The Most Requested Tesla Features

August 27, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Every Tesla comes standard with tons of features – many of which aren’t provided by other automakers or they come at an additional cost. Since Teslas receive software updates regularly, there are always a ton of requests on what Tesla should add next. So let’s take a look at some of the most requested features.

We’ll categorize everything as best we can, but let’s start on the outside of the vehicle.

Exterior Features

Better Puddle Lighting

Tesla's official puddle lights accessory in China

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Tesla China has already gotten some gorgeous puddle lights as a store accessory. Nothing is stopping Tesla from making these puddle lights standard – it's simply a design formed into the plastic of the puddle light.

Bumper Camera

A front bumper camera would be extremely useful on most Teslas – and Cybertruck owners are already pointing out saying how useful it is when parking. We’ve heard that the Model S and Model X will eventually be getting them and the refreshed Model Y Juniper is expected to have it as well.

Rain Sensors

Rain Sensors are something we’ve talked about in great depth – and there are physical limitations to how well Tesla can detect rain with its existing cameras. While cameras work fine for FSD, the current implementation makes it difficult to drive with auto wipers in light rain.

Improved Front License Plate Mount

The provided front license plate mount for Tesla is held on with 3M double-sided adhesive. It falls off in car washes, heavy rain, and in general just doesn’t adhere well over time. We’d love to see a better OEM option. While many people remove their front license plates, there are plenty of districts that still require them throughout the world.

Interior Features

Adjustable Cup Holders

This one is an oddball – why doesn’t Tesla have properly adjustable cupholders? The rubber pieces in the cupholders barely adapt to anything but the biggest objects – but we do appreciate how big the cupholders are. They can fit a 16oz mug in them just fine.

Not a Tesla App

Better Acoustic Door Damping

Quite a few vehicles use acoustic foam or insulation in the vehicle doors – especially those closer to the price point of the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck. We’d love to see Tesla fill the empty spaces in the doors with better acoustic damping material. Some users we’ve heard from have filled the empty spaces in their Model Y or Model 3 doors and found a noticeable improvement in road noise reduction.

Motorized Rear View Mirror

When you step into a Tesla, it immediately adapts to your user preferences while you’re using a phone key. However, the one single item that doesn’t adapt is the rear-view mirror. Some premium brands have begun to ship motorized rear-view mirrors, or rear-view mirrors that provide a video display of the rear-view camera. These would be some fantastic features for Tesla to bring to its more premium vehicles.

Frunk Drain Plug

The frunk needs a drain plug. If it fills with water, you’ve got three real options – vacuum it up with a wet/dry vacuum, let it evaporate, or take apart a good chunk of the frunk to remove it and drain it. You’d also be able to use the frunk as a cooler – putting in ice and cold drinks without having to keep them in a separately insulated container.

Heads-Up Display (HUD)

This one is a bit of a pie-in-the-sky request since Elon Musk has already turned it down, but having a heads-up display for the driver does seem pretty futuristic and high-tech. Modern fighter jets airliners, and even ships use this technology to get information right in front of the user, and it does have its use case.

Some luxury brands have already begun to provide this as an option for their vehicles, and upon trying it in the Audi e-Tron, it felt smooth once you got used to where it displayed navigation, speed, and other key information.

Bring Back Massaging Seats

Tesla once had massaging seats in the Model S and Model X. This is a feature that many users are missing now, in Tesla’s constant search for a reduction in vehicle unit cost. Massaging seats are another standard premium vehicle option, and we’d like to see these return at some point.

It would help to reduce the luxury gap felt between the Model S and the Lucid Air or other luxury vehicles.

Improved Wireless Phone Chargers

Tesla’s wireless phone chargers – in every one of their vehicles – have commonly been derided as phone heaters. Many modern phones are capable of efficient 35-watt or higher charging, so there’s no reason for Tesla to skimp with relatively tiny 15-watt chargers in an electric vehicle. We’d love to see Tesla bring better phone chargers to its vehicles, and we know they can do it – the portable wireless charger available in the Tesla shop is already much better than what comes in any Tesla.

Musk previously said that Tesla will add the option to turn off Tesla’s wireless chargers if you don’t use them.

Software Features

Altitude

Tesla has been adding more weather information and improving maps in update 2024.32. Some users would love to see the vehicle’s current altitude displayed on the screen.

Bird’s Eye View

YouTube/AI DRIVR

Tesla has mostly solved this feature request with the updated Park Assist, but we’d still like to bring some color and texture to the picture. It can help drivers pick out important information that is sometimes missed, even with the exceptionally detailed rendering that Park Assist provides.

Phone Left on Charger Alert

A simple alert that a phone has been left on the charger – one for the driver and one for the passenger when the door is opened, would be nice for those forgetful folk. Someone you know has probably left their phone on the charger when you’ve dropped them off, or maybe you’ve left yours.

