Lifestyle
Tesla Roadster Sport comes out of retirement to race the Model 3 Performance
Some vehicles will forever hold a special place in people’s hearts. For the Tesla community, that car would be the original Roadster, a car that broke the mold of conventional electric vehicles when it was released. With the Roadster, Tesla proved that electric cars did not have to look and perform like glorified golf carts — they can be fast, sleek, and sexy too.
The original Roadster garnered a lot of awards during its time. On October 27, 2009, for one, the Tesla Roadster set a world distance record for production electric cars, traveling 501 km (311 miles) on a single charge. In March 2010, the sports car also became that first electric vehicle to win the Monte Carlo Alternative Energy Rally, with Formula One driver Erik Comas driving an Arctic White Roadster to dominate the three-day, 1,000-km (620-mile) event.
Tesla released the Roadster Sport in 2009, as a top trim for the electric sports car. In its review of the vehicle, Car and Driver noted that the Roadster Sport hit 60 mph in just 4 seconds, thanks to its powerful AC permanent-magnet synchronous electric motor that produces instant torque. With its 122 mph top speed, 288 bhp of power, and 295 lb-ft of torque, the Roadster Sport was capable of sucking the breath out of unassuming passengers.
Tesla only sold about 2,450 Roadsters during the vehicles’ entire run from 2008-2012. After the Roadster, Tesla focused its efforts on developing and refining the Model S sedan, a vehicle that could very well be the most important car of the decade. Following the Model S was the Model X SUV, and after that came the Model 3, the company’s first attempt at a mass-market car. Tesla passed through “production hell” with the Model 3, though the company was able to power through its difficulties this year. Elon Musk recently noted that Tesla is now at a point when it has no problem building 5,000 Model 3 a week — more than twice the number of original Roadsters the company produced over four years.
The Model 3 Performance is the top trim of Tesla’s latest vehicle. Being powered by larger and more energy-dense 2170 battery cells, the Model 3 Performance is Tesla’s first track capable car. Equipped with two electric motors that produce a combined 450 hp and 471 lb-ft of torque, the high-performance electric sedan has an impressive 0-60 mph time of 3.5 seconds (eventually updated to 3.3 seconds by Tesla), a top speed of 155 mph, and a range of 310 miles per charge.
In sheer specs alone, the Model 3 Performance — the most conservative among Tesla’s Performance-branded vehicles — outguns the original Roadster. As a video of a race between the two cars shows, though, the original Tesla Roadster is still incredibly quick despite its age. The race between Tesla’s past and present electric cars was held at the Atco Dragway in NJ, where two neophyte drivers christened the drag strip with the rather rare matchup.
Thanks to the raw power of its electric motor, as well as the reaction time of the Model 3 Performance’s driver, the Tesla Roadster Sport established an early lead during the bout. Midway through the quarter-mile, though, the Model 3 Performance started catching up. Both vehicles were neck-and-neck until the end of the race. The Model 3 Performance crossed the quarter-mile mark in 11.838 seconds at 114.02 mph, while the Tesla Roadster Sport completed the run in 12.959 seconds at 101.13 mph. Thus, despite getting the jump over the newer car off the line, the Roadster Sport ultimately bowed down to the Model 3 Performance by 0.6623 seconds.
Its loss to the Model 3 Performance aside, it’s difficult to not remain impressed by the Tesla Roadster Sport. The car, after all, is equipped with battery and powertrain technology that has since been improved by Tesla. Despite this, the vehicle was still able to perform the way Elon Musk wanted it to — as an electric sports car that can stand toe-to-toe with some of the best high-performance cars in the market.
Watch the original Tesla Roadster Sport battle the Model 3 Performance in the video below.
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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