Lifestyle
What Tesla Slacker Internet Radio Means to Me
In this great write up, Rob M. explains the inclusion of Slacker Radio in the Tesla’s entertainment system. Like him, I was unfamiliar with Slacker before ordering the car, and assumed it would be like other internet radio services. I was right, only, I hadn’t yet realized how profound of an inclusion this was for me.
My 60-year-old parents in law, both of whom were formerly allergic to computers, listen to Pandora on the iPad I forced upon them as a Christmas gift. My 50-year-old mother loves YouTube for its ability to display full music videos from hair bands like Guns N’ Roses. Nearly every party I attend has a soundtrack courtesy of internet radio. By now, it’s safe to say most Americans have used or heard of streaming music.
What they may not think about is how wonderful of an application it is for inside a vehicle. Every Tesla Model S comes with Slacker personal radio standard and at no additional cost. With it, you can select a song, artist or album and the radio will play the specified song as well as related songs. It also provides pre-selected channels such as 80’s hits or 90’s hip hop.
Selection can be done by way of the intuitive touch screen or by pressing a steering wheel button and commanding the car to “Play: Fool In The Rain.” Assuming you did so because that’s the kind of mood you were in, you’d be delighted to next hear songs like Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” (So *this* is where that one lyric my mother used to repeat often was from!)
Me, I’m more a “Play: Sussudio” or “Play: Missy Elliot” kind of gal. But just like this Apple Radio commercial, “It knows your mood, it knows your taste. It’s like you have a boyfriend that makes you a mix tape in your laptop.” Except, it’s your car. And where better to have a mood matching musical experience than a car?
One of my favorite uses of Slacker is when a random song comes to mind and you can listen in an instant. You may not have that song in your own digital collection. And you certainly can’t just command an obscure song to happen to be playing on FM radio. What’s even better is when that obscure song turns out to be a really good base for the radio to select other songs you didn’t even realize you wanted to listen to. I’m talking to you, Beenie Man!
And of course, as you may find to be the case when taking a spirited solo drive, sometimes you just want to hear whatever exact song it is that you consider to be your driving theme song.
Relationships with cars are complicated. We tend to love or hate them; enjoy or dread getting behind the wheel, depending on the situation. We love road trips, family vacations and nights out with friends. But the same car that might bring joy in those situations is the one whose steering wheel you grip or bang on when yet again, your commute is ruined by one minor accident. Insert internet radio into any of those situations and as you can imagine, your mood can be instantly elevated. Go ahead, take a moment and picture a family vacation. What song do you want to hear? Now picture date night with your significant other. You’re on your way to a great dinner and want to say something. “Play: Wonderful Tonight.” How about that annual golf scramble that Bob from Accounting always wins? “Play: Eye of the Tiger.” Need to get out of your own head after a bad day at work? “Play: Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
The Tesla is already a joy to drive for reasons stated a million times over. But music? Music speaks to the soul. And sometimes, my soul wants to escape a traffic jam by thinking of my late father.
“Play: Surrender.”
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.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s surprise addition to the X Takeover lineup has fans talking
Elon Musk will join Saturday’s X Takeover at Giga Texas for a live virtual interview.
Elon Musk will join X Takeover at Giga Texas on Saturday for a live virtual interview, according to Sawyer Merritt, who shared the news late Thursday. Musk will not be on stage in Austin. The conversation is set to stream for free on the @teslaownersSV account on X.
Organizers had kept expectations in check. In a September update, Tesla Owners Silicon Valley said Musk had appeared at the event twice before but was not promising a third appearance, even as fans hoped he would walk the Giga Texas grounds in person. A virtual spot matches 2024, when Musk gave a surprise interview of about an hour to the crowd in San Luis Obispo, as Teslarati reported at the time.
Wasn’t expecting this 🫡
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 9, 2026
This year’s edition is a first in several ways. It is the first X Takeover held outside California and the first at a Tesla facility, with tickets selling out in eight days. Tesla provides the venue, but the event is produced independently by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley. The main event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT, followed by a drone and light show at 9 p.m. Maye Musk is the keynote speaker, Franz von Holzhausen is set for a virtual keynote, and Nicki Minaj is the special guest. Joe Tegtmeyer, whose drone footage Teslarati used to track the Optimus factory steel frame at Giga Texas, is also on the speaker list.
Musk’s interview topics have not been revealed, but the backdrop is busy. Tesla doubled its Cybercab fleet in Austin in late September, and last week Musk explained why Robotaxi hours only moved from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.. Merritt also reported Thursday that Texas DMV records now show 319 registered Cybercabs, up from 169. NHTSA’s deadline for Tesla’s sworn answers on Cybercab certification is October 30, and Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21.
Fans who cannot make it to Austin can watch the livestream on X. Musk tends to say more in unscripted settings than he does in prepared remarks, which is the reason this one is worth having open on Saturday.
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