Tesla’s new in-car AI assistant, Grok, will be getting a hands-free wake word soon. Tesla added Grok to its 2025.26 update, and it’s already working on ways to improve the feature.

Elon Musk stated on X that Grok will soon be able to be activated on Tesla vehicles with the “Hey, Grok” wake word. The conversational assistant will feel even more human-like by having it respond to its own name.

Currently, Grok is activated with a long press of the voice command button (or a long press of the right scroll wheel on older vehicles). A single tap of the button/wheel is currently reserved for the outgoing voice command system, which is expected to be replaced by Grok in the future.

When you’re barely touching the steering wheel on FSD, having a wake-word will be especially useful since you don’t want to deactivate Autopilot accidentally by grabbing the steering wheel.

Grok Will Have More Data

Grok in a Tesla is going to be far more useful than on a phone or smart speaker, because Grok has access to a whole set of real-time contextual data about the vehicle and its surroundings. While Grok already has access to your vehicle’s location, in the future it’ll be tied in with a lot more, likely knowing your destination, route, battery level, and a lot more. This is all data that Grok will be able to use and take into account when responding to one of your questions.

“Hey, Grok - what’s the best coffee shop along my route that’s within 15 minutes?” will be easily answered by Grok in the future.

Expect More Improvements

Seamless, hands-free activation will be a big improvement for voice commands, especially if the syntax isn’t as rigid as it is today. “Hey Grok, turn on the heated seats”, or “Hey Grok, add a stop at the nearest coffee shop.”

While Grok is going to be an in-development product for quite some time, the confirmation of a wake word tells us that Tesla is already planning its next set of improvements. We don’t expect these to be added all at once, but we can see a long list of features that could be added to Grok.

Once Grok has access to vehicle controls, we expect it to be much more capable than it is today, not only from a syntactical point of view, but also in terms of the actual functions it could control. For example, you may be able to ask Grok to open your garage door when you get home, or tune to a specific radio station at a specific time.

Now, we just need to be able to talk to our vehicles from outside, Knight Rider style.