News
Tesla launches “Project Loveday” contest for fan-made commercials
Less than four days after Elon Musk responded to 10-year old Bria Loveday’s open letter, suggesting that Tesla should consider holding a competition to find the best homemade commercial, the company replied with “Project Loveday”.
Tesla has published terms and conditions to the new “Project Loveday” contest aimed at finding the best fan-made commercials ending May 8, 2017. According to the blog post on Tesla’s website, entrants can submit a link to a 90 second or less YouTube video along with a brief description.
Tesla will select ten “Winners” that will be judged on a point scoring system based on originality, creativity, relevance to Tesla and its mission, and entertainment value. Additionally, a Grand Prize Winner along with a Top 3 will be selected from all eligible video submissions on May 22, 2017.
Updated May 5, 2017: Tesla extended the deadline for submissions to the end of the day on June 5, 2017. Some of the top fan submissions can be found here.
We’ve provided full details to Tesla’s Project Loveday contest, as follows:
Project Loveday
Terms and Conditions
Project Loveday is a video submission contest sponsored by Tesla, Inc., 3500 Deer Creek Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, USA (“Tesla”).
1. OVERVIEW
Project Loveday begins on March 4, 2017, at 12:00 A.M. PT and ends at the end of the day on June 5, 2017.
2. ELIGIBILITY
Project Loveday is open to individuals who are at least 18 years old at the time of entry or to individuals under the age of 18 with the express permission of their parent or guardian (“Entrant”). All federal, state and local laws apply and Project Loveday is void where prohibited or restricted by law. By participating in Project Loveday, the Entrant agrees to be bound by these Terms and Conditions and all final decisions of Tesla.
3. HOW TO ENTER
During the Entry Period, an Entrant may create and submit a video entry (“Submission”) by completing an entry form located here. Each Submission must comply with the guidelines in Section 4 below. By entering Project Loveday, the Entrant agrees to these Terms and Conditions. Each Entrant may only enter one Submission, and each Submission may only have one individual Entrant.
4. SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Submissions must be submitted via the online Entry Form
Submissions must comply with these Terms and Conditions
Videos must be no longer than 90 seconds
Videos must relate to Tesla, SolarCity, our products, or our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy
Videos hosted on third-party social media platforms must comply with that platform’s Terms of Service
Videos must be approved for all ages; i.e., it cannot contain violence, nudity, or inappropriate language or behavior
Any text or voice-overs in the videos must be in English
Submissions must not contain material that violates or infringes another’s rights, including, but not limited to, privacy, publicity or intellectual property rights
Submissions must not in any way mention, refer or otherwise allude to the name, logo or trademark of any entity, individual, product or brand other than those of Tesla and its brands
Submissions must not contain material that is not the original work of the Entrant
NOTE: By submitting a Submission, the Entrant agrees that his or her Submission conforms to the Submission Guidelines and that Tesla may, at its discretion, disqualify him or her from Project Loveday if Tesla decides that the Submission fails to conform to these Terms and Conditions or for any other reason.
5. LICENSES
Entrant grants Tesla (and its affiliates) a royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, nonexclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, publish or create derivative works from and display the Submission in whole or in part, on a worldwide basis, and to incorporate it into other works, in any form, media or technology now known or later developed, including for promotional or marketing purposes. If requested, the Entrant will sign any documentation that may be required for Tesla or its designees to make use of the nonexclusive rights to use the Submission. No rights in or to the Submission are reserved by Entrant.
Entrants may only use Tesla’s name, product, trademarks and logos (collectively, “Tesla’s IP”) for the sole purpose of entering Project Loveday. Entrants are not permitted to make any other use of Tesla’s IP, and Tesla may, at any time, revoke any permissions granted by Tesla. No rights, title or interests in and to Tesla’s IP, except for the limited permissions granted to Entrant in these Terms and Conditions, are transferred or created.
6. JUDGING AND WINNER SELECTION
After the Entry Period, all eligible Submissions will be judged by Tesla personnel (“Judges”). The Judges will score each eligible Submission based on originality, creativity, relevance to Tesla and its mission, and entertainment value. Entrants of Submissions that receive the 10 highest scores from the Judges will be deemed the Winners. Entrants of the 3 highest scoring Submissions will be declared Top 3 Winners. The highest scoring Submission will be declared the Grand Prize Winner. All Winners are subject to verification of eligibility and compliance with these Terms and Conditions.
7. PRIZES
Approved Submissions will be hosted on Tesla’s website located here. In addition, the winning Submissions will receive the following.
