• 2 min read
Tesla gives Grok real in-car controls
Tesla’s Summer Update expands Grok with vehicle controls, smarter navigation, and tighter rear-screen parental settings.
Image: TechRadar
Tesla’s Summer Update turns Grok into something closer to the in-car assistant it should have been from the start. The update adds a wider set of voice commands across Tesla vehicles, letting drivers control more functions without digging through on-screen menus.
According to TechRadar, Grok can now make and answer hands-free phone calls, skip tracks or change radio stations, adjust climate settings, and even open the glove box by voice. That last one matters in a Tesla, where opening the glove box has traditionally required navigating the touchscreen.
Tesla first introduced Grok to its cars in 2025, but at the time it worked more like a general-purpose voice chatbot and couldn’t directly control vehicle features. A Spring Update earlier this year added a wake word and location-based reminders. The latest release pushes it further into the kind of practical assistant role that rivals have offered for some time.
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The update also improves navigation, which can now learn recurring stops and plan routes accordingly. And for Teslas with a rear display, front-seat occupants now get stronger parental controls, including the option to fully manage what is playing in the back or lock the screen out entirely.
How Tesla stacks up on voice assistants
TechRadar notes that Tesla has been relatively slow to ship advanced voice assistant features, despite Elon Musk’s broad focus on artificial intelligence across his companies. Chinese automakers have long offered assistants that can handle core vehicle functions, while BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen have all been deploying a mix of LLM-powered and in-house systems for both general questions and car-specific commands.
Even so, Tesla’s advantage remains the way it upgrades cars already on the road. As TechRadar points out, the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck continue to show how software-defined vehicles can gain meaningful new features well after purchase.
Frontier Editor
Dan is our resident futurist, covering electric mobility, space exploration, and the smart home. He's interested in atoms just as much as bits. Whether it's a new battery chemistry, a reusable rocket, or a protocol that finally makes IoT devices talk to each other, Dan breaks down the engineering that pushes humanity forward.
via TechRadar
