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Trip Planning in a Tesla Model S

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A dear friend of my husband’s that we’ll call “Bob” sent a text message on Saturday April 1st. We were at the airport en route home from the Model 3 unveiling and he apparently heard the news about the growing number of reservations.

“Should I reserve a Model 3?”
Yes, Bob. Yes you should. If you have $1,000 to spare and think there is some small chance you may want the car, make a refundable deposit. This goes for anyone, by the way.

In the days to follow, Bob and my husband chatted about the car a bit. Bob just hoped for enough range to get to and from work a couple of times without having to charge and had declared that he would probably just take another car on longer trips. Why? He didn’t feel like having to think and plan for charging stops.

That’s when it hit me. A large portion of the 325,000 Model 3 reservation holders have never owned a long-range EV that can be powered with a fast charging network on long trips. To some of them, the idea of having to chart out your trip ahead of time is unappealing. To me, it’s actually fun. So fun, in fact, that after seeing someone ask about whether Pittsburgh, PA to Fort Myers, FL is doable – I charted this trip for them.

Tesla road trip planning

100% of the credit for the above trip, as well as every trip I’ve taken in my Model S, goes to the website EVtripplanner.com. This website lets you plug in your start and finish points, various other important pieces of information and route through Tesla superchargers. (At the moment, no other long-range EVs are on the market, nor are other nationwide fast chargers included in the price of your car.) The results take into account elevation information and everything you entered to project the time it will take to get to each charge stop and the amount of rated range you will probably use. This information is easily understood and can be used to jot down a little trip plan like the one above. While I was at it, I used google maps to check the location of each stop. That’s where I got the information included in the suggestion of what to do while charging for any of the above charge stops I haven’t personally been to. The whole plan above took me fewer than 20 minutes and that’s with a little extra formatting to make it easy for the new driver I was making it for to read.

EVTripPlanner routing

Voluntarily charting the above trip out for someone else was a joy. I live in PA and have family in Fort Myers so I wouldn’t mind taking this trip myself, but primarily wanted to showcase how easy the trip could be. On my longest trip, I did Savannah, GA to Philadelphia, PA without an overnight stop. It was long but doable with two drivers. My favorite part of taking trips on the SC network is the forced stopping that encourages stretching your legs, keeping hydrated (not feeling guilty about the restroom breaks since you’re charging anyway) and switching drivers at each stop. Fatigue isn’t a problem when you have the ability to split the driving responsibility. Mostly everyone who has ever road tripped in a Tesla knows it’s great but back to the ease of planning.

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Planning ahead, as shown above, is advisable but Tesla’s built-in navigation also trip plans on the go. In March of 2015, it was announced that a software update would effectively end range anxiety. This enhanced trip planning and range assurance considers real-time information and gives you guidance on getting to where you need to be. It will warn you if you’re in danger of running out, and will advise you to charge to avoid it. Of course, if you just get into the car and head in a direction that is not covered by Superchargers, your trip will end up a lot less convenient. That is why I like to go to EVtripplanner.com from time to time and find various potential trips I can make easily from my home in Philadelphia. I record them on a spreadsheet file, one tab per trip idea, and keep them in mind next time I’m ready for a vacation. It’s also a great idea to revisit it regularly, since new Supercharger locations pop up all the time.

This thread over on the Tesla forum gives excellent tips and reviews of various Supercharging locations and is a valuable resource that helped me to avoid some real confusion when I had to take a ticket to get into the paid parking garage at the Savannah airport, for example.

In the next few years, many more Tesla drivers will learn the joys of EV road tripping and understand that planning ahead is no sweat at all.

Where would you like to road trip in your future Model 3? Leave me a comment!

"I'm Electric Jen

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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.

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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.

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

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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