Tesla’s Safety Score is used to help determine an owner’s insurance premiums under Tesla Insurance. It attempts to evaluate how safely the vehicle is driven by taking into account several metrics such as harsh braking, turning too fast, and speeding.
Tesla has continuously improved its Safety Score program by adding new metrics or improving existing ones. Tesla is notably transparent about the specific factors that contribute to your Safety Score and, by extension, how insurance premiums are calculated.
With the launch of Safety Score V2.2, Tesla has introduced updates to how Excessive Speeding is factored into your score and removed the controversial Forward Collision Warnings (FCW).
While excessive speeding has been part of the scoring system since March 2024, it has primarily contributed to Tesla’s internal calculations for premium generation. The latest version improves how Tesla determines speeding and its weight into the Safety Score.
Improved Excessive Speeding
The latest version of Safety Score now measures Excessive Speeding as a proportion of the time you spend driving over 85 mph, or when you’re speeding relative to the vehicles in front of you.
This could affect how your score is impacted while overtaking slower drivers—we’ll have to wait and see how this plays out for Tesla Insurance users, and whether rates will rise, fall, or stay steady in the coming months.
Forward Collision Warning
While Tesla didn’t call out changes to Forward Collision Warnings in its Safety Score v2.2 update, it appears that Tesla is no longer using FCWs as a metric in Safety Score, at least in some regions.
Tesla’s Forward Collision Warnings are a helpful feature in Tesla vehicles since they can alert drivers when a vehicle stops suddenly in front of them. However, they can sometimes have false positives, which isn’t a huge deal… unless they’re affecting your insurance premium. While FCWs have been included in Tesla’s Safety Score since its inception, it has often been a controversial metric due to false positives.
With the release of Safety Score v2.2, Tesla has now removed FCWs as part of the Safety Score, and drivers will no longer be penalized when a vehicle stops suddenly in front of them. However, Unsafe Following, an existing Safety Score metric that is defined as “proportion of following time spent at an unsafe following distance,” is still a part of Tesla’s Safety Score.
According to Tesla, this update is designed to offer a more accurate reflection of future collision risk, using insights from over 23 billion miles of real-world driving data. New Safety Scores will begin to reflect these changes as the update rolls out. However, any impact on premiums won’t take effect until next month—so your current premium is safe for now.
It’s worth noting that in California, Safety Score doesn’t affect your insurance rate at all. In those cases, Tesla includes it strictly for educational purposes. But in states where it does apply, it will directly influence what you pay.
Due to constant improvements involving real-world data and billions of miles, Tesla’s Safety Score is a unique and fairly accurate way of assessing safe driving. Unlike traditional insurers—some of which rely on basic smartphone acceleration data—Tesla is able to calculate your score based on nuanced, vehicle-level data and real-time driving conditions. While it isn’t perfect, it gives a clear edge in measuring how you actually drive.
We’re still hoping to see Tesla Insurance expand to more states. Progress has slowed recently, even after the company brought on a former GEICO executive whose main mission is to broaden the program’s reach.
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Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering, Lars Moravy, recently took to X and opened the floor for user input. There, he asked the community for features and improvements they’d like to see to make Teslas better heading into 2026.
This post generated thousands of suggestions - and we recapped the best of them. There were also a few that Lars responded to, giving owners hope for some much-requested future changes, so let’s take a look at what may be coming
Lumbar Profile Support
Today, lumbar support is one of the few items that is not saved in the Tesla profile. That means if you have multiple drivers who use the same vehicle, you’re often left adjusting this setting manually, as it retains the setting that was last used. One community member suggested saving your lumbar setting to your profile just like Tesla does for other seat settings.
Lars said making this change seems doable, but it’ll take some engineering magic. The lumbar support isn’t tied to an absolute sensor like the other seat settings. This suggests that Tesla does not have an exact value to save, as it does with other seat functions, but Lars believes Tesla can find a way to save lumbar preferences. Tesla could potentially time how long the motor runs to get to the user’s lumbar setting and save this value.
With that said, it seems the vehicle engineering team may take a look at this one, and we may see it included in a future update.
Model 3 Signal Stalk Retrofit
The move away from traditional stalks in favor of the steering wheel buttons on the Refreshed Model 3 has been a point of debate. While the author is squarely in the camp of steering wheel buttons (at least with the Cybertruck), many dissent and say that the buttons on the Refreshed 3 aren’t as satisfying or easy to use.
Many other drivers also prefer the tactile feel and muscle memory of a physical stalk for signaling. Tesla appears to favor stalks, as they retained the turn signal stalk with the new Model Y. There are also rumors that Tesla is going to reintroduce the turn signal stalk to the Model 3.
If Tesla adds stalks back to the new Model 3, current 2024+ Model 3 owners are still left without stalks. However, a user suggested adding stalks as a retrofit option. Lars said that he would try to consider a retrofitted signal stalk for the Refreshed Model 3, similar to the simplified version in the Refreshed Model Y.
While less definitive than the lumbar support response, it appears that Tesla may at least consider offering a stalk retrofit for the new Model 3. If you’re a lover of signal stalks and can’t wait for Tesla to get an official one - we recommend the Enhauto S3XY Stalks, which are customizable and feel very close to Tesla’s original fit and finish.
With that said, it’s nice to see Tesla incorporating more community feedback into its vehicle design these days. Perhaps one day, they’ll address the infamous auto wipers. They have gotten better, but they’re still not as reliable as what’s available in most other vehicles. With that said, we look forward to the changes that will emerge from these recent conversations.
Sometimes, even with Tesla’s intensive bug-testing regime, bugs manage to make it out into the wild. In this particular case, a European user (@darkwaffle48484 on X) noticed that their 2024 Model 3 was using up more battery than normal while parked. Normally, they noted that the vehicle would lose about 1-2% per week; however, recently, they noticed much larger drops of 3-4% per night.
They monitored their Tesla widget and noticed the car wasn’t entering deep sleep. The widget consistently showed a recent connection time—usually within the past 45 minutes.
Fix Inbound
After discussing the issue with other Tesla owners and realizing it was somewhat widespread, they contacted Tesla Service. The service team confirmed that it was a firmware bug affecting the Telematics Control Unit (TCU), which prevented the vehicle from entering deep sleep mode.
The TCU is essentially the communications hub of your Tesla - and is mounted on the ceiling of newer vehicles such as the Model 3 and the new Model Y. It enables cellular and location services (via GPS) and also handles Wi-Fi and Bluetooth services. Tesla Service stated that this bug is planned to be fixed in update 2025.14.6, although the exact version number could change. However, they confirmed that they are aware of the issue and it is being addressed.
@darkwaffle48484
When the user reached out to Tesla Service, Tesla Service responded with the following (translated from Dutch):
“It has been confirmed that this is a firmware bug. The fix is in one of the next updates. Currently, it is planned for 2025.14.6 (subject to change). Do you have any more questions?”
Potentially Region-Specific
This bug could potentially be region-specific. TCUs often require specific hardware components, such as modems, as well as specific firmware versions that support different regions and cellular providers. These enable Tesla to comply with local cellular standards and regulations and ensure that your vehicle can connect to the networks available in that particular region.
At this point, it’s not clear when the fix will roll out, but given that update 2025.14.1 has practically stopped rolling out, Tesla may be waiting to resume the rollout with update 2025.14.3 or this 2025.14.6 version.
If you’ve noticed this issue and are in a non-European nation, let us know.
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