While Tesla supports a variety of music streaming services, including YouTube Music, Apple Music, and Spotify, there may be times you want to listen to music from a local USB drive.
While Bluetooth is also an option, it’s limited to what’s available on your phone and the lower streaming quality of Bluetooth.
In this guide, we’ll go through the benefits of having music on a USB drive and how to set it all up.
Benefits of Music on a USB Drive
Having music stored locally has several benefits. First is audio quality; since you’re under full control of the bitrate of the content, you can encode or buy music at much higher quality when compared to steaming content from Spotify or another streaming service. Tesla even supports FLAC’s lossless audio, letting you experience the best audio experience in your vehicle.
Local music also doesn’t require an internet connection, so if you frequently traffic through areas with a spotty connection, you may prefer to have music locally on hand.
While streaming content is convenient, you can be limited by the content that’s offered. If you prefer foreign music or other music that’s not available on a music service that Tesla supports, local content could be a great option.
Lastly, having music on a USB drive is a great option if you don’t subscribe to a music streaming service or don’t pay for Premium Connectivity in your Tesla.
Step 1: Use the Right USB Port
Not all USB ports in a Tesla support data transfer. While some models have USB data ports in the rear console or center console, they do not support media playback and can only be used to charge a device.
Instead, your best bet is to use the USB port inside the glovebox, which is designed for both dashcam video storage and music playback. While some vehicles may also support data transfer through the USB ports in the front console, not all of them do. Older vehicles may not have a USB port in the globebox, and you’ll be limited in using the USB ports in the console.
Important: You cannot play music from a phone, tablet, or external music player over USB—only from a properly formatted USB storage device.
Step 2: Format Your USB Drive
Every new Tesla comes with a high-speed USB drive pre-installed in the glovebox, formatted for Sentry Mode and Dashcam storage. If your vehicle didn’t come with one, or you want to use a larger or separate drive for Sentry Mode or music, you’ll need to format it first.
How to Format a USB Drive in Your Tesla
Insert your USB drive into the desired USB port.
Navigate to Controls > Safety > Format USB Drive
Wait a few seconds (it may take longer for large drives), and the system will format the drive and create the necessary folders (e.g., for Sentry Mode and Track Mode).
💡 Tip: Use a high-speed, high-capacity SSD for the best experience. Regular flash drives work, but SSDs provide faster loading times and more capability.
Step 3: Add Your Music
Once your USB drive is formatted, unplug the USB drive from your Tesla and connect it to your computer to add your music files.
Organizing Your Music:
Create a folder called Music at the top level of the USB drive. All music must be added to this folder.
You can organize the music however you prefer, and you’ll be able to view the folders in the vehicle when selecting music. Most users prefer to have folders that include the name of the artist with subfolders for the album name, but how you organize the content is completely up to you.
If your music files content metadata such as song title, artist, album, etc, it will automatically be displayed in Tesla’s media player.
Supported Audio Formats
Tesla’s music player supports a variety of audio formats, including wave, MP3, and FLAC (lossless), but it does not support AAC (Apple's iTunes format). If you have AAC files, you can convert them to MP3 or FLAC before transferring them.
Step 4: Play Your Music
Not a Tesla App
Once you’ve transferred your music, you can bring it back to your Tesla.
Insert the USB drive into the front console or glovebox port.
You’ll now have a new app under the all apps menu called USB.
The USB app will let you view all of your supported audio content on the USB drive. You’ll be able to view the content by song, artist, album, genre, and folder structure.
First-time indexing of audio content may take a few seconds (longer for larger drives). Tesla re-indexes the drive every time the car wakes from sleep, so keeping the total file size under 30GB ensures faster access.
Voice Commands and Search
While music stored on the USB drive will behave much like other content that’s played over streaming services, there are a few limitations.
Voice commands can not be used to play a specific song or artist from your USB drive. If you ask the vehicle to play any content, it’ll default to one of the music services.
Music search is also not supported. While search will show content from all music services that aren’t hidden, it will not include music from your USB drive.
Enjoy the Best Sound Tesla Has to Offer
Tesla’s audio system is meticulously engineered for a premium sound experience, and playing lossless audio over USB takes full advantage of that. If you’re an audiophile, this setup ensures you hear your music in its purest form—no compression, no interference, just crystal-clear sound.
Now, plug in, press play, and enjoy the ride.
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With Tesla’s first major expansion of the Robotaxi Geofence now complete and operational, they’ve been hard at work with validation in new locations - and some are quite the drive from the current Austin Geofence.
Validation fleet vehicles have been spotted operating in a wider perimeter around the city, from rural roads in the west end to the more complex area closer to the airport. Tesla mentioned during their earnings call that the Robotaxi has already completed 7,000 miles in Austin, and it will expand its area of operation to roughly 10 times what it is now. This lines up with the validation vehicles we’ve been tracking around Austin.