Add More Cameras to Camera View

The Camera View in vehicle currently only displays 3 cameras – the side repeaters and the rearview camera. Tesla should allow all cameras on the vehicle to be easily displayed in the Camera View, especially when the vehicle isn’t moving. The Cybertruck, which includes a front bumper camera, can also swap between the front and rear cameras, but both can’t be displayed at the same time.

Tesla App Store

Elon Musk once mentioned that Tesla vehicles would receive an App Store, and developers could create apps specifically for Tesla vehicles. Sadly, we haven’t received anything of the sort, and we’ve only recently received additional music functionality like Apple Music, YouTube Music, and SiriusXM streaming is also coming soon.

Even Zoom came as a vehicle update – but there are plenty of users of other conferencing or communications software like Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet that could be brought onboard through an App Store.

Expanded Voice Control/Grok Support

Tesla’s current voice control scheme is pretty light in functionality. You can do some basic tasks, but ask it to compose a text message, and you’re going to get something that isn’t as useful. In addition, Elon previously mentioned in-vehicle Grok support – and Grok is eventually going to get voice support. We’d love to see this combined and get a proper AI assistant in-vehicle to handle voice tasks. Tesla has already added a smart assistant in China, so we’re hopeful this is coming soon.

Kickdown in Chill

This one is pretty simple. If the car is in chill mode, and you put the accelerator pedal to the floor, the car should “kickdown” and go to Standard. On vehicles with 3 drive modes, kickdown in Standard should go up to Plaid, Insane, or Beast mode.

Preconditioning Battery for 3^rd party chargers

Currently, there’s no way to manually precondition your Tesla’s battery for faster charger at a 3^rd party charger. Tesla currently automatically preconditions the battery for Superchargers and select third-party chargers in Europe. It’d be useful if Tesla expanded the feature to additional regions and also added an option to manually precondition the battery in certain scenarios. You may be navigating to a fast charger that’s not on the map, or if you have a Supercharger that’s nearby the short drive isn’t enough to precondition the battery. Letting users start the preconditioning manually and earlier would save them time at the charger.

Outside of Europe, you can trick the vehicle into preconditioning the battery navigation to a nearby Supercharger – you can navigate there and just not drive there. But other than that, Tesla offers no easy way to begin preconditioning your vehicle for DC charging. A simple button in the charging UI would solve that.

Entry Music/Chime

Selectable entry music or a selectable entry chime would be neat – just another way of making your Tesla yours. We’ve already got custom lock sounds, so why not?

Facial Recognition for Driver and Passenger Profiles

Teslas already automatically recognize drivers and automatically load vehicle profiles based on the cell phone closest to the driver’s side door. However, this sometimes doesn’t work properly, especially if someone has a Phone Key setup, and someone else is using a keycard.

Having facial recognition on entry to automatically correct and adjust the driver profile and the passenger profile would make this process more reliable, and simpler. Tesla already has a patent for facial recognition to load user preferences, so maybe this one is already in the works.

Set Minimum Battery at Destination

Being able to set the minimum battery when you arrive at a certain destination would be a useful feature – especially when you’re going somewhere, and then plan to drive around or won’t have a charger nearby. As it stands, Tesla’s Trip Planner will leave you with a minimum amount of battery — just enough to get to the nearest Supercharger.

While the optimized approach is nice, we’d love a slider to adjust the preferred arrival state of charge.

Tesla App Features

Watch Support

@niccruzpatane

It would be great to have official support for the Apple Watch and Android Wear. Other manufacturers, even legacy auto now support smart watches and Tesla needs to catch up in this regard. The app doesn’t need to do anything fancy, but being able to easily start your climate, unlock your vehicle, or use your watch as a vehicle key would be a huge addition. Musk has even confirmed that watch support is coming. Can we expect it as part of Tesla’s 2024 holiday update?

Start Lightshows from the App

Currently, the only way to start a Tesla Lightshow is in the vehicle itself. You’re currently unable to start one from the Tesla App. This would make it very simple to pick and choose a Lightshow saved on your USB drive and admire it from the outside at your convenience, rather than having to hop into the vehicle. We’d also love it if you could loop Lightshows, to keep the party going once it's started.

Precondition Battery Button

Similar to an in-vehicle preconditioning button for 3^rd party chargers, the Tesla App should also have a button to precondition the battery. This will make it easy for users, especially those who don’t have home charging – to get their vehicles ready for DC Fast Charging before departing.

Garage Door Controls

For Tesla owners who choose to equip their vehicles with HomeLink, or those whose vehicles came with HomeLink already installed, you have control of your garage door from inside the vehicle. While Tesla lets you open your first programmed garage door through the app, you’re limited to just the first one. It’d be nice to be able to choose which garage door you’d like to open when pressing the HomeLink button. This would be a pretty useful tool – especially in combination with Actually Smart Summon, whenever that arrives.

