Lifestyle
Watch this Tesla Model S conquer Autocross [Video]
The following post was originally published on EVANNEX
Grant M. is like a superhero with a secret identity – during the week, he works as a lawyer, but on the weekends, he takes his Tesla S60 to the autocross track to do battle with the forces of fossil fuel.
Autocross, also called solo or (in Canada) autoslalom, is a timed competition in which drivers navigate a course that includes straightaways, curves and slaloms. It’s less about fast acceleration and high speed than about handling and precision driving. The autocross community is egalitarian – any kind of car can compete, and drivers of all skill levels are welcome. Courses are usually temporary, set up with cones on a speedway parking lot or a disused airstrip – this prevents experienced drivers from gaining an advantage, as the course may be different every time.
According to the Sports Car Club of America, most autocross courses are designed so that the cars won’t exceed normal highway speeds – around 55-60 mph. However, “that doesn’t mean they are slow. Well-designed courses will feel plenty fast as you attempt to maintain that speed through a series of elements. Imagine slaloming every barrel in a 55-mph construction zone, and you will start to get the idea.” As the New Brunswick Sporting Car Club puts it, “While AutoSlalom events typically involve lower speeds than other motorsports, the number of driver inputs per second is comparable to Formula One.”
Driving an electric vehicle (EV) on the autocross track is very different from driving a gas-burner. The EV’s instant acceleration gives it an advantage coming out of corners onto a straightaway. However there’s also a drawback: EVs, especially the Tesla Model S, weigh a lot more than their gas-powered counterparts. “Trying to take a corner fast and hard with a car that weighs 4,500 to 5,000 pounds” isn’t easy, Grant told us. “I’m probably 1,000 to 1,500 pounds heavier than every other car in my class.”
Regenerative braking presents another challenge. “It’s like engine braking, as if you were downshifting. You have to take that into account too – it can slow you down pretty far on a really sharp corner, and sometimes that can lead to the back end of the car sweeping out, just because while you’re braking and taking a turn, you lose contact with the tires.”
In a sense, an EV has the opposite attributes of a gas car: it’s slower in the tight turns, but faster on the straight sections. Grant’s competitors know they have to watch out for the Tesla on the straightaways. “I can’t take the corners as fast as everybody else, but when I see a straightaway, with my instant torque and acceleration I can make up some time.”
The Model S is not an ideal autocross car, so Grant doesn’t expect to win a first-place finish any time soon, but his times are improving, and he often earns a respectable place in the top 3 to 5. “It’s very hard to beat cars that are made by the manufacturers to actually go on tracks.” The BMW M3 seems to be the number-one competitor. “They’re very fast and much smaller.”
Grant competes at SCCA events in Southern California in the F Street class, in which cars must be totally stock – the only modification allowed is the tires, so some drivers opt to use “stickier” models. He’s the only Tesla driver on the Southern Cal autocross scene (and apparently the only EV driver, though he has seen a couple of Volts at events), so he and his car get a lot of attention.
Although he’s the only electric driver among a field of car guys and motorheads, Grant says he has encountered no chauvinism or hostility – on the contrary, most of the other drivers find his Tesla Model S very interesting, and are excited about the technology (he does hear some jokes about his vehicle’s silence). This being Southern California, some of the other drivers own Teslas themselves, although they prefer to bring their M3s or Corvettes to the autocross track.
In fact, Grant has become something of a Tesla ambassador to the autocross community – all the car guys have heard about the P100D and its 2.2-second 0-60 time, but he has educated many of them about nifty features such as Autopilot. Everybody wants to take the Model S for a spin, and we all know how that often ends up – it’s possible that Grant has inspired a car guy or two to buy a Tesla of their own.
And why shouldn’t you follow his example? Autocross events are held in all 50 states, and beginning racers are welcome. If you’ve ever wondered how your Model S might perform on a track, an autocross event could be a good place to find out. You’ll have fun, improve your driving skills, and help to spread the word about driving electric.
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.
Tesla Cybercab gets a for sale date at last
Tesla Q3 2026 Earnings results: in-line revenues, slight beat on EPS
