News
Tesla’s next-gen Roadster is ushering in the automotive industry’s ‘Megacar’ era
Elon Musk is a man driven by his limits. The man behind electric car maker Tesla, Musk has led the company from its small Silicon Valley startup days to its current status as a $50 billion automaker with a market cap that rivals that of Ford and GM. With each vehicle that Musk releases, Tesla disrupts an industry, and with the next-generation Roadster, the CEO is aiming to create a true halo car.
Christian von Koenigsegg is a man driven by his passion. The man behind the small, exclusive supercar company Koenigsegg, Christian is known for pushing the limits of the vehicles he releases. Koenigsegg might be far smaller than supercar makers like Ferrari and Lamborghini, but the few cars that it makes shake the automotive world. The Koenigsegg Agera RS, for one, currently holds the title as one of the fastest cars in the world after it reached speeds of 278 mph. The Koenigsegg One:1, named for its equal power-to-weight ratio, also packs 1,341 horsepower, or the equivalent of one megawatt of power. Koenigsegg’s cars are so powerful that some of them actually qualify as a hypercar instead of a supercar.
When Christian von Koenigsegg heard the specs of Tesla’s next-generation Roadster, his entire company’s roadmap for the coming years was shaken. In a recent statement to Top Gear, Koenigsegg admitted that his company was completely thrown off course by the listed specs of the all-electric supercar, even admitting that the experience itself was “frustrating.”
“We kind of had our future mapped out, and then we heard about the new Tesla Roadster and its insane acceleration numbers, and we thought ‘damn that’s put the gauntlet down.’ Sure, it must be really heavy, but that kind of acceleration? That’s frustrating!” he said.
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Christian noted that one of the biggest revelations by the arrival of the next-generation Tesla Roadster was that Elon Musk’s quoted specs for the vehicle were actually possible. In order to respond to the arrival of an electric car designed to deliver a “hardcore smackdown” to gas-powered vehicles, Koenigsegg and his engineers came up with a strategy that would allow one of its cars to give the Roadster some good competition.
“We thought, ‘this is not OK.’ We wondered whether it was possible, and yeah, it’s possible. Then we thought, ‘OK how do we deal with it? This is embarrassing.’ In two days we’d thought of a few things. The simplest way of putting it is like this: it’s combining direct drive, with the hybridization we have in a different format with free-valve engine technology, in a peculiar layout,” he said.
The concept that Koenigsegg and his team came up with is pretty much the fossil fuel-powered counterpart of the next-generation Tesla Roadster — one that is beyond a hypercar, perhaps even a “megacar” of sorts. Christian noted that he was partly annoyed at himself, for “needing a kick in the head to start thinking” about improving his vehicles’ acceleration.
“We’re talking 0-250 mph in 14 seconds, or something like this. It’s like, black marks all the way up to 250 mph (400 kph), pushing the combustion engine into the wall to try to make it more power dense than an EV for as long as possible. What we see with our engines, we’ve noticed that we’re just scratching the surface of what we can achieve,” he said.
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Elon Musk threw the gauntlet at legacy automakers when he unveiled the next-generation Tesla Roadster last year, and if Christian von Koenigsegg’s reaction to the vehicle is any indication, it appears that the all-electric supercar is doing precisely what it was intended for — it is forcing automakers to see electric cars as a formidable force, and it is driving them to adapt and come up with ways to make their vehicles even better and faster.
Interestingly, such a sentiment has been echoed by Tesla’s test driver for the next-generation Roadster, Emile Bouret, earlier this year. In a segment with YouTube’s VINwiki channel, Bouret, who drove the all-electric car the whole night during its unveiling, encouraged the auto community to support projects and vehicles like the next-generation Roadster, stating that the existence of such vehicles would affect the auto industry in a positive way as a whole.
“I love that I live in a world where all these cars exist. You have Koenigseggs and Paganis and Ferraris and Lamborghinis and McLarens and Porsches and Rimacs and Teslas. So, I know there’s a lot of hate out there, but I just don’t understand it. If you’re a car person, wouldn’t you root for everybody? I’m definitely rooting for them because the world will be a better place if that car does get built and it gets on the road because other people are gonna build cars to beat it — and we’re gonna win,” he said.
Considering that Koenigsegg appears to have come up with a solution to match the next-gen Roadster, it seems that Buoret’s words are coming true. As the Tesla Roadster and Koenigsegg’s upcoming vehicle are released to the market, the era of megacars could very well begin.
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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