Lifestyle
Tesla’s Biggest Enemy: The Spread of Misinformation from the Misinformed
Automotive enthusiast and former Late-Night funny guy Jay Leno hosted Elon Musk and a series of Tesla vehicles on his show, Jay Leno’s Garage, earlier this week on CNBC. While most of the “well-informed” Tesla fans (including me considering it is my job to know anything and everything going on with this company on a daily basis) found the episode to be disappointing and somewhat outdated, it was certainly a good opportunity for people who know about Tesla, but not the company’s finer points, to expand their opinions on the Cybertruck.
Nothing was more entertaining than listening to Leno and Elon Musk talk about the Cybertruck. Even though a lot of what was being said was stuff I already knew, it was cool to see someone like Leno, who has driven/owned some of the coolest cars to ever exist, nearly awestricken by the features of the all-electric pickup.
Despite a lot of super cool things, the segment was really only about 1/6th of the entire episode, while the rest of the TV time was allotted for excessive commercial breaks and a few other interesting portions of the show itself.
From past experiences, I knew mainstream media outlets would hop all over the story to give a summary of what the episode entailed. I also expected to see a lot of people who don’t follow Tesla closely give their uninformed and incorrect points of view on the truck and the company.
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I don’t mean cosmetic opinions, because those cannot be right or wrong. What irks me and really drives me wild is that in 2020, an entire eight years after the Model S was released and three years after the most affordable Tesla vehicle was unveiled to the public, people still hold this false pretense that Tesla’s cars are for the rich and the wealthy. I’m here to tell you, they are not.
The first thing I did was head to Facebook and look at the comments on CNBC’s article. Boy, was I in for a treat. The comment I really wanted to dial in on for this week’s newsletter had to do with Tesla’s rumored “inability” to offer the automotive market a reliable and affordable electric vehicle. For some reason, this is still not common knowledge, which is extremely surprising to me considering we are literally years past these cars being “new” to people.
The comment simply states: “Ok he got the technology side. Now he needs to work on the economics. These vehicles are not priced for the average person.”
I really don’t know what to say to this, and I tend to just read these kinds of comments and navigate away from them to avoid pointless arguments. Sometimes I want to get involved just to spread the narrative that Teslas are affordable, but other people usually beat me to the punch.
Some replies to the comment talked about pricing points, the most logical saying “The starting price is slated to be only a few thousand more than what most regular size trucks go for.”
For me, it is still striking that people see the cars as “luxury mobiles that only Matt Damon can afford after his biggest motion picture.” This narrative is effectively killing Tesla from growing even more than it already has in the past few years, and to me, it is the arrogance that prevents some people from doing a simple Google search to find out how much these cars cost.
The most affordable truck costs $39,900. The Base Regular Cab Ford F-150 starts at $28,745 and is missing a lot of features that most people expect with a nearly $30,000 vehicle. Even Cars.com states that one of the drawbacks of the F-150 is that Limited trim not luxurious enough, and the price of High-End configurations of the truck are very expensive. Try over $71,000 for the most expansive version of the F-150. Just a reminder that the price of the Tri-Motor Cybertruck is cheaper than that at $69,990.
Here’s my question: Why aren’t people holding this same narrative with gas trucks? Why is it super acceptable to spend $40,000 on a gas truck, but $40,000 on a Cybertruck is key for the misinformed to say that the electric vehicles manufactured by Tesla are “not priced for the average person.”
It goes past the Cybertruck. It goes to the polar opposite of the Cybertruck: The Model 3. There is a $35,000 variant of the Model 3 that is available “off-menu” which is more than affordable for most people. People will spend $40,000 on Honda Type-R and not blink twice, but a $35,000 car that you never have to put gas into is “too expensive.”
So to get to my main point, we as Tesla fans/enthusiasts/owners hold a responsibility to inform the misinformed about the benefits of owning an electric vehicle. We also hold a responsibility to inform those who have misconceptions about the car’s price. It’s not unaffordable, people just want to believe that it is (for whatever reason).
Keep the emails coming! I enjoy talking to all of you!
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.
Tesla Robotaxi app update now tells riders if Cybercab is the better choice
Tesla is ending Cybertruck production
