A crucial aspect of electric vehicle adoption is efficient and standardized charging infrastructure availability. Tesla opened up its plug technology and smartly renamed it the North American Charging Standard (NACS) connector. Thankfully, legacy automakers, led by Ford, went all in on Tesla's technology. Now Tesla has further solidified its commitment to fostering industry-wide standardization by licensing UK-based power equipment manufacturer Volex to produce its NACS connector.
The Importance of the NACS Connector
By allowing other automakers and infrastructure suppliers to adopt this connector, the NACS connector is on track to become the most widespread charging standard in the world. Already outnumbering the Combined Charging System (CCS) two-to-one and boasting 60% more NACS posts, Tesla's Supercharging network is driving a cohesive strategy toward a unified charging system.
Tesla's license to Volex signifies an important step in making the NACS connector widely available. Volex is a recognized global leader in integrated manufacturing for performance-critical applications and a major supplier of power products. The company's expertise in cable assemblies, electric vehicles, and consumer electricals makes them an ideal partner for this endeavor.
The Executive Chairman of Volex, Nat Rothschild, underscored the significance of this partnership, stating, "As a selected supplier of the NACS coupler, this further validates that Volex continues to be the trusted manufacturing partner of Tesla's charging system technology to the world's leading EV manufacturing companies and suppliers who utilize the NACS EV Charging system."
NACS Adapters
Volex's readiness to supply the NACS connector to automakers makes this partnership even more compelling. While Tesla had announced the intention to provide adapters to automakers next year, Volex's preparedness accelerates the process.
The adoption of NACS has already begun to resonate across the industry, with Ford, GM, Rivian, Nissan, and other automakers announcing their commitment to this new standard. Including Volex in this ecosystem adds momentum to the standardization process and potentially paves the way for more robust and rapid expansion of the EV charging infrastructure.
The licensing agreement with Volex further emphasizes Tesla's willingness to share its technology and leadership for the greater good of the automotive industry. In a landscape often marked by intense competition and guarded intellectual property, this collaboration offers a refreshing perspective toward achieving a common goal: making electric mobility more accessible and convenient for everyone.
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Emissions Pooling is an incentive-based program supported by various governments—most notably the European Union—to help automakers meet strict carbon reduction goals under Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.
CAFE standards mandate that automakers reduce the average CO₂ emissions across their fleet of newly manufactured vehicles. The EU’s 2025 targets are particularly aggressive, and manufacturers risk hefty fines if a sufficient portion of their new vehicles aren’t low- or zero-emission.
Emission Pool
Emissions pooling is a regulatory mechanism that allows automakers to combine their fleet CO₂ emissions to collectively meet environmental targets. Companies with low or zero emissions—like Tesla—can partner with higher-emitting automakers to help reduce their combined average and avoid costly fines.
In practice, this means pool members purchase emissions credits from Tesla, which uses its all-electric lineup to generate surplus credits. These credits help other manufacturers offset their emissions, while Tesla earns a tidy profit.
Tesla has long capitalized on this model, regularly selling emissions credits to strengthen its financials. Now, its European Union emissions pool is expanding again—with Honda and Suzuki joining existing members like Stellantis, Toyota, Ford, Mazda, and Subaru.
Green Bottom Line
Every automaker in Tesla’s emissions pool is effectively buying credits from a company with a 100% zero-emission fleet. In Q4 2024 alone, Tesla earned $692 million from regulatory and emissions credits, making up nearly 30% of its quarterly net income.
That’s a major chunk of profit driven by programs like emissions pooling—and with Honda now onboard, Tesla gains a significant new partner (and revenue stream) in the EU.
Tesla quietly included a cabin radar in its vehicles for several years before recently activating it through software update 2025.2. Tesla now uses the interior radar for several features, and later this year will add additional features that take advantage of the interior radar.
Cabin Radar Features
The first feature Tesla developed that uses the cabin radar is front row cabin sensing. Instead of relying on sensors in the seats to detect occupancy, Tesla now uses the radar to determine where people are sitting in the vehicle. The radar is much more accurate than a seat sensor, so not only will it prevent false positives that occur when placing a heavy object on the passenger seat, but it could also improve reliability by reducing the number of parts in the vehicle.
