I’m starting to like the Cybertruck,’ that brings me joy. When people see the Cybertruck, they quickly judge despite such little knowledge. They don’t know what it took to bring this idea to life. I think of it like Tesla is bringing a child or a little baby into the world. There are a lot of similarities to the story of Christmas, in the initial skepticisim and ridicule when your’e new to the world. Welcome to Earth little truckling. It’s a cold world, but you’ll shine bright.”
Diego Martinez’s The Ugly Truckling: The Story of My Cybertruck is available on Amazon and Barnes & Nobles. Elon Musk received his copies of the book in early December 2023.
The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, contact me at maria@teslarati.com or via X @Writer_01001101.
Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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.
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