Winner Prizes (10): The top 10 winning Submissions will be featured and shared on Tesla’s social media channels.
Top 3 Winner Prizes (3): The top 3 winning Submissions will receive additional promotion across social media channels.
Grand Prize Winner (1): The Entrant with the top winning Submission will be invited to and introduced at a future Tesla product launch event. Tesla will pay for reasonable travel expenses and accommodations for 2 people for 2 nights.
PRIZE CONDITIONS: Prizes are non-transferable and no substitution, redemption or cash equivalent will be allowed. All applicable taxes, and all other fees and costs not specifically identified in these Terms and Conditions as a prize element, are the sole responsibility of the prize winner.
8. HOW TO CLAIM A PRIZE
On or about May 29, 2017, the Grand Prize Winner will be sent an email notification with instructions on how to claim the prize. The Grand Prize Winner may be required to provide the winning video in a format requested by Tesla and to execute any requested documents within the time period requested by Tesla. The prize must be claimed by June 2, 2017 or, at Tesla’s sole discretion, the prize may be forfeited and awarded to the Entrant whose Submission received the next highest score.
9. PRIVACY POLICY
Any personally identifiable information collected during an Entrant’s participation in Project Loveday will be used for purposes of the proper administration of this contest and in accordance with Tesla’s Privacy Policy, available here.
10. PUBLICITY RIGHTS
By participating in Project Loveday, each Entrant agrees to allow Tesla and its designees the perpetual right to use his or her name, biographical information, photos, videos, entries, likeness, and statements for Project Loveday and for trade, commercial, advertising and publicity purposes in any form of media worldwide.
11. GENERAL
Tesla reserves the right to disqualify any Entrant found, in Tesla’s sole discretion, to be acting in violation of these Terms and Conditions or to be acting in an unsportsmanlike manner or otherwise acting in bad faith.
12. WINNER LIST
To obtain a list of prize winners, interested individuals should send a written request with a self-addressed, stamped business-sized envelope to: Tesla, Inc., 3500 Deer Creek Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, Attn: Project Loveday. Winner List requests must be received by May 31, 2017.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Grok Bot is picking up the phone now, and the first calls are wild
Elon Musk wants Grok Bot users making phone calls, and one Comcast call saved $500.
Elon Musk is pushing Grok Bot users toward a feature that, until this week, few of them could actually use. “Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls!” Musk wrote on X Tuesday afternoon, quoting a demo from Sawyer Merritt that included audio from a live call.
Musk first announced calling on October 25, writing that the agent could “call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation.” There were no release notes at the time, and the feature only appeared in preview builds. That changed on Tuesday, when creator Peter Yang said all Grok Bot users should now be able to call US businesses. Musk reposted his demo.
Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 3, 2026
Yang’s call shows how far the feature goes. In his video, his bot dialed Comcast, worked through the phone menu, deflected small talk about the weather by saying it does not “have eyes on the sky,” turned down three upsells and used a cheaper fiber offer from competitor Sonic as leverage. His bill dropped from $84 to $45 per month on a faster plan, a savings of nearly $500 a year. The call ran about 25 minutes, and the bot paused to get Yang’s approval before accepting the final terms.
Merritt described what the user sees: a live transcript runs during the call, and when the business asks for something the bot does not know, an answer box pops up in the chat. The user types a reply and Grok relays it to the person on the line. Other users posted results Tuesday, including a $100 gift card recovered from Verizon Fios after a 51 minute call and a same day pediatric appointment, which Musk also shared. Not every call worked. One user said a rep refused to cancel a subscription once it was clear an AI was on the phone.
Grok @Bot can now call someone or a business for you, make a request on your behalf, take notes on the response and send you a note summarizing the conversation! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 25, 2026
The Grok Bot terms require every call to identify itself as a virtual assistant calling on the user’s behalf and warn that calls may be recorded. Marketing, mass calling and impersonation are prohibited, and calling currently works only with US numbers.
The timing stands out. Days ago, users began hitting their weekly limits early, and Musk said the cost of serving Grok Bot was “unsustainably high relative to revenue,” as Teslarati reported. A call that spends most of its 25 or 50 minutes on hold is the kind of long running task that eats into usage, and SpaceXSI has not said how calls count against the weekly pool. Grok Bot is included from the $30 Premium tier of The X Subscription upward.
For Tesla owners, the agent has been in their cars since September 22 and is enabled across every Cybercab and Model Y Robotaxi. Musk has already pitched it for phone chores like scrubbing your number from spam call lists. Neither Tesla nor SpaceXSI has confirmed whether a bot can place one of these calls on request from inside the vehicle.
