Connect with us

Lifestyle

Tesla, teardowns, and treats: Sandy Munro talks 2,300-mile journey across the U.S.

Credit: Tony Pham

Published

on

The Tesla community is widely-familiar with automotive teardown legend Sandy Munro. The longtime Detroit automotive veteran has spent the last week in a 2021 Refreshed Tesla Model 3 with colleague Cory Steuben, driving over 2,300 miles from Michigan to the West Coast to talk Tesla, teardowns, and treats with the electric automaker’s faithful followers.

Munro chatted with Teslarati on Tuesday morning, close to exactly a week after his journey began, give or take a few hours. Munro’s purpose for the trip was to meet with several Munro and Associates clients who have requested the manufacturing expert’s two cents on their products for decades.

Munro’s 2021 Refreshed Model 3 was the car of choice for his 2,300-mile, 36-hour drive. (Credit: Tony Pham)

2,300 miles for Tesla fans and Treats

While his meetings were with other companies, Munro told us that he did not meet with Tesla or any executives exclusively. Instead, he was flagged down by several Tesla Owners groups who are situated across the state of California. It has been a pleasurable drive. In fact, Munro told me, “it has been one hell of a trip.” Munro has been showered with gifts and merchandise from Owners Clubs across the state. “We have a trunk full of goodies in the Model 3 here, and they’ve taken great care of us,” he said. “I had some of the best pizza of my life in San Diego. I haven’t had anything that good since I was in Italy.”

But his trip was more than just shared meals with Tesla owners across the state. He had plenty of time to talk with enthusiasts about their vehicles. He chatted with the Northern California-based group Tesla Owners Silicon Valley, where he spoke and conversed about all things Tesla related.

He did have a quick sneak preview of the Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features, where he said, “I can’t go into much detail right now, but I can say it was phenomenal. I was in the passenger’s seat, and I was very impressed with what I saw, but I will leave it at that,” he commented.

Model 3 Improvements

Munro was a vocal critic of the original Model 3, using choice words when he described it to me during our interview. However, Tesla’s manufacturing processes, from build quality to paint, have all been improved since his teardown of an early Model 3 build. “This car has improved significantly,” Munro said. “The paint is great; it’s very impressive,” he remarked, but he still thinks there are some panel gap issues that Tesla needs to improve upon, but they may come with time and more refinements in the manufacturing process.

Most importantly, the paint issue is what Munro seemed to be super impressed with. He indicated that there was only one imperfection that he could notice in the 2021 Model 3, and he doesn’t even blame Tesla for it. “There is a small teardrop in the passenger’s side wing, but I don’t blame that on Tesla. It’s whoever made that part, not the paint.”

Advertisement
-

I made sure to ask Munro whether Tesla’s paint facility had made the improvements internally, to which he replied he thought the early production years were most likely to blame for the paint mishaps. “I think they were just rushing to get in there and get production started. But a paint shop, when I look at it, should be as clean as the dining room table,” he said. Munro noted several steps automakers need to take when things like hair, dust, or dirt are found in a vehicle’s paint. It ultimately comes down to shutting the whole shop down and doing a clean sweep of the entire facility.

Tesla may have done this in 2020 after several permits found by Teslarati indicated paint shop revisions at Fremont were underway.

Tesla Fans: the best thing since the Jeep Wrangler wave

“I haven’t seen anything like Tesla fans since Jeep Wrangler people came about,” Munro said. “When I drive my Jeep Wrangler, and I see someone else with one, I am waving.” He talked about the monumental loyalty that every automotive brand enthusiast group experiences, but there is something different about Tesla. Munro said there are owners of Teslas and Jeeps who “extoll the virtues of their vehicles,” who are proud to drive their cars, and more importantly, glad to support their preferred companies through the good times and the bad ones.

Tesla teardown episodes have expanded Munro’s fan base considerably. He recounted multiple stories of when Supercharger visits resulted in photo ops for fans and unexpected conversations. His favorite, though, was an 8-year old child who asked, “Are you Sandy Munro?”

Advertisement
-

“Here’s this kid, his Mom drives a Tesla, he wants one of his own, and he sees me and tells me he likes my car,” he said.

Credit: Tony Pham

To his surprise, young fans are not the only ones with a keen eye on recognizing him. He also told multiple stories of how surprised he was to see the older generation driving the automotive industry’s newest thing. “I’ve never seen it before. There are 70-year-olds driving these cars, saying ‘It’s the best car I’ve ever had,’” even though they have been loyal GM or Ford owners for 5 or 6 decades. “They’re delighted” that they’ve made the switch, Munro says, and it seems like he certainly expects the trend to continue.

“This is the future,” Munro said. “There’s no question about it.”

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

Advertisement
Comments

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.

Published

on

By

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.



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.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi’s real advantage won’t be the ride service

Published

on

By

Concept art of a Tesla Cybercab in Las Vegas Strip as rendered via Grok

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?

Advertisement
-

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Published

on

By

Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)
Tesla Cybercab camera visibility for passengers (Credit: Dan Burkland via X)

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 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.

Advertisement
-

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.

Continue Reading