Tesla Matrix Headlight Support Arrives in the U.S. and Canada With Update 2024.20

Updated: June 3, 2024

By Karan Singh

Matrix headlights have a circular dome projector on the outer edge

Not a Tesla App

Tesla has been on a roll with updates recently, and now update 2024.20 was released to employees over the weekend. This update builds on the many features in the Spring Update and adds a few big improvements.

Update: Matrix Support in the US & Canada

Tesla recently tweeted that update 2024.20 is now rolling out to vehicles - and they included some surprises in this tweet. This update includes Adaptive Headlights for the United States and Canada! North America will receive matrix headlight support, including the curve adaption feature discussed below. South Korea and Puerto Rico will also gain the feature.

However, Europe and possibly other regions also receive an additional matrix headlight feature — the ability to illuminate further on highways.

Tesla also shed some light on what’s included in the hot weather improvements. All Model 3s and Ys, as well as refresh Model S and X’s will now cool down faster in hot temperatures. They will also better regulate high-voltage battery temperature for improved Supercharging performance. The Cybertruck in particular will also benefit from a quieter AC.

The full list of improvements in update 2024.20 is discussed below.

Adaptive Headlights

New updates to Adaptive Headlights are arriving for European cars with matrix headlights. The new update allows the headlights to adapt to curves in the road ahead of you, enabling better illumination. Having the adaptive headlights work for curves is the second major update for matrix headlights. Update 2024.8 added adaptive high-beam support, letting your high beams stay on longer by turning off select LEDs in the headlights.

Update 2024.2 first brought adaptive high beams to the new Model 3, before it was later introduced to older vehicles with matrix headlights. At this time, it’s not clear whether the improvements to headlights around curves will be exclusive to matrix headlights or also support the new Model 3.

How to Tell If You Have Matrix Headlights

How do you know if you have matrix headlights on your Tesla? On the outer edge of the headlight, there will be a large, round projector dome, like in the image below. If there isn’t a dome, those are standard non-matrix headlights.
Another way to tell is to run a stock light show while facing a wall. If the Tesla logo, in letters, pops up, you have matrix headlights.

For now, North America still does not have adaptive headlight support, mostly due to legislative and testing issues in the United States. The US recently approved adaptive headlights, and a Tesla employee mentioned they’re working on it. Canada has legalized adaptive headlights since 2018, so we see this deployed in North America at some point in the future.

Supercharger Races on Beach Buggy Racing 2

Tesla is still improving its Arcade functionality, with the addition of local leaderboards at Superchargers in Beach Buggy Racing 2. It appears that each individual Supercharger site will have its own leaderboard, which drivers can compete on while their cars charge. Tesla says there will also be special races to compete in this Beach Buggy Racing 2 update.

Tesla owners can plug in and play with a controller, the touchscreen, or their vehicle’s steering wheel. Thanks to steer-by-wire on the Cybertruck, the actual wheels on the truck won’t move like they do on other Tesla models when playing the game.

We continue to hope that future refreshes to the S, 3, X, and Y will eventually receive steer-by-wire as well, as the feature has quite a few unique uses, whether driving or parked.

Autopilot Strikes and Suspension

An updated Autopilot Strike system, similar to the one that is on Tesla’s upcoming FSD V12.4 update, is on 2024.20 as well. At five strikes, users will be suspended from the use of Autopilot like before, but now Tesla will remove a strike for each 7-day period the driver goes without receiving a strike.

FSD 12.4 also improves vision-based monitoring and removes the steering wheel nag, but that’s not in this latest Tesla update, but will likely be added in the future.

Tesla tends to release new Autopilot features in their FSD updates before releasing them to the wider public for regular Autopilot use.

Hot Weather Improvements

The last set of user-end improvements coming in 2024.20 will be related to hot weather, the opposite of 2024.2.6’s cold weather update. This set of changes intends to improve AUTO mode HVAC performance in hot weather, helping to cool down the cabin faster, while also maintaining comfort at lower noise levels.

There have been several updates in the last six months to Tesla’s HVAC systems, all helping to deliver a quieter, more comfortable experience, with one of the last major ones introducing cool-down or warm-up periods before blowing air into the car cabin.

Tesla Releases FSD V12.4.3 to Employees

July 4, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Following the recent release of V12.4.2 to employees and early access testers, Tesla has now released V12.4.3 to employees, according to X user Farzad.

While we haven’t received a full set of release notes to compare against, it seems that this update won’t bring much other than bug fixes. We recently took a deeper look at the new features available on V12.4.2 here.

Given how rapid-fire Tesla has begun releasing updates to internal testers, employees, and early-access customers, it seems there could be a couple more iterations of V12.4 before it hits customers, as Tesla tunes FSD.

Why so many Versions and Delays?

While nobody is happy about delays, one needs to keep in mind that Tesla has to keep safety as a priority for FSD releases. If a release goes out wide to hundreds of thousands of vehicles that are unsafe, there could be considerable impacts on people’s lives.

Beyond that, each subversion is Tesla adjusting their AI model, fine-tuning it to be able to better drive in both normal and edge cases. As such, watching these subversion releases go by is a good thing – at the end of the day, we’ll end up with a better, safer product.

Every version also has to be tested internally first among their dedicated ADAS testers, then among employees, and finally with Tesla’s early-access customers. Once all these people give a green light, and most errors and major bugs are addressed, does a release get the green light to go wide.

So, stay tuned for when this release goes out wider than this leak and possibly comes to your vehicle with nag-free FSD.

First Look at Tesla FSD v12.4.2 - The Update That Removes The Steering Wheel Nag [Video]

July 4, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Tesla’s FSD V12.4.2 has landed in the wild – at least among early-access customers this week. There have been a few videos and some folks have begun to provide feedback on X, on the update and how it's going.

For now, it hasn’t gone wide to customers and only early-access testers and employees have it on their vehicles. FSD 12.4.2 is update 2024.15.10 and it’s expected to be available to everyone on update 2024.14 who owns or subscribes to FSD… eventually.

Consistent, Confident

Early-access testers have found FSD V12.4.2 to be considerably more confident, and more consistent when it makes decisions. V12.4.2 seems more confident when making unprotected left turns and encountering construction or complex interchanges.

They’ve also had more consistency and confidence with the Auto Speed feature, which adjusts the vehicle’s speed automatically based on traffic conditions, and also noted that it has improvements with lane selection, which was a larger issue in V12.4.1.

Users have also noted that the Vision-Based Driver Monitoring System is more confident and can see better at night. On V12.4.1, the Vision-Based DMS was unavailable at nighttime, and nags would still occur – but on V12.4.2, this restriction appears to be removed.

Regressions

There are still some regressions, with @DirtyTesLa on X noting that V12.4.2 seems to fail a left turn on an unmarked dirt road that it has previously made.

@WholeMarsBlog also noted that he had one critical safety intervention and that FSD missed a turn onto the highway, noting it was a regression from his experience on V12.4.1. Overall, he has had multiple intervention-free drives.

Overall Conclusions

It seems that besides a few minor regressions, V12.4.2 is shaping up to be a good update. There are improvements to the Vision-Based Driver Monitoring System, as well as improvements to decision-making and lane selection.

It is highly possible that V12.4.2 could be the version that unleashes the floodgates of nag-free FSD.