New Model S UI Coming to All Teslas, possibly v11

On June 10th Tesla showed off the new Model S Plaid and it’s completely redesigned interface. The new UI contains many new features and enhancements, such the ability to customize the buttons at the bottom of the screen so that you can have your most used apps easily accessible. It also includes the ability to drag and drop apps between the left side and right side of the screen. A new mini player also makes music controls always easily accessible. You can read about all the new features in the new UI, which we covered last month.

Since the day of the event, everyone has wanted to know whether this new UI would be carried over to previous cars, since the cars' displays differ quite a bit. Previous Model S and X vehicles contain vertical displays, and the Model 3 and Model Y do not contain an instrument cluster, so people started to wonder whether Tesla would be able to adapt the new UI for these other dimensions.

Elon took to Twitter and confirmed that a new UI will indeed be coming to all Teslas. We anticipate that this new UI will be similar to the UI in the new Model S, although Elon was not specific on Twitter. Elon simply said that an “updated UI coming with FSD wide release,” which doesn’t necessarily mean it will be the same as the UI in the new Model S. However, Tesla has never had different UIs for different vehicles in the past. Even when they overhauled the UI various times in the past, the changes always trickled down to older vehicles as well.

Yes, updated UI coming with FSD wide release. All cars with FSD computer will have new “mind of car” view. All 3/Y can be upgraded to have FSD computer.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2021

It’s clear however that the UI needs some big changes before it can work on older vehicles. We may see some features dropped or changed. For example, on the Model 3 and Model Y, the left side of the screen is used for car visualizations and takes up a significant amount of the screen. Tesla could allow stacking of apps on the right side or the cars may be limited to a single app at a time.

In December of last year, Elon said that we will have multiple display options, so that feature may be included in this update.

Although we may not be able to hide the car visualizations completely, we may be able to choose how big or small they are on the screen. It would be great to see an option where the car visualizations are hidden completely and we merely keep a small window with the important information, such as current speed, speed limit and Autopilot details.

As for the vertical screened Model S and Model X, it’s possible Tesla may just stack the apps vertically instead of horizontally and the rest of the layout would remain largely unchanged since those cars include an instrument cluster.

Elon mentions that the new UI will come with the FSD wide release, which honestly we don’t know when that’s coming. However Elon has said recently that he expects FSD to be ready “soon.” It’s been pushed back several times since we first expected it in April, but it looks like Tesla may be getting close. We expect the FSD beta to be limited to beta testers initially, but hopefully it won’t have to wait too long after that.

The other tidbit Elon teases is that the new UI will include the “mind of the car” view. We covered this before and in short, we expect this to be new and improved car visualizations. As Tesla gets better at understanding and interpreting the world around us, the car visualizations also improve and we think this will be a major step forward in what we see on the screen.

We don’t know exactly what the future holds, but it’s exciting to hear that a new UI will be coming soon and new car visualizations will be coming soon.

Update: Tesla delivered v11 with an updated UI based off of the new Model S in the 2021 Holiday Update.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

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.

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Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

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.

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