The Kilowatts spots Tesla's Project Highland with new wheels
The Kilowatts/Twitter
Tesla's mysterious caped crusader has once again appeared. Twitter and YouTuber The Kilowatts posted pictures of a black Model 3. For months these cars, sporting covers on the front and back, have been noticed in California, but this is the first time we've seen one without aero covers on the wheels. So the refreshed Model 3, known as project Highland, will apparently have new wheels. But some other changes are also revealed in these images.
New Wheels on the Highland
The rims in the Kilowatts post have 14 points of contact with the outer edges instead of the current 10-spoke rims. The spokes are slightly off-center to give a swirl effect, another difference from the straight lines the current rims offer. There is a large circle in the middle where the center cap will go. That circle will replace the five-star piece on the existing wheels.
These wheels offer more coverage, possibly cutting down on wind resistance and giving you a half mile more in range. As we know, Tesla always looks for more ways to improve capacity.
Body Molding Change and Wires
While the wheels draw attention, there may be another change. Check out the side repeater. It almost looks like the body modeling has ben extended around the repeater camera, but it's not terribly clear in the photo and it could just be the reflection. We know that Hardware 4 comes with new cameras, and other evidence points to the side repeater cameras changing the angle that they point. However, the housing of the cameras appears the same as the previous model.
The bumper also appears to have a slightly different shape than the current Model 3, with the top lip appearing to be reduced or moved further down.
It's all a mystery after that. Check out the duct tape used to cover the headlight thoroughly. Previous pictures of these cars had the headlight exposed, it seems there may be some changes there. It was believed cameras were being added to the headlight housing, but that speculation was put to rest with images of HW4-equipped Model S, and Model X spotted in Fremont.
Finally, some wires come from under the car and run along the inside and partially on the outside of the doors before going back under the car.
Reuters reported that Project Highland would go into production in Shanghai in September. This new Model 3 is expected to cut production costs by focusing on reducing the number of components and some interior changes. In addition, the exterior is expected to see some changes to improve efficiency and reduce cost.
Tesla’s FSD V13.2.2 continues its rollout to the HW4 fleet, now complete with holiday goodness that makes it available to all HW4 vehicles. While FSD V13 is capable of some incredible feats, such as three-point turns, there are some additional capabilities Tesla hasn’t talked about yet.
Emergency Vehicle Handling
First up, better handling for emergency vehicles. While Tesla works on gathering audio data to make emergency vehicle detection even better, Tesla improved how it handles emergency vehicles with FSD V13.
FSD previously had issues handling emergency vehicles - sometimes pulling over and stopping on V12, other times requiring driver intervention to do the job. This led to lots of user interventions when an emergency vehicle was detected. Ensuring you’re out of the way of an ambulance can save precious seconds - which is enough to save lives.
V13 now does a much better job of pulling overly safely to the side for emergency vehicles. Check out the video below of FSD pulling the vehicle over to the side of the road.
Another issue that FSD had trouble handling previously was school buses. Previously, FSD would ignore the stop sign and flashing lights and attempt to drive around the bus.
School buses often required driver intervention, but it seems Tesla has dedicated time to training FSD V13 to handle them properly now. Check out this post of FSD now successfully stopping and waiting for a school bus.
FSD v13 stopped for a school bus! Waited till the stop sign folded in and then proceeded forward! pic.twitter.com/ReU4enxnNB
Reduced speed zones, including school zones, have had mediocre handling by FSD in previous versions. Now, some initial speed zone handling has arrived in V13.2. However, while it does handle some speed zones with blinking signs, it doesn’t necessarily handle all speed zones. For now, while Supervising, drivers will need to make sure their vehicles don’t exceed the speed limit, especially in school zones. In the meantime, look at this speed video of the vehicle handling a speed zone with FSD V13.
Slightly better video of FSD V13 responding appropriately to flashing yellow lights indicating it’s temporarily a 20mph zone. It didn’t exceed 25 despite being set to a much higher max speed
As part of V13, Tesla included some interesting features addressing hardware - namely camera cleaning, The initial changelog was slightly vague: “Improved Camera Cleaning” and nothing else.
It turns out this actually refers to the camera heating elements around the vehicle, including those around the B-Pillar. According to FSD engineer Yun-Ta Tsai, this is far more complex than just heating the camera up.
The system integration team does a lot of energy and thermal optimization across the entire vehicle, to optimize autonomy.
This is just one example. The heating is actually more complex than just heating it up.
Yes, real world AI cares about these things, a lot!
The Cybertruck features an automatic tonneau that lets you lock in valuables. It rolls back and forth along a track and is somewhat water-resistant. Tesla never said that the tonneau would be waterproof, but many owners have encountered a lot of water flowing into their tonneau covers.
The place where the glass roof meets the plastic strip - the aero flap- seems to be the location where most of the water gets in, and this has been noted by many as a constant source of leaks - while the rest of the bed stays mostly dry.
Tesla has attempted to fix this by adding additional slats to the tonneau, which ensures that there are slats left over underneath the aero cover, thereby providing some additional water resistance. However, it looks like they’re doing more now to prevent these leaks.
New Rubber Seals
Tesla intends to issue a service code - the term they use for service bulletins to fix common problems - for this particular issue. This service code will include the removal of the old aero flap and the installation of a new aero flap that has additional rubber seals - similar to the ones used on windows. Thanks to theMONK11 on Reddit for catching this and providing the photo.
The service code hasn’t gone live yet, so it looks like Tesla is only testing this new part for owners who have complained about excessive water intrusion. We’ll likely see this new flap, with the additional rubber seals, become a standard part on newly built trucks to resolve this issue.
For everyone else, you’ll need to put in a service ticket with Tesla, but we would recommend waiting a few weeks before doing so. That will give them time to finalize the process and have the new part sent around to service centers across North America. Given that this isn’t a critical issue to the functionality of the vehicle, Tesla likely will not issue a recall for this - so it’ll be up to owners to create a service ticket and have the new applique installed.
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