FSD / AutoPilot Features

More FSD Transfer Opportunities

While Elon previously stressed that the latest FSD Transfer opportunity is the last – we really hope that Tesla keeps bringing more opportunities like this – especially once Hardware 3 becomes legacy and AI5 is introduced. This is an excellent way to keep customer goodwill going.

Smart Summon Range Increase

As it stands, Smart Summon’s Range is very limited. It’s a lot shorter than the average parking lot – only 210 ft, or 65m. Once Actually Smart Summon arrives, we hope that Tesla increases that range, otherwise it's still only usable at certain times.

Other Feature Requests

Improve Service Times and Expand Mobile Service Rangers

Tesla recently cut quite a bit of staff in early 2024, and Tesla Service was one of the sections hardest hit. Because of this, many locations are experiencing heavy service loads and extended times to see vehicles. Tesla needs to focus on improving service times and also expanding its Mobile Service Rangers. This will help Tesla keep its reputation as a brand.

Referral Program

When we initially wrote this, we included the request for Tesla to bring back its referral program. Tesla ended their Referral Program earlier this year with Elon Musk citing that it was an additional cost that Tesla had to carry on each vehicle. In addition, Tesla also began issuing tax forms to US-based referral users, impacting their tax statements.

Just this past weekend, Tesla reintroduced its referral program in the U.S. Not only that, but they actually improved it over the previous program that only let you buy certain store items.

Vehicle-to-Load/Vehicle-to-Home Functionality

The Cybertruck finally introduced Tesla Power Share to Tesla vehicles, with Vehicle-to-Home functionality. This is a fantastic first step – but we’d like to see this across the entire lineup. This is especially important since recently a third party demonstrated that bidirectional charging does work on Tesla vehicles – namely on a 2022 Model Y.

This should be a standard feature across the Tesla lineup.

Wireless Vehicle Charging

This feature is likely to come with the Robotaxi first – but we’d like to see Tesla bring wireless or automated charging capabilities to its vehicles. Tesla previously purchased Wiferion – a company working on wireless EV charging and showed off a Wiferion charging mat underneath a Tesla parked in a garage. Since then, we haven’t heard anything on this front – but more on this on October 10^th most likely.

So that’s everything we’ve thought of. If you’ve got more ideas or want to discuss, head over to our forums and comment.

Tesla's Upcoming Model Y Performance Spotted With Camouflage: What's New

May 22, 2025

By Karan Singh

Carscoops

Just like how Carscoops spotted the refreshed Model S, they also spotted the refreshed Model Y, and this time, it was likely the Performance variant.

When Tesla launched the Launch Edition of the refreshed Model Y, they opened the floor to orders for the Rear-Wheel Drive (later introduced to the U.S.) and All-Wheel Drive Long Range variants, but not for the Performance model. This was the same strategy that was used with the refreshed Model 3, whose performance version launched months after the new Model 3.

We’ve already seen some covered-up refreshed Model Ys at Giga Texas, so it seems almost certain that Tesla is in their final evaluation phases prior to this variant’s launch.

With that said, let’s dive into what we saw at the ‘Ring.

Minor Exterior Updates

The Nürburgring prototype was fully wrapped in a white and black camouflage, but thanks to the crisp photos, we got some detailed looks at the exterior of the vehicle. A new and more distinct spoiler is on the rear hatch, similar to the previous generation’s Performance model. That spoiler is likely carbon fiber and will also likely make its way to the Tesla store in the future as a cosmetic add-on for non-Performance buyers.

That spoiler is super noticeable from the side.

Carscoops

Carscoops also noticed that the vehicle was sitting noticeably closer to the ground than the refreshed Model Y Long Range. We’re expecting Tesla to include an adaptive suspension system, similar to the one that arrived with the Model 3 Performance. These adaptive suspensions can adjust to driver and road input in real-time with adaptive damping.

Interestingly, the front fascia looks relatively unchanged, lacking the dedicated brake cooling ducts that the Model 3 Performance has.

Powertrain

As usual with Tesla, we haven’t heard anything in terms of official specs on the powertrain for this Performance variant, but we can make some good guesses. The Model 3 Performance and Model Y Performance usually sport the same amount of horsepower, so we’re guessing that the refreshed Model Y Performance will also have 510 HP. That gives it about a 3.2-second 0-60 mph (0-100km/h), which is a generous upgrade from the previous generation’s 3.5-second speed at 470 hp.

Wheels & Brakes

On the ‘Ring, the refreshed Model Y Performance is sporting new alloy wheels that are reminiscent yet slightly distinct from the Model S Arachnid wheels. These new Performance wheels also look like they’re a staggered setup, similar to the rest of Tesla’s performance lineup, which means wider rear wheels for better traction and handling. Alongside the red brake calipers, we expect that there are larger, performance-optimized brakes to handle track days.

