What the Blue Snowflake Means in the Tesla App and on the Car's Display

February 10, 2024

By Kevin Armstrong

Not a Tesla App

Like all vehicles, Teslas require a little extra attention during the cold winter months. A common query among Tesla owners is the appearance of a blue snowflake icon next to the battery indicator on their vehicle's touchscreen and in the Tesla app. This icon is not just a quirky design choice; it carries important information about the state of your vehicle's battery, particularly in cold weather conditions.

What the Blue Snowflake Means

The blue snowflake icon warns that the battery is too cold to access its full power and range capabilities. When this icon is visible, owners might notice a reduction in regenerative braking and acceleration. The vehicle’s range is also reduced and charging may be slower than usual, especially at Superchargers. This is a protective measure by Tesla to prevent damage to the battery under cold conditions. The lithium-ion batteries used in Tesla vehicles, like those in other electric vehicles, are sensitive to temperature extremes. Cold temperatures can significantly impact the battery's chemical reactions, reducing its ability to store and release energy efficiently.

How Much of the Battery Is Affected

The Tesla app visually represents the battery's charge level, with the affected portion displayed in blue. By tapping on the battery icon or the charge button in the app, or similarly on the vehicle's touchscreen, users can jump to the Charging section in settings. Here, the portion of the battery displayed in blue represents the "locked" or unusable part of the battery due to cold temperatures. The extent of this blue section gives you a rough idea of how much of your battery's capacity is currently restricted.

Range Impact and Restoration

The vehicle's displayed range already accounts for the portion of the battery that is currently unusable by cold temperatures. This means the actual available range might be more than what is shown. As the battery warms up -- either through driving, charging, or preconditioning -- the additional range will be unlocked, and the blue snowflake icon will disappear. It's important to note that the colder the battery, the more range is temporarily inaccessible. Achieving normal operating temperature is crucial to unlocking this additional, temporarily unavailable range. Moreover, a cold battery can also diminish the vehicle's acceleration performance.

Why It Happens and How to Prevent It

The primary reason for this phenomenon is to safeguard the battery's integrity in cold weather. To minimize the impact of cold temperatures and prevent the snowflake icon from appearing, Tesla recommends keeping the vehicle plugged in whenever possible and maintaining a charge level above 20% when unplugged. Additionally, storing the vehicle in a garage and keeping it plugged in can help keep the battery from getting too cold. However, seeing the snowflake on colder days is still normal. Preconditioning the vehicle before use, a feature that preheats the battery and cabin can also mitigate the effects of cold weather on the battery.

Preheating enhances comfort and ensures that the battery operates efficiently from the moment you start driving, meaning that not only will you have full access to the vehicle’s power, but also its regenerative abilities and range. This approach, coupled with keeping the vehicle charged and stored in warmer conditions, can significantly reduce the occurrence of the blue snowflake icon, ensuring that your Tesla performs optimally, even in colder climates.

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.