Tesla recently added support for YouTube Music and Amazon Music in its most recent update – 2024.26.3. Tesla now offers 9 music services in its vehicles: Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Online Streaming (through LiveOne, formerly Slacker Radio), Caraoke, TuneIn, and traditional FM radio.
That’s quite a slew of options, but there are a few popular services remaining — notably SiriusXM and Pandora. While Tesla doesn’t cover every niche, this list now covers most users.
Amazon Music - Free Tier
On the music front, we recently reported that Tesla may soon offer Apple Music with Hi-Fi support, but it seems like Hi-Fi support isn’t being included with Amazon Music – even with a Premium subscription. However, unlike Spotify, which requires a premium subscription to play on a Tesla at all, Amazon Music can be played in a free tier.
The Amazon Music Interface
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In the free tier, you’ll be able to access music, curated playlists, Amazon Radio, and podcasts. You’ll still have ads, and you won’t be able to pick the specific songs you want. The next tier, Amazon Music Prime (through Amazon Prime), will provide you with ad-free music, and song selection. Both services are limited to one device streaming per account.
The highest tier – Amazon Music Unlimited, also provides lossless Hi-Fi audio and bit-perfect Hi-Fi, but not in Teslas. We could hope that this changes in the future, and Amazon and Tesla expand their offerings to include Hi-Fi audio in-vehicle. In terms of streaming, there are individual and family plans, supporting one device or up to six at once for the Unlimited tier.
YouTube Music
YouTube Music doesn’t offer lossless or offline support but does come bundled with YouTube Premium – which you can use by logging into the YouTube app on your Tesla to get ad-free video.
There is an individual plan for single-device streaming and a family plan for up to 5 concurrent devices.
Interface Commonality
The YouTube Music Interface
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One of the nicest things that Tesla has done here is to make the interfaces between the streaming services very similar. This means that each music service has a consistent, similar, Tesla-orientated interface. You can swap through them and maintain the same basic set of controls. Tesla works hard to integrate third-party services and we’re use many users will enjoy these additional streaming options.
Both of these services are available without Premium Connectivity while on WiFi or connected via a phone’s hotspot, but they require Premium Connectivity to stream while on LTE.
Tesla’s vehicles all have a built in Service Mode, where you can find working diagrams of anything from the HVAC system, low or high voltage systems, your power steering, or infotainment. All of this is included on-vehicle, and doesn’t require a third-party tool or subscription.
Of course, if you need more information, Tesla does offer Toolbox3, a fairly inexpensive subscription package that can be downloaded onto any laptop and connected to any Tesla - without the hassle of needing a special manufacturer-specific OBD tool.
Thanks to John Kelly for finding this. Let’s dig into it.
48V LVCS Connector Reference
Cybertruck runs on a 48V architecture, called LVCS, or Low-Voltage Connector Standard. They recently launched this standard to the rest of the automotive industry, in hopes of promoting standardization and progress.
48V and LVCS offer Tesla the unprecedented ability to optimize the wiring inside Cybertruck and future vehicles, massively reducing the complexity and cost - and also ensuring that everything within the vehicle is networked. That networking means that you can also debug the Cybertruck’s wiring from within the vehicle - without needing to disassemble the entire thing.
The wiring diagram, set to the front cabin view.
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The Wiring Service Diagram offers the ability to search for particular connectors, and also see where the wiring runs originate and terminate. And that’s not all - you’re also able to pull up the pinouts, wire colors, and harness connections to see everywhere that specific connector brings data, power, or anything else to.
The pinout view for a particular connector.
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This is an fantastic update, and enables anyone, including a DIY home mechanic, to be able to figure out exactly what might be wrong with a particular system, as well as how to potentially correct it. In addition, all of this data is freely available within the vehicle, and nothing else is required to be able to access it other than sitting down and entering Service Mode Plus.
How to Access It
For this particular interface, you’ll need to access Tesla’s Service Mode Plus, which means you’ll need a subscription to Toolbox 3, Tesla’s Service Software. We won’t walk you through that procedure here, as we recommend you review Tesla’s Service Manuals before jumping in.
Assuming you know what you’re doing, once TB3 is setup and connected to the vehicle, you can enter Service Mode Plus from the TB3 primary menu, and then navigate your way to the Low Voltage section. The Connector Reference Tool is its own sub-heading, and the search tool to look for particular connectors is in the top right.
Tesla has recently committed new code to its Light Show Github repository that reveals several additional Lightshow features and shares specifications for others.
Tesla hosts the software for building Lightshows on GitHub, an open-source code repository. The new code was added five days ago, but given that this is a change to the actual software and not an on-vehicle change, we’re not sure whether the features below will be available for immediate use or will be available in a future software update.
Up to Four-Hour Long Light Shows
The feature update is pretty extensive and, for the most part, is focused on the Cybertruck and Model 3 Highland, but also features changes for other Tesla models.
There’s one general change, which now lets you create Light Shows that are up to four hours in length — yes, that’s really long. In the Holiday update, Tesla mentioned that Light Shows can now be longer, but this recent commit makes it seem like Tesla is essentially removing the limit of how long a Light Show can be.
Front & Rear Light Bars
On the outside of the Cybertruck, you’ll now be able to control the front light bar, but what’s even better is that you can control each of the 60 LEDs individually. The rear light bar is seeing similar improvements, letting you control each of the 52 LEDs individually.
This feature alone is going to create some amazing Light Shows, anything from which has 60 individually configurable LEDs each. The rear light bar has 52 individually controllable LEDs as well.
This alone is going to inspire some really creative designs, such as a Knight Rider-like animation as seen on Rivian.
These are, of course, locked to just white for the front light bar and red for the rear, but Lightshow designers will be able to configure how bright each individual LED is and feather them up and down in brightness.
As we saw in the absolutely epic Tesla octa-truck Lightshow, the off-road lightbar is also controllable on vehicles that have it equipped. For now, that’ll just be Foundation-Series Cybertrucks, but the lightbar has been confirmed to be compatible with the non-Foundation-Series vehicles once it arrives in the Tesla shop later this year.
The off-road lightbar has six segments - two side-facing ditch lights and four forward-facing lights. Although you won’t be able to address individual LEDs here, you’ll be able to control each segment (six total) and brightness.
This feature was added as part of the Holiday update, so it should be available for all vehicles on 2024.44.25 and higher.
Center Display Color
Over on the interior side, designers will get full RGB control for the center display. Even when viewing the light show from the exterior of the vehicle, the center display will light up the interior in any color of your choice, letting you add festive colors to your Light Shows.
The interior display is also available on the Holiday update and is available for all vehicles, including legacy Model S and Model X vehicles that support Light Shows.
Ambient Lighting
This one has been a long time coming, but you’ll finally be able to control the vehicle’s ambient lighting feature on the Cybertruck and new Model 3. The accent lights are split into five segments and are all controllable RGB, so you can set each section to a different color if you want. The sections include center front, left and right front, and left and right rear.
These are some massive additions to Tesla’s Light Show feature, and they’re arguably some of the best. The individually controllable LEDs in the light bars and the ability to choose colors for the first time will undoubtedly create some of the best Light Shows we’ve ever seen.
Unfortunately, Christmas is behind us now, but we’re sure developers will find other holidays that take advantage of colors, such as Independence Day.
Light Shows bring the Tesla community together, and they’re one of the most distinctive Tesla features. Enjoy the awesome Christmas Light Show compilation below. Thanks to Rhys Samson for sharing these Light Show changes with us.
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