News
The Tesla Cybertruck’s tough character can help address a horrible emissions trend
An emissions problem that seems worse than Dieselgate may be brewing in the United States, and it would likely take a perception shift to battle it well. As indicated by a new federal report from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Civil Enforcement, over half a million owners and operators of diesel pickup trucks in the US have been illegally disabling their vehicles’ emissions control technology during the past decade. This trend, which continues to be popular, have allowed excess emissions equivalent to around 9 million extra trucks on the road.
Intentional Emissions
The EPA’s findings in its report echo the shocking revelations of the Dieselgate scandal, which involved Volkswagen admitting to illegally installing defeat devices in millions of passenger cars worldwide to cheat emissions tests. About half a million of these vehicles were sold in the United States. Yet inasmuch as Dieselgate was shocking, what makes the EPA’s recent report quite alarming is the fact that truck owners themselves are the ones–as well as small auto shops–who are willingly installing the illegal emissions-increasing devices on their pickups.
This makes it extremely difficult to accurately measure the scope of the US pickup truck market’s emissions problem. The EPA’s report estimates that there are over half a million pickup trucks in the US equipped with emissions-increasing devices over the past decade. However, the EPA’s study only focused on devices that were installed in heavy pickup trucks like the Chevy Silverado and the Dodge Ram 2500, which weigh between 8,500 to 14,000 pounds. Considering that some owners of smaller trucks like the Ford Ranger may also be engaged in the same practice, there is a good chance that the US’ pickup truck emissions problem may very well be far bigger, involving millions of vehicles nationwide.
“One reason it is difficult to estimate the full extent of tampering nationwide is that the Air Enforcement Division has reason to believe this conduct occurs within most or all categories of vehicles and engines, including commercial trucks, passenger vehicles, pickup trucks, motorcycles, forestry equipment, and agricultural equipment,” the report read.
Worse than Dieselgate
According to the report, the modifications that “diesel tuners” in the US place in pickup trucks could result in the release of over 570,000 tons of nitrogen dioxide, a substance associated with diseases like heart and lung disease, over the lifetime of the vehicles. This is more than 10x the excess nitrogen oxide emissions attributed to Volkswagen’s Dieselgate vehicles that were sold in the United States. The report further stated that the modified pickup trucks will hit 5,000 excess tons of industrial soot over their lifetime. Industrial soot, also known as particulate matter, is linked to respiratory diseases and higher death rates for COVID-19 patients.
John Walke, an expert in air pollution law at the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted in a statement to The New York Times that the EPA’s findings came at the worst time possible. “A global respiratory pandemic is the worst time to find out that there is this massive cheating by the makers of these devices. That is an astronomically high level of smog-forming pollution. It’s happening at ground level where people are breathing the fumes. And if the problem extends to other vehicles it’s almost unimaginable what the health impact will be,” he said.
Phillip Brooks, a former EPA emissions investigator and a veteran of the Dieselgate case, shared his thoughts on the US pickup truck market’s budding emissions controversy. “The aftermarket defeat device problem is huge. A lot of people just don’t understand what the problem is — your average person buys a vehicle and says, it’s my vehicle, I can do what I want with it. They may not even be aware that these devices are illegal,” he said. “But the real question is impact. If 10 people do it, there’s no impact. But these are numbers that are meaningful for air quality. This is not a great way to express how to be a free American, but there are a lot of people out there who think that way.”
The Need for a Diesel Pickup Predator
To battle such a horrible emissions trend, a change of perception is needed that is not that different from what the Model S ushered in for the high-performance sedan market. Diesel tuners, after all, equip vehicles with illegal emissions-increasing equipment largely to improve a pickup truck’s performance. If a vehicle were to be introduced in the pickup truck market that is so far ahead in durability, power, and performance compared to the veterans of the pickup segment, then large diesels could end up going the way of horse-drawn buggies. There are few vehicles that are better at leading this charge than the Tesla Cybertruck.
Similar to the next-generation Roadster, the Tesla Cybertruck has the potential to be a “smackdown” of sorts to the diesel pickup truck market. It’s a large vehicle with a domineering stance designed to look like a futuristic armored personnel carrier. Avid diesel aficionados tend to poke fun at EVs due to their tame, sleek, looks. There’s nothing of that in the all-electric pickup. The Cybertruck, with its XY, origami-like exoskeleton, is a steel beast: tough, unapologetic, and it looks like something that even a large diesel truck should not cross. This trend continues to the Cybertruck’s performance and utility, with its 0-60 mph time of 2.9 seconds, its 6.5-foot truck bed, its 14,000-lb towing capacity, and 500+ miles of range.
Assuming that Tesla does release the Cybertruck with specs that meet those that were announced during the vehicle’s unveiling, the all-electric pickup could utterly outperform diesel rivals to such a degree that it would be embarrassing for traditional trucks to stand toe-to-toe against the steel monster. And once this is established, perhaps the time would soon come when diesel-powered modified trucks could become laughable in the face of superior vehicles that just happen to have zero emissions. Such a time, while unfortunate for the US’ long history of large diesel trucks, would likely be appreciated by the environment and the populace as a whole.
Read the EPA’s report on tampered US pickup trucks and their emissions below.
EPA-US Emissions Scandal Pickup Trucks by Simon Alvarez on Scribd
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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