Based on the spread of the new sightings, the potential next geofence could cover a staggering 450 square miles - a tenfold increase from the current service area of roughly 42 square miles. You can check this out in our map below with the sightings we’re tracking.
If Tesla decides to expand into these new areas, it would represent a tenfold increase over their current geofence, matching Tesla’s statement. The new area would cover approximately 10% of the 4,500-square-mile Austin metropolitan area. If Tesla can offer Robotaxi services in that entire area, it would prove they can tackle just about any city in the United States.
From Urban Core to Rural Roads
The locations of the validation vehicles show a clear intent to move beyond the initial urban and suburban core and prepare the Robotaxi service for a much wider range of uses.
In the west, validation fleet vehicles have been spotted as far as Marble Falls - a much more rural environment that features different road types, higher speed limits, and potentially different challenges.
In the south, Tesla has been expanding towards Kyle, which is part of the growing Austin-San Antonio suburban corridor spanning Highway 35. San Antonio is only 80 miles (roughly a 90-minute drive) away, and could easily become part of the existing Robotaxi area if Tesla obtains regulatory approval there.
In the East, we haven’t spotted any new validation vehicles. This is likely because Tesla’s validation vehicles originate from Giga Texas, which is located East of Austin. We won’t really know if Tesla is expanding in this direction until they start pushing past Giga Texas and toward Houston.
Finally, there have been some validation vehicles spotted just North of the new expanded boundaries, meaning that Tesla isn’t done in that direction either. This direction consists of the largest suburban areas of Austin, which have so far not been serviced by any form of autonomous vehicle.
Rapid Scaling
This new, widespread validation effort confirms what we already know. Tesla is pushing for an intensive period of public data gathering and system testing in a new area, right before conducting geofence expansions. The sheer scale of this new validation zone tells us that Tesla isn’t taking this slowly - the next step is going to be a great leap instead, and they essentially confirmed this during this Q&A session on the recent call. The goal is clearly to bring the entire Austin Metropolitan area into the Robotaxi Network.
While the previous expansion showed off just how Tesla can scale the network, this new phase of validation testing is a demonstration of just how fast they can validate and expand their network. The move to validate across rural, suburban, and urban areas simultaneously shows their confidence in these new Robotaxi FSD builds.
Eventually, all these improvements from Robotaxi will make their way to customer FSD builds sometime in Q3 2025, so there is a lot to look forward to.
For years, the progress of Tesla’s FSD has been measured by smoother turns, better lane centering, and more confident unprotected left turns. But as the system matures, a new, more subtle form of intelligence is emerging - one that shifts its attention to the human nuances of navigating roads. A new video posted to X shows the most recent FSD build, V13.2.9, demonstrating this in a remarkable real-world scenario.
Toll Booth Magic
In the video, a Model Y running FSD pulls up to a toll booth and smoothly comes to a stop, allowing the driver to handle payment. The car waits patiently as the driver interacts with the attendant. Then, at the precise moment the toll booth operator finishes the transaction and says “Have a great day”, the vehicle starts moving, proceeding through the booth - all without any input from the driver.
If you notice, there’s no gate here at this toll booth. This interaction all happened naturally with FSD.
While the timing was perfect, the FSD wasn’t listening to the conversation for clues (maybe one day, with Grok?) The reality, as explained by Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI, is even more impressive.
It can see the transaction happening using the repeater & pillar cameras. Hence FSD proceeds on its own when the transaction is complete 😎
FSD is simply using the cameras on the side of the vehicle to watch the exchange between the driver and attendant. The neural network has been trained on enough data that it can visually recognize the conclusion of a transaction - the exchange of money or a card and the hands pulling away - and understands that this is the trigger to proceed.
The Bigger Picture
This capability is far more significant than just a simple party trick. FSD is gaining the ability to perceive and navigate a world built for humans in the most human-like fashion possible.
If FSD can learn what a completed toll transaction looks like, it’s an example of the countless other complex scenarios it’ll be able to handle in the future. This same visual understanding could be applied to navigating a fast-food drive-thru, interacting with a parking garage attendant, passing through a security checkpoint, or boarding a ferry or vehicle train — all things we thought that would come much later.
These human-focused interactions will eventually become even more useful, as FSD becomes ever more confident in responding to humans on the road, like when a police officer tells a vehicle to go a certain direction, or a construction worker flags you through a site. These are real-world events that happen every day, and it isn’t surprising to see FSD picking up on the subtleties and nuances of human interaction.
This isn’t a pre-programmed feature for a specific toll booth. It is an emergent capability of the end-to-end AI neural nets. By learning from millions of videos across billions of miles, FSD is beginning to build a true contextual understanding of the world. The best part - with a 10x context increase on its way, this understanding will grow rapidly and become far more powerful.
These small, subtle moments of intelligence are the necessary steps to a truly robust autonomous system that can handle the messy, unpredictable nature of human society.
