Tesla Launches Safety Score v1.2, Adds Trip Breakdown and More

By Lennon Cihak
V1.2 of Safety Score is here
V1.2 of Safety Score is here
Drive Tesla Canada

Tesla has updated its Safety Score feature to version 1.2, which adds late-night driving as a factor, among other things.

Since the Safety Score feature launched, Tesla has had a handful of improvements. Version 1.2, however, is the function's biggest update yet. This update will hopefully address a number of the concerns drivers were having before about how the score was calculated.

Tesla uses the Predicted Collision Formula (PCF) to calculate all of the above factors. This formula predicts how many car accidents may happen per 1 million miles driven.

This new version 1.2 adds features like a visualization of your trip (without location data to protect privacy), Late Night Driving and an increased grace period from three to five seconds.

Here is a list of the changes to Safety Score:

  • Provided a visualization of your trip, as a timeline, to show when specific events that impacted your Safety Score occurred. To protect your privacy, no location data is provided.
  • Added Late Night Driving as a new Safety Factor. More time spent driving at night will lead to a lower Safety Score.
  • Increased grace period after Autopilot disengages from 3 seconds to 5 seconds.
  • Updated hard braking and aggressive turning Safety Factors to count the number of events instead of the duration of events.
  • Updated Forward Collision Warning rate Safety Factor to calculate the rate of warnings per 1,000 miles driven while not using Autopilot.
  • Updated Safety Score to use the miles-weighted average of the last 30 day’s Safety Scores, ignoring any miles driven on Autopilot.

One of the biggest upgrades to version 1.2 is the addition of Late Night Driving. Tesla notes in their blog post that, “Late Night Driving is defined as the number of seconds you spend driving at night (10pm - 4am) divided by the number of seconds you spend driving total in the day.” Although Late Night Driving is capped at 29.3% of your total score.

The reason Tesla has added this as a safety factor is that driving at night can be more dangerous due to reduced visibility, tiredness, and distractions.

According to the National Safety Council, most fatal accidents occur between 4pm and 11:59pm, with Friday, Saturday, and Sunday being the most frequent accident days.

Tesla’s new trip visualization feature in version 1.2 is also a welcomed improvement. Previously, drivers were not given detailed feedback about their drives. Instead, they were just given an adjusted score. Trip visualization will show drivers when their trip started, when Autopilot was engaged/disengaged, the time of the infraction (if any), and when the trip ended.

These insights will hopefully allow drivers to reflect on each drive and correct any aggressive driving in order to receive Full Self-Driving beta.

Although Tesla has launched Safety Score v1.2, some drivers will remain enrolled in the original version. You can see which version you're enrolled in by scrolling to the bottom of the Safety Score screen.

These Safety Score improvements come at the same time Tesla Insurance launches in Minnesota.

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Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time
Note the weather under the arrival time
Not a Tesla App

You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

The weather pop-up above the ETA
The weather pop-up above the ETA
Not a Tesla App

One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a 3-hour radar overlay centered on either your vehicle or your route. You can play or pause the animation of the weather overlay, but it’s useful to see the direction the storm is moving in.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, as long as you’re not zoomed out too far. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

Tesla Updates Santa Mode & Rainbow Road to Use Ambient Lighting and Updates SteamOS [VIDEO]

By Karan Singh
Flo / Roberto Bonato

While Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update brought many new features, including Apple Watch Support, Cross Traffic Alerts, Weather Overlays, Search Along Route, and others, there are also several smaller items in this update that didn’t get much attention.

Ambient Lighting Now Affects Easter Eggs

The 2024+ Model 3 and Cybertruck both come equipped with ambient lighting, and Tesla is now taking advantage of this custom lighting feature by incorporating it into several easter eggs.

Rainbow Road: If you head over to Apps > ToyBox > Rainbow Road, you’ll find a new option available that allows the ambient lighting in the vehicle to also change shades while Rainbow Road is active. The Rainbow Road easter egg is a tribute to the iconic course course in Nintendo’s Mario Kart.

Check out the feature in action below:

Santa Mode: Just in time for Christmas, Tesla has improved Santa Mode by cycling the ambient lighting between Christmas colors. Similar to Rainbow Road, the use of ambient lighting for the easter egg is optional and can be enabled under Apps > ToyBox > Santa Mode.

When using Santa Mode with ambient lighting turned on, the lights will cycle just between Christmas colors, red, green and white, instead of the full rainbow. There’s a video of the feature below:

Update: It looks like it affects other Easter eggs as well, such as turning orange when using Romance mode.

SteamOS (Beta) Update

The Model S and Model X vehicles that support Steam gaming are receiving a Steam app update in the holiday update as well. This update could end up being very interesting, but for now Tesla says that the SteamOS, which also runs on Valve’s Steam Deck has been updated to version 3.6.

Valve outlines a wide range of fixes and improvements in their release notes for version 3.6, but Tesla simply states that the OS update includes performance enhancements and improved game compatibility.

The SteamOS hasn’t been updated on the Model S and X for quite a while, so we believe there may be more to this besides performance improvements and fixes. We’ll be looking to share some insights into this in the near future.

So, there you have it—three new features in the Holiday update that have mostly gone under the radar. While they may not apply to everyone, there are plenty of other cool features in the Holiday Update, like the arrival of Dynamic Road Closure Routing and Nearby Parking, that are coming to every vehicle, so go check out the full release notes.

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