In future updates, Tesla intends to expand the occupancy sensing to the rear of all of its supported vehicles, which will help improve vehicle safety by correctly deploying airbags as needed on a dynamic basis.
Regular Radar vs 4D Radar
The 4D radar is Tesla’s latest iteration of the radar, which is capable of even more sensing features. While many of these features are still a work in progress and haven’t been enabled, we recently covered what’s coming for the cabin radar. For now, these 4D radars are limited to the Cybertruck and the refreshed Model Y, but Tesla intends to expand the 4D radar to other vehicles as parts become available. Older vehicles include a different part number for the cabin radar, but it’s not clear if or how that will affect upcoming cabin radar features.
Upcoming Cabin Radar Features
In Q3 2025, Tesla intends to add child-presence detection, as well as health-detection for critical emergencies. In short, the radar is a safety-focused addition and will be able to help protect an individual left behind in a vehicle.
In addition to child detection, the radar will also determine passenger sizes to dynamically determine which airbags to deploy, which can help reduce airbag injuries for shorter individuals sitting in the front seats.
The radar can automatically note if a child or baby is left behind in the vehicle and will notify you via the Tesla app immediately. It will also turn on the HVAC system to ensure their safety. In the case of an emergency, the vehicle can also automatically call emergency services in some cases and even report its location.
As a reminder, while Tesla vehicles outside of the United States support eCall, vehicles within the US cannot call 911 unless a phone is connected to the vehicle via Bluetooth. We hope that Tesla looks to add similar capabilities in North America to improve safety capabilities.
Which Vehicles Have Cabin Radars?
Tesla’s more recent lineup of vehicles includes cabin radars, but this isn’t an exact science, and we’ll explain why a bit further below.
Tesla includes the cabin radar on the 2024+ Model 3 and some 2022+ Model Ys. It’s also included on all refresh Model Ys, the Cybertruck and some 2021+ Model S and Model X vehicles, however, the exact hardware version of the cabin radar does differ between models. While there are different hardware versions for the cabin radar, it’s not clear whether all hardware versions will support all features in the future.
To complicate things further, some pre-refresh Model Ys (late 2022+) are already equipped with the cabin radar, while others are receiving a notice from Tesla to come in and have the radar installed. This is due to Tesla using the radar for driver and passenger occupancy sensing.
As such, some older Model Ys and Model 3s may either be equipped with the cabin radar or may receive a notification from Tesla to have it equipped to address the occupancy sensor recall.
Model S and Model X vehicles manufactured from approximately September 2024 should also include the cabin radar sensors, but it’s best to check to be sure. We’ve got some instructions below on how to do just that.
How to Check If You Have a Cabin Radar
There’s actually an easy way to check whether your vehicle has a cabin radar. To do this, you’ll need to enter Tesla’s Service Mode, which is aimed at technicians, but it’s perfectly safe to do so as long as you exit it before driving and don’t change any settings.
If you’re not sure how to access Service Mode, check out our Service Mode guide that will walk you through the process. Once you’re in Service Mode, use the menu on the left to navigate to the Safety & Restraints section and thenchoose Seats.
You’ll be presented with the seats panel that shows passenger occupancy. Between the two front seats, you’ll see a green box below or above the virtual screen. Tap on it and it’ll either say Restraints Control Module (RCM) or Cabin Radar (ICR).
Location of Cabin Radar
Not a Tesla App
On supported vehicles, the cabin radar is located between the two front seats above the rearview mirror.
Future Features
We expect Tesla to continue to develop features that rely on the vehicle’s cabin radar. Dog Mode, for instance, could be turned on automatically if you leave your pooch inside the vehicle and fail to turn on Dog Mode. Tesla can also trigger the rear HVAC fan even when the seat occupancy sensor isn’t triggered, which happens regularly with child seats.
Tesla is also expected to stop including seat sensors in every seat and instead rely on the cabin camera to detect passengers, reducing the cost of each vehicle. As with other Tesla features, new feature ideas on how to leverage the cabin sensor will come later as owners and product owners think of other clever uses for the new hardware.