News
Tesla Full Self-Driving gets hit with some adjustments in Europe
Tesla Full Self-Driving, which is now referred to in Europe as “Tesla Assisted Driving” (TAD), is getting hit with a handful of new changes at the hands of the Netherlands’ vehicle authority, the RDW (Rijksdienst voor het Wegverkeer).
On 3 November, the RDW announced that it has assessed and approved a set of changes to Tesla’s FSD Supervised driver-assistance system. The updates introduce the official European name TAD and impose stricter controls on the system’s speed behaviour.
The new name will appear on the in-car display, in the owner’s manual, and in all other driver-facing information. The change applies to Tesla models equipped with Tesla Assisted Driving and hardware version 4.0 (HW4) or later.
Importantly, the RDW stressed that the name change does not alter the system’s fundamental operation: it remains a supervised driver-assistance feature that supports the driver in performing driving tasks. The driver stays fully responsible for controlling the vehicle at all times.
Beyond the rebranding, the most significant functional adjustments concern speed settings. Drivers will still be able to set a speed margin, a percentage by which the system may exceed the applicable speed limit when necessary for safety or traffic flow. However, the maximum allowable margin has been reduced from +50% to a maximum of +10%.
In addition, every time the vehicle is started, the speed-margin setting will default to 0% deviation, and other speed-related functions will be disabled by default. These changes will be delivered through an over-the-air (OTA) software update from Tesla.
Tesla requested the RDW’s review of these “minor changes.” After evaluating how the modifications were implemented and how the system behaves, the authority found no adverse or unintended effects on the system’s operation or the vehicle’s driving behaviour. Consequently, the existing type approval remains valid under the same conditions and for the same use; no amendment or extension of the approval is required.
The RDW has informed the nine EU member states that have already accepted its type approval—Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Czechia—about the updates. Broader EU-wide approval is still under discussion within the European Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV). Those proceedings remain confidential, and the RDW has declined to comment on them.
The approved changes align with earlier discussions involving German authorities, which had advocated both for clearer naming to avoid misleading drivers and for a tighter speed offset.
By formally incorporating these adjustments while leaving the core type approval intact, the RDW has cleared the way for Tesla to roll out the updated TAD software via OTA to eligible vehicles in the Netherlands and the other countries that recognise the Dutch approval. The system continues to function strictly as supervised driver assistance, with the human driver remaining the responsible party.
News
Tesla shows off Roadster ‘kickflip’ over vehicle lineup in crazy new POV video
Tesla has released a fresh point-of-view video capturing the next-generation Roadster’s headline stunt from its October 15 unveiling, giving fans a visceral look at the car as it jumps and rotates over its siblings within the company’s vehicle lineup.
Tesla posted the video on X today with the caption “POV you’re a flying car,” and the roughly 30-second clip reveals never-before-seen angles directly attached to the Roadster. It’s really unbelievable:
The sequence reveals the uncrewed prototype firing its cold-gas thrusters, lifting off the ground, and barrel-rolling fully inverted while sailing over a staged lineup that includes a Model 3, Model Y, Cybercab, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi.
Here’s an image of it that Tesla shared right after the unveiling event for a better perspective of what you’re looking at:

Credit: Tesla
There are also some other cool takeaways from the video, including the shift to the inverted-ramp demonstration. The Roadster uses its underbody suction-fan system to climb, then lock itself upside down on the ramp.
This generates multiple Gs of downforce, which then translates into the Roadster releasing these systems to enable a mid-air roll. The car then settles on its wheels gently as thruster vapor provides a perfect cushion.
All of the runs at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, test site, which is where the unveiling took place, were autonomous. Elon Musk stated this was a safety measure.
Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation
Tesla’s vehicle-engineering chief Lars Moravy dubbed the mid-air roll the “kickflip,” prompting Musk to quip that Tony Hawk would be proud and that the car could clear even more of the fleet. The thrusters, which use high-pressure compressed air and fast electric actuators, provide the precise, short-duration force needed for both the launch and the controlled rotation; the same hardware is intended for production versions of the higher-end Thrust and Rocket trims.
The second-generation Roadster, first teased in 2017, has been delayed repeatedly. Musk has indicated production is targeted for 2028.
While the company has yet to publish full pricing or independent performance verification, the combination of extreme acceleration, ground-effect suction, and limited flight capability has already positioned the car as one of the most theatrical EV reveals in years.
Musk has also said Tesla plans a dedicated Texas test track so future owners can experience the maneuvers themselves, far from public roads. The new POV clip simply lets everyone else feel a fraction of that experience from the car’s own cameras.