Pretty Arachnid-looking wheels. We like them!

Carscoops

Performance Launch Date?

Given the fact that this is only the second time we’ve seen the refreshed Model Y Performance, we expect the launch to be a couple of months out. Tesla is still likely working on optimizing the adaptive suspension characteristics and fine-tuning Track Mode 3.0 for the vehicle, and hopefully also designing some unique Performance seats to go with it all.

We’d expect Tesla to launch this variant sometime in late Q3 or early Q4 2025, which is still a few months away. Perhaps the new Model S and Model X will also launch alongside it? That may just make a great Tesla event.

Tesla Model S Refresh Spotted With Front Bumper Camera at Nürburgring [PHOTOS]

May 21, 2025

By Karan Singh

CarScoops

Carscoops, which keeps a close eye on racetracks around the world for new models in testing, has spotted what appears to be the refreshed Model S at Nürburgring in Germany. Tesla is testing out the new Model S, which is likely a Plaid, on the track. Tesla was taking this new Model S for some laps around the track, which serves as an excellent testing ground for high-performance vehicles like the Model S Plaid.

The updated Model S was seen wearing some white and black camouflage over the front and rear, but from the photos that were provided, the changes appear to be relatively minimal and focused on aerodynamics, at least on the exterior.

Not a Juniper-Level Refresh

Tesla’s VP of Engineering, Lars Moravy, mentioned that Tesla was working on updating the Model S and Model X. However, he didn’t quite say just how much of a refresh was on its way. Lars’ comments were very general, and he didn’t mention any details.

Based on what we’ve observed at the ‘Ring,’ this Model S refresh doesn’t appear to be a full-blown Model Y Juniper level refresh, which included a light bar, new headlights, and other substantial changes to the rear and front of the vehicle.

New Front Bumper Camera

At first glance, the front fascia looks remarkably similar to the existing Model S, but there are a few key differences.

First up is the addition of a new lower lip spoiler mounted at the very bottom of the front bumper. These spoilers help to improve aerodynamic efficiency and downforce at high speeds, which is entirely appropriate for a vehicle that thrives on tracks like the Nürburgring.

On the other hand, the distinctive headlights and eyeliner-style running lights appear to remain intact, keeping the overall look of the front relatively similar. Tesla has kept the black space with the Tesla logo at the front of the vehicle. While it’s difficult to tell on the front shots, you can tell it’s still there from the side shots.

Another little item was the return of the front bumper camera. Tesla is shipping both the refreshed Model Y and the Cybertruck with a bumper camera, so it isn’t surprising to see this, but it is one of the best indications that this is a new vehicle being tested.

Can you spot the little nub with the bumper camera?

CarScoops

Wheels & Brakes

The prototype was spotted sporting some new alloy racing wheels that bear a distinctive resemblance to the Photon wheels that ship with the Model 3. If you take off the aero covers from the Photon wheels, they look exceptionally similar. This seems relatively odd, as Tesla’s top-end performance wheels are usually distinctively different from other wheel options.

We also saw the currently-available Arachnid wheels on the same Model S being tested, on the way to and from the track. Tesla likely switched out to these new wheels to test their performance and handling characteristics on the track.

The original Arachnids on this Model S tester

CarScoops

Rear End

From the available images, the rear end of this new test vehicle appears to be largely unchanged. The tail light design, bumper shape, and overall profile look essentially the same as today’s Model S, which means that Tesla’s work has likely focused on the front of the vehicle.

The rear diffuser looks a bit different, but seems essentially the same.

Not a Tesla App

What Else?

With the exterior changes appearing to be relatively minimal, it’s plausible that more significant updates could be found within the cabin. Tesla could be working on interior updates that help bring the new Model S more in line with the new Model 3 and Model Y.

A focus point for Tesla may be the Model S Plaid’s powertrain. The S Plaid used to hold several records, at least until the Lucid Air Sapphire and Rimac Nevera came along to steal the trophies. Tesla could be improving both the front and rear motors, as well as the other portions of the drivetrain needed to grab a podium finish once again, which would be just as exciting as Plaid+ being announced again.

Given the minimalistic changes to the exterior, it seems unlikely that Tesla has made drastic changes to the vehicle as a whole, though. We don’t expect this updated version of the Model S to launch with Steer-by-Wire or any of the other new technologies pioneered by the Cybertruck. Although Tesla says they will be used in future vehicles, even Juniper launched without these Cybertruck upgrades.

Tesla could still surprise everyone, as is their habit with vehicle announcements, but we’re expecting a slightly faster, slightly cooler-looking Model S at this point.