Lifestyle
This Tesla Cybertruck replica is far from ordinary for all the best reasons
When Tom Burick, a teacher at PS Academy in Gilbert, Arizona, told his students they had four weeks to build something that would normally take six months, they did not shy away. In fact, they embraced the challenge and wanted to show their resilience, and what they said eventually became the project’s theme: “We’re up for it!”
Tom gathered 70 of his engineers, who are students living with autism, and prepared them for the task of building a Tesla Cybertruck replica that was fully functional, but he made them aware of the test. While the project was originally slated to be completed in six months, Tom made his students aware that they would instead have just 28 days to get it done.
“We wanted to put our abilities to the test,” one of the students said.
It all started with an idea and a choice: What vehicle would be the perfect design to enter into their booth at the Concours in the Hills car show on February 4th?
“We were looking for a vehicle that was cool, fun, and exciting,” Burick told Teslarati. “There is so much hype around the Cybertruck, we thought it would be a good vehicle to build. We didn’t want to build something normal like a Corolla,” he said with a laugh.
Then it came down to execution. Working after school in the evenings, on the weekends, and whenever there was time, Burick and his team of engineers sought after a single goal: one truck and four weeks.
They started with what they call Pink Panther foam. It is a type of foam insulation ideal for crafts because it is rigid and stable, and it allowed PS Academy students to set up the chassis of the Cybertruck without worrying too much about its strength.
-
After the foam, the Cybertruck frame was covered in canvas drop cloth and painted with grey, water-based paint. They added some windows, then it was on to the motor, electronics, drivetrain, and more.
This Cybertruck replica utilizes lithium-iron batteries, which research by Burick and his team of engineers concluded were better for this application. They added two 12-volt motors, one to each rear wheel, and a normal motor speed controller from Amazon that is used as the accelerator. However, the students’ favorite feature does not have to do with its performance but with entertainment.
“Their favorite feature is the 400-watt audio system. It shakes the windows, and that has been their favorite feature by far,” Burick said.
Burick said that the students received help from a few local businesses and organizations that truly assisted in meeting the strict timeframe. Not only did PS Academy receive some love from the Tesla Driver’s Club Scottsdale, but Bespoke EVs helped with an initial $200 donation to get the project off-and-running, while AZ Metals, located in Mesa, Arizona, helped weld the steering system by shutting down their entire operation and taking an afternoon to assist with the project.
“If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think we would have made the show.”
A Deadline Met
PS Academy Arizona made it to the February 4th show at the Concours in the Hills car show, and over 1,000 cars, including plenty of Teslas were on display.
50,000 people attended the event, and over $430,000 in donations were received for Phoenix Children’s Hospital.
The appearances continued, with the most recent coming during Super Bowl weekend when the Cybertruck made it to the Rock-n-Roll Car Show at the Pavillions at Talking Stick.
“More people gravitated toward our makeshift Cybertruck than toward the $100,000 Teslas, and that meant a lot to us,” Burick said. “It is a testament to the creativity and hard work the students have displayed.
-
Far from Finished
Despite the truck making it to a few events, raising awareness for a great cause, and displaying the tremendous work ethic that the students living with autism showed, the work is far from over, Burick said.
“We’re just getting started, this is the launching point for even bigger things.”
Eventually, the team will add a rolling tech platform, adding more electronics, headlights, taillights, driving lights, a center-dash screen just like the actual Cybertruck will have, more motors, tinting, and other features.
“We want to get the vehicle out in the community,” Burick added. “We want to build a float and have the Cybertruck tow it. We’d love to have it on display in some of the local parades.”
All in all, Burick is incredibly proud of his students, who showed their resilience, creativity, and hard work.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
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.
Tesla Model Y L’s new features flexed at unveiling event at Diner
Tesla CEO Elon Musk denies ridiculous Gigafactory Shanghai rumor
![Tesla Optimus Gen 3 [Credit: Tesla]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/tesla-optimus-gen3-diner-80x80.jpg)
