Tesla Updates Safety Score to v2.0: Adds New Metrics and Adjusts Night Driving

March 25, 2023

By Kevin Armstrong

Tesla updates their Safety Score to version 2.0

Tesla

Tesla is updating their Safety Score program to version 2.0, up from v1.2. The Safety Score acts as a driving coach for Tesla owners. It assesses their driving behavior and provides feedback on how they can improve their habits, potentially resulting in lower insurance premiums. And now, with version 2.0, Tesla has introduced two new safety factors and updated the calculation of the Safety Score. Let's take a closer look at what these changes mean for Tesla owners.

The Safety Score is between 0 and 100, with a higher score indicating safer driving. It is based on several metrics called Safety Factors, which are measured by the Tesla vehicle using various sensors and Autopilot software. The Safety Score aims to encourage safer driving habits and potentially result in lower insurance premiums for Tesla owners.

What's New in Safety Score 2.0

The new Safety Factors are Excessive Speeding and Unbuckled Driving. Excessive Speeding is defined as the proportion of time spent driving more than 85 mph, while Unbuckled Driving is defined as the proportion of time spent driving above ten mph without fastening the driver’s seatbelt. Late Night Driving, added in version 1.2, has also been updated to be risk-weighted based on when drivers are driving from 10 PM to 4 AM, with the impact on the Safety Score reduced earlier in the night and increased later in the night.

The updates are added to other safety factors, including Forward Collision Warnings, Hard Braking, Aggressive Turning, Unsafe Following and Forced Autopilot Disengagement. The Safety Score is calculated using the Predicted Collision Frequency (PCF) formula, which is based on statistical modeling using 8 billion miles of fleet data.

It is worth noting that yellow traffic light detection is only available on vehicles with FSD hardware 3.0 or later. The Tesla vehicle relies on its cameras and firmware to detect yellow traffic lights, so it may not detect all yellow traffic lights. Examples of situations that could lead to undetected yellow traffic lights include when the cameras are obscured or do not have a line of sight of the traffic signals, inclement weather, or low light environments.

How to Achieve a Safe Score

Unfortunately, Tesla's Safety Score isn't available for everyone, at least not yet. To see your Safety Score, you need to have Tesla Insurance or have requested FSD Beta, but have not received it yet.

To determine which Safety Score version you're on, you can open the Tesla app and scroll to the bottom of the Safety Score screen. It'll show you whether you're enrolled in version 1.0, 1.2 or 2.0.

Tesla owners can improve their Safety Score by improving each Safety Factor, such as maintaining a safe following distance, engaging the brake pedal early, turning gradually, not tailgating, planning trips to avoid driving between 10 PM and 4 AM, and fastening their seatbelts before driving.

It is important to note that miles driven while Autopilot is engaged are not used to determine the Forward Collision Warnings per 1,000 Miles. Additionally, driving on Autopilot (including 5 seconds after Autopilot is disengaged) will not be factored into the Safety Score formula. Still, the miles driven while on Autopilot are included in the total.

Safety Score 2.0 Requirements

Safety Score 2.0 requires the vehicle to be on software update 2023.2.12 or later (2021.24.25 or later for Tegra vehicles) or be enrolled in FSD Beta version 11.3 or higher.

The Safety Score can help drivers identify areas to improve, such as reducing speed or maintaining a safe following distance. In addition to providing feedback to individual drivers, the Safety Score data is also used by Tesla to improve the safety features of their vehicles. The data collected from millions of miles of driving can be analyzed to identify patterns and trends in driving behavior, which can then be used to inform the development of new safety features or improvements to existing features.

Overall, Tesla's Safety Score is a powerful tool for promoting safer driving habits and improving the safety of its vehicles, which are already the safest in the world.

Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

December 11, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

December 11, 2024

By Karan Singh

Robert Rosenfeld / YouTube

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.

Not a Tesla App

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

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.

Tesla also recently introduced a new voice command. Asking, “What’s the weather?” or something similar will now bring up Tesla’s weather popup.

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 radar overlay centered on your vehicle. It’ll animate through the radar data over the last 3 hours so that you can see the direction of the storm, but you can also pause it at any point.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, even if you zoom out. 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.