Change your Tesla’s Color and Wheels With Tesla's Colorizer Feature

June 3, 2024

By Karan Singh

Tesla's Colorizer feature lets you customize the color of your Tesla

Not a Tesla App

Changing your Tesla’s color – whether through PPF/Vinyl or Paint, is a definite possibility. But how do you show those colors throughout the car’s software? Easy! Tesla’s Colorizer feature offers the ability to adjust the vehicle’s color in software.

You can even change what kind of wheels appear in the visualizations – a quick and easy way to match whatever you have on the car – as long as it’s a first-party wheel.

Where to Find the Colorizer

There are two ways to access Tesla’s Colorizer feature. You can go to the ToyBox app and choose Colorizer, or you can go to Controls > Software and tap on the colored square underneath your vehicle. Keep in mind this feature can only be accessed while the vehicle is parked.

Once enabled, you’ll be presented with the vehicle color wheel and menu – which offers a set of options to cater to your preferences. We’ll tackle some of those options a bit further down.

Where the Colorizer Feature Applies

Tesla's Colorizer feature even applies in the Beach Buggy Racing game

Not a Tesla App

So where do these colorizer changes apply? All throughout the vehicle, and in unexpected places too! It will display the chosen color directly in the visualization, both when parked and moving. These changes will also appear throughout settings and different parts of the car, including the mobile app, and even the Beach Buggy Racing game.

Keep in mind that the Colorizer is only available on Intel or AMD-based vehicles (MCU2+) vehicles – which means legacy vehicles won’t be able to benefit from these software color changes.

Colorizer Settings

The colorizer primarily offers a color wheel for easy selection of whatever hue you’d like to go with – whether for the day, or for longer. It also offers two other options – paint style, and trim style.

The three paint styles – Solid, Matte, and Metallic – are similar to regular car paints. The solid paint style is a flat color that matches most of Tesla’s paint offerings. The matte paint style is a bit smoother, and metallic is much more reflective. In our testing, matte often looks the best on screen.

Tesla also gives you two trim color options. Most legacy vehicles nowadays have chrome trims – and if you’d like to match that or you prefer chrome – you can also choose a chrome trim. Most modern vehicles have black – and it is selected by default.

Saving and Removing Presets

The Colorizer also offers you the ability to save presets – and to switch back to your car’s default paint – whatever it shipped with from the factory. The factory preset is located on the bottom right and quickly swaps the color back to the factory option if you can’t find one you’d like.

You can create new presets after deciding on a new color and pressing the plus box on the bottom left corner of the menu. This will add a new preset to the right of the plus icon. If you want to delete a preset, tap and hold on one, and an X will pop up – allowing you to delete that preset.

Changing Wheels in Software

You can also change your Tesla’s wheels from the car. Everywhere the Colorizer applies – these same changes apply.

You can access this by going to Settings (the grey vehicle icon), and then going down to the Service Menu. From there, select the Wheel and Tire sub-option on the right. You’ll be presented with a list of options.

However, keep in mind that selecting wheel options that do not match your current wheel size will impact your vehicle. Tesla provides a warning in this menu to not mismatch the wheel sizes – as it will impact range estimates and the vehicle’s speed display.

Tesla Now Display Which Apps Are Accessing Your Vehicle's Location in Update 2024.20

June 29, 2024

By Karan Singh

Maxim

In an undocumented change in Tesla update 2024.20 and later, Tesla has added a minor, but privacy-focused change to its software. Tesla has a user privacy-first focused policy, which aligns with the expansion of user privacy changes.

Location Privacy

Since late 2023 (update 2023.38), Tesla has been showing a small location icon at the top of the screen any time the vehicle’s location is being accessed, either by Tesla or a third-party app.

This includes someone using the Tesla app, which displays the vehicle’s location on a map. However, as of update 2024.20 and later, Tesla is now expanding the information shown.

Previously, when the icon was tapped, it would display a general message explaining why the icon was appearing. The message stated:

“This icon appears when an app requests your vehicle's live location data.
You can turn off sharing anytime in Controls > Safety > Allow Mobile Access, including all Tesla app access.
When this setting is on, your vehicle communicates directly with the Tesla app and other apps, but Tesla doesn't track your location.”

The same text is still displayed, but now boldly says, “This icon appears when an app requests your vehicle’s life location data.”.

More importantly, Tesla now displays the service that is accessing the vehicle’s location (h/t DriveTeslaCanada). So if someone opens the Tesla app, the vehicle will now display that the vehicle’s location is being accessed by the “Tesla Mobile App.” In addition, it appears to also display which Tesla driver or account is viewing the location of the vehicle. If it’s a third-party app or service accessing the vehicle’s location, Tesla will display the name of the registered third-party app.

