Lifestyle
Tesla rebel mechanic of ‘Rich Rebuilds’ to sit down with Joe Rogan in JRE podcast
Tesla-refurbishing hobby mechanic Rich Benoit of the Rich Rebuilds YouTube channel will be interviewed April 30th on the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast at 12 pm PDT. The guest studio chair once sat in by Tesla CEO Elon Musk during his notorious cannabis puff will now be filled by a man who works hard to educate Tesla owners on how to repair their own cars, often against the all-electric auto maker’s resistance.
After beginning a journey to salvage a flooded Tesla Model S in 2016 and chronicling the effort on his YouTube channel, Rich hit frequent roadblocks while trying to obtain parts and servicing information from the all-electric auto manufacturer. Tesla refused to sell him replacement parts for the vehicle, citing safety concerns, but Rich’s determination eventually pulled through. The rescued Model S, nicknamed ‘Dolores’, is now complete and regularly used for his personal travels.
I was able to catch up with Rich via phone while he was on his way to the JRE location, and of course, one of my first questions was whether he would repeat Musk’s ‘stunt’ whether it be in tribute or in irony. “I’m bringing edibles,” he answered jokingly. “I’ll pop brownies based on how quickly the conversation goes downhill…After fifteen minutes, I’ll start with like three.” I should warn that Rich uses a lot of sarcasm in his humor.
We then discussed what kind of conversation he was expecting on the show (he has no idea) and whether he was given any advance outline of the topics that might come up (none whatsoever). “Actually, I’m not even sure this whole thing is happening,” he admitted. “I haven’t really heard anything else from [JRE] since booking it, so hopefully I’m not gonna show up and they don’t know who I am or why I’m there.”
He was laughing, but his nerves were still wrapped up in the whole situation. On one hand, Joe Rogan has a very large audience reach that can introduce all sorts of communities to Rich’s projects and mission. On the other hand, he doesn’t even have solid confirmation that the interview will take place as scheduled.
“I emailed the guy about it, and he said they’re ‘probably’ good for it. Like, probably? I’m already in California! I at least better get a picture with Joe,” he mused. Rich is from Salem, Massachusetts.
This led to my other introductory question. How did he connect with Rogan? I was particularly interested in the behind-the-scenes booking process. Turns out, there wasn’t much to it. The show was scheduled via email – Joe Rogan’s booking manager contacted him and they set a date and time for Rich to appear. After confirming, Rich mentioned the booking on his YouTube channel, but it was kind of buried in between a status update on his latest refurbishing project and an honesty check for used Model 3 sellers.”Well, Joe Rogan, that show is forever,” Rich told me when I asked why he didn’t give the show appearance its own video or do more to promote it. In his view, anyone who didn’t catch the live stream of The Joe Rogan Experience could watch it later on YouTube, and he’d link and refer to it in future videos.
I’d also seen that an article about Rich on the front page of The Boston Globe was shared by Joe Rogan on Twitter and met with a positive response. “A lot of my followers and subscribers are also fans of [Rogan], so when he posted that article, they started asking him to have me on,” Rich explained. He was obviously excited to have the opportunity.
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“ITS HAPPENINNNNGGGGGG big shout out to all my fans that bullied Joe Rogan into having me on his show. April 30th LIVE from CA! You guys remember the infamous Elon Musk interview? Well this will be the generic store brand version,” he shared on his Instagram shortly after confirming the booking.
Several of the Rich Rebuilds videos document his struggles with Tesla during his repair attempts, now expanded to other vehicles besides Dolores, but Rich’s mission isn’t just about the fight. He says it’s about helping Tesla owners learn more about their cars and to help fill gaps in service that have yet to be filled by the company.
Rich originally began his infamous Tesla Model S salvage project from his home in Salem, but he’s since teamed up with ex-Tesla mechanic and EV Tuning owner Chris Salvo to found the Electrified Garage in Seabrook, New Hampshire. The Rich Rebuilds channel generated significant interest from the Tesla community, and much of it took the form of requests for assistance with vehicle repairs.
“I was never thinking of opening my own shop…But I’d been denied so many times by Tesla that I really started thinking there’s got to be a bigger picture here, another player who can help others and get parts as well. Now there’s a place where people can go for third-party EV repair,” he explained to CNBC in a feature interview.
The Joe Rogan Experience streams its episodes live via the show’s YouTube channel, so be sure to tune in April 30th at 12 pm PDT to hear more about Rich’s Tesla repair journey.
In the meantime, you can watch the videos below for more about Rich’s Tesla salvage projects:
Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
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