Lifestyle
Tesla rolls out red carpet delivery for cancer-ridden Cybertruck customer
Sometimes, it’s the little gestures that truly show that a company cares about its customers. This is especially true if a company has already grown to such a level that it has become the world’s most valuable automaker by market cap. This was highlighted by Tesla earlier this month when the electric vehicle maker rolled out the red carpet for a Cybertruck reservation holder who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
Last month, a Cybertruck Owners Club member who goes by the username Mrp11 shared his situation to the forum’s other members. As per the Tesla customer, who already owns a Model 3, Tesla Solar, and Powerwall 2 batteries for his home, he has a reservation for a Foundation Series Cyberbeast, but he is not sure if he will be around long enough for his delivery. He then asked if there was a way to move up his reservation so he could take delivery of his Cyberbeast earlier.
Other members of the Cybertruck Owners Club forum responded positively to the Tesla customer’s story, with some even offering their spot in the Cybertruck delivery queue. Others also suggested that the Tesla customer reach out to Tesla with his request. In a later update, Mrp11 shared that Tesla has stepped up, and it would not be long before he takes delivery of his very own Cybertruck. “Without sharing too much, I will soon have a purchased delivery of my own. Well beyond expectations and for me significance I cannot really explain the worth,” the Tesla customer wrote in a post.
Midway through the month, the Tesla owner shared the efforts of the electric vehicle maker to make his Cyberbeast delivery more special. As per the Cybertruck Owners Club forum member, Tesla did a home delivery for his Cyberbeast, but his vehicle was not alone. It was accompanied by several other Cybertrucks, some of which were wrapped in Tesla’s OEM Paint Color Film. Following is the Tesla owners’ post.
❤️?— Tesla (@Tesla) March 16, 2024
“Today, I received my Cyberbeast via a very cool home delivery. Some of you may have seen my post about being a Cancer patient with a wish. Today was delivery day and Tesla made it very special. Far beyond what we could have imagined. Great people and Great Companies Do Great things. They don’t have to but they do.
“Here is how the home delivery went. Our new beast arrived plus support from a Rose Gold, a Black and another Stainless Cybertruck. They made a grand entrance, filled the driveway, and were there to address any new needs or concerns questions for as long as we wished.
“It made for an incredible event for which I will remember and cherish today forever. Thank you, Tesla, for making today so special,” the Tesla owner wrote.
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Glad it worked out— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2024
Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the story, which was also posted on X. As per Musk, he was glad that things worked out during the special Cyberbeast delivery.
Tesla may attract a steady team of negativity, but the company has a long history of recognizing its most passionate fans. In 2017, the Tesla community rallied around a terminally ill Model 3 reservation holder. Veteran Tesla owners championed his cause, making it known that experiencing the new electric sedan was one of his final wishes.
Tesla responded by moving him up the reservation line, ensuring he received his Model 3 early. The delivery itself was a special event, with a large group of Tesla staff present to celebrate this emotional moment. This heartwarming story made him one of the first publicly known non-employee recipients of the Model 3, solidifying his place in Tesla lore.
The following year, the Tesla community came together again to support another superfan. This time, a Model X owner battling stage 4 colon cancer expressed a desire to meet Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla’s Design Chief. The superfan was treated to a personalized tour of the Fremont Factory, followed by an hourlong conversation with von Holzhausen. Elon Musk himself joined them for a brief chat, even amidst the intense “production hell” Tesla was facing at the time.
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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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