Tesla Europe announced plans to add xAI's Grok, an AI chatbot, to its vehicle infotainment systems in the U.K. and eight other markets across Europe.
It remains to be seen if the addition of this technology will revitalize Europeans' interest in buying Teslas.
Elon Musk's automaker saw electric vehicle sales in Europe decline by 27%, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, or ACEA. The decline for Tesla came as Europeans' continued strong adoption of battery electric vehicles. BEVs, the only kind that Tesla makes, represented 17.4% of the market across Europe in 2025 according to the ACEA. China's BYD gained market share across the continent with innovative, and more affordable, EV models.
Tesla's lack of affordable new models last year, and an ongoing consumer backlash in response to Musk's incendiary political rhetoric, and endorsements of anti-immigrant extremists including Tommy Robinson in the U.K. and Germany's AfD party weighed on the appeal of the Tesla brand last year, according to Brand Finance.
Tesla is not the only automaker integrating chatbot features into its infotainment systems. For example, Volvo has announced plans to add a Google Gemini-based conversational AI assistant to its EX60 electric vehicles.
During a fourth-quarter earnings update, Tesla revealed that it had invested $2 billion into Musk's xAI.
After that, Musk's aerospace and defense juggernaut, SpaceX, acquired xAI in an all-stock transaction that valued the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.
Before those deals, xAI had merged with social network X (formerly Twitter), and its Grok product had become the subject of myriad regulatory probes in Asia, Australia and throughout Europe including by regulators in Ireland, the U.K., France and the European Commission.
As CNBC previously reported, Grok enabled users to easily create and share deepfake explicit images based on photos or clips of real people without their consent, including deepfake images depicting child sexual abuse.
Last summer, Grok generated and spread antisemitic hate speech across social network X and praised Adolf Hitler, drawing earlier regulatory probes by the European Commission.
... continue reading