Disabling Location Sharing

Tesla states that you can still turn off sharing in the same location as before (Controls > Safety > Allow Mobile Access), but doing so prevents many features of the Tesla app from working. If you use a third-party service, the location information is also tied to gathering detailed data on the vehicle, making it an “all or nothing” option.

If you have a service request active, Tesla Service may also ask you to re-enable Location Services so that Mobile Service can find your vehicle.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a history of which apps have accessed your vehicle’s location over a certain period. The location icon and detailed information are only available for a few seconds when the icon is displayed.

Rimac Announces 'Verne' Robotaxi - Comparing it to Tesla's Upcoming Robotaxi [Photos + Video]

June 28, 2024

By Karan Singh

MotorTrend

Rimac, the company behind the Rimac Nevera electric hypercar, has announced that it intends to produce a robotaxi, and it looks quite similar to Tesla’s concepts. Much of what we’ve heard about Tesla’s upcoming robotaxi, the Cybercab, is featured in Rimac’s autonomous vehicle. From the two seats to the airy interior and the center-screen-focused interior, it’s all here, although there are significant differences as well. Rimac’s prototype, called Verne, was revealed on Wednesday, June 26^th.

Verne Robotaxi

Verne will include a 43

MotorTrend

The Verne is expected to begin operation in 2026 and is a two-seater robotaxi using Mobileye’s LiDAR technology. The vehicle is expected to be a level 4 autonomous vehicle, which means it would still require remote support for handling complex situations, similar to Waymo’s work in San Franciso.

The Verne has a 43” display, and 17 speakers, and is supposedly designed to emulate “a room on wheels”, with an inside-out design concept. Interestingly, rather than regular doors, the Verne has doors that swing forward horizontally, along with a keypad-based entry system.

A smaller screen between the front seats lets you control certain aspects of the vehicle

MotorTrend

Rimac says they have signed agreements to launch in 11 cities in the EU, the UK, and the Middle East. They have also mentioned they are negotiating contracts with 30 more cities worldwide.

Rimac also showed off images of its robotaxi app and a concept building for its robotaxis – presumably a charging and service hub.

The verne will feature sliding doors, a lot like a minivan

MotorTrend

Comparing Rimac’s Robotaxi to Tesla’s

Although Tesla has yet to reveal the Cybercab, there are several things Tesla has already talked about for their upcoming robotaxi. One key difference between Rimac’s vision and Tesla’s is that Tesla appears to be chasing the cheapest possible transport, with Tesla previously touting ride prices that would rival bus ticket prices. While Rimac appears to focus more on an ideal experience. While everyone loves extra luxury, at the end of the day, price usually wins.

The Rimac robotaxi app

MotorTrend

One example is Tesla’s single center screen, compared to Rimac’s two screens. In addition to the viewable 43” center display, which presumably is not a touch-screen, Rimac has a separate screen and controls between both passenger seats. Tesla’s approach appears to focus on a single screen, with the user controlling much of the car’s control such as music and climate through Tesla’s robotaxi app.

Another example is Rimac’s idea of including an entry pad and screen on the outside of the vehicle for passenger to be able to unlock the vehicle. Tesla’s approach to unlocking a vehicle is expected to rely on temporary keys that are tied to user’s phones leveraging ultra wideband, a lot like how Tesla’s phone keys work today on newer vehicles.

Tesla’s approach to autonomy is also drastically different than Mobileye’s, which relies on radar, LiDAR and more cameras than Tesla’s Autopilot suite today.

Viability

This announcement from Rimac is a bit of an oddity. As a company, Rimac has produced less than 150 vehicles in their short lifespan – all hand-designed and hand-produced Rimac Nevara hypercars. Their ability to scale to produce more than a handful of these Verne robotaxis, while visually appealing, is questionable at best.

On the same front, Rimac recently received a $200M Euro grant from the EU as part of a package to develop an economic recovery plan for Croatia. Rimac has also received $80M Euros in funding from Hyundai and Kia – but that was to collaborate on a high-performance fuel cell electric vehicle, and a high-performance EV sports car.

The exterior of the Verne robotaxi

MotorTrend

Beyond that, Rimac has never done any work with autonomy – the self-driving tech that is running the Verne is entirely based on the outsourced work from Mobileye. It seems that the Verne will serve as Mobileye’s real-life test on whether its technology can be integrated into a Robotaxi platform on its own.

Tesla previously used Mobileye’s technology for its own autonomy during its inception years (AP 1) but quickly moved on towards using its own vision-based camera tech instead.