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The recent headlines about Dyson’s abandoned efforts at making an electric car were probably music to the EV-doubter crowd’s ears. I assume this not so much because the Rolls Royce of vacuum companies had difficulty transitioning into a completely different industry, but because of the reason given for the shut down:
“However, though we have tried very hard throughout the development process we simply can no longer see a way to make it commercially viable.”
Sure, the jokes are funny. (“I guess they ‘sucked’ at making cars,” etc.) But the dissenters will point to this as yet another example of why the long-term prospects of EVs are overestimated by a long shot. No amount of regulations can fix the business-case and economic fact that there’s a huge cost obstacle to manufacturing battery-electric vehicles that can only bring the price down so much. Even Elon Musk has commented about this, saying something along the lines of how he doesn’t hate cheaper cars; they’re just not possible to make right now.
Quite possibly the biggest obstacles to widespread EV adoption is the affordability factor (the other being supply chain limiting production capability). While Tesla is obviously working on this aspect and some might argue they’re already there with a $35k Standard Range Model 3 (downgraded post-purchase), it really seems like it’s going to be an issue for a long time for companies other than Tesla. In other words, Tesla will probably figure out mass market, cheap cars way quicker than their competitors and stay ahead of the game for years if not decades. Is that a win for the movement, though?
To be perfectly honest, I’m a market principles person. My favorite part about Tesla (and SpaceX) was how a customer-driven approach was taken to revolutionize an industry (or two) after the government-driven approach had been wanting at best. The myths about EV ownership don’t exist in a vacuum (sorry, I had to). They came from a history of compliance EVs that were produced to merely meet requirements and not a bit of innovation more. For people that can’t afford a Tesla, it doesn’t matter that the company has achieved amazing things with their product. Their perspective is somewhat like scrolling through various celebrity Instagram accounts: How nice for them!
If Tesla wants to lead a movement of battery-powered vehicles on a global scale, someone has to be able to keep up. Right? Porsche seems to be on the right track, but they’re even less affordable than a Tesla and have always only sought to appeal to a niche luxury market. It seems to me that the issue is something beyond the tech itself, considering Tesla has “open sourced” its patents. What is it? What is driving huge companies with huge resources to fail at even creating a Tesla-level vehicle circa 2012?
I do think it’s a bit lazy to blame it on oil profits. If EVs made as much business sense for those “gasoline/diesel-centered” companies as it does for Tesla, they’d convert in a heartbeat. That’s the bit about markets that you can usually rely on. If there’s money to gain, there are players waiting to cash in. Also, there will be a market for oil companies for a long time due to manufacturing needs, and their investors are perfectly willing to diversify their portfolios with other things that make good money.
Or maybe that’s it in itself? Once Tesla has the cost-ratio figured out, the other players will follow along and start investing serious money in repeating that success. But what if that’s not it? How committed can Tesla be to its own movement if no one can catch up? Do others need to catch up? Will “good enough” be enough for global EV adoption with Tesla always representing the luxury segment of the market?
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.
EVgo taps Tesla Superchargers for mass charging expansion
Tesla Giga Texas reportedly moves to 24/7 production
