Lifestyle
Tesla Model S thief ditches electric car in river, leaves bag of onions inside
A paddler from Langley, Canada recently came upon a rather strange sight — a stolen Tesla Model S floating on a river. What’s even stranger was that the Model S thief appears to have left a big bag of onions inside the electric sedan.
The incident transpired early Wednesday last week, as the paddler was on Fraser River in Fort Langley, British Columbia. The Model S’s entire front end was underwater, though its rear was sticking out. The Model S was painted in titanium metallic silver — an option that Tesla no longer offers.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Corporal Holly Largy stated that police were dispatched to Fraser River after the sighting was reported. According to Largy, the full-sized luxury electric sedan was stolen from Burnaby, BC on Tuesday night, the day before it was sighted floating on the water, according to a report from The Langley Times.
The Model S thief left a large bag of onions inside the electric car, which floated away from the vehicle when authorities started recovering the car. The paddler helped retrieve the vegetables as evidence for the local police’s investigation.
“Why they had a big bag of onions is anyone’s guess,” the paddler said.
Here are a couple of images from last Wednesday’s strange Tesla Model S incident.
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- A stolen Tesla Model S floating on the water. [Credit: The Langley Times/Facebook]
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- A stolen Tesla Model S floating on the water. [Credit: The Langley Times/Facebook]
Adding to the bizarre nature of the incident, the Model S appears to have floated some distance before it was discovered by the paddler, considering that the boat launch was a good distance away from the location where the car was spotted. This is in line with one of Elon Musk’s tweets from way back in 2016, when he stated that the Model S could float well enough to turn it into a boat (not to be confused with Tesla’s James Bond Lotus Esprit Easter Egg) for short periods of time. According to Musk, the Model S’ battery and drivetrain should be safe during short run-ins with water, considering that the units are sealed.
We *def* don't recommended this, but Model S floats well enough to turn it into a boat for short periods of time. Thrust via wheel rotation.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2016
Elon Musk’s fascination with cars that can handle a good amount of water was in full display when he purchased the actual Lotus Esprit submarine used as a prop in the classic James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. Winning the car through an auction, Musk as later quoted to have playfully stated that he was disappointed to find that the Espirt did not actually transform. According to a CNN Money report, a statement provided by Tesla teased that Musk would be trying to make a real transformable car in the future.
“I was disappointed to learn that it can’t actually transform. What I’m going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real,” Musk said.
A strange incident involving a Tesla happened in the United States last month as well. As we noted in a previous report, a self-confessed Tesla hater in Santa Barbara, CA attacked a Model S as it was driving by. According to witnesses, the man was saying “I hate Teslas!” while swinging a hatchet in one hand.
The man made contact with the Model S in the Santa Barbara incident, though the electric car did not incur any damages. After attacking the Model S, the Tesla-hating man attempted to flee on foot, though he was later arrested by authorities near an intersection. The hatchet he was holding when he attacked the electric car was also confiscated.
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.
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