Tesla Switches to Fabric, Removes Rear Screen and More in Model 3 in Mexico; Possibly Prepping for $25K Model

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Tesla has made some significant changes to the Model 3 Rear Wheel Drive that’s sold in Mexico – in fact, they’re launching an entirely new textile interior option for the market.

There are several significant changes throughout the interior, but let’s take a look at the new textile interior first.

Textile Seats

Tesla has been well-known for offering vegan leatherette in all its vehicles up to this point, as the only interior option – primarily in black and white for the Model 3 and Model Y, but also in cream for the Model S and Model X.

This new textile interior is now the only option available for the Model 3 RWD in Mexico – coming in gray and is listed as “Standard Fabric”. This textile-only option is also not available for the Long Range or Performance variants, or on any of the Model Y variants.

Tesla has introduced a fabric seating material

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Heating & Cooling Features Removed

Tesla didn’t stop at the seating material with these changes. They also included other, somewhat surprising changes throughout the interior. There is no longer a semi-premium interior for the RWD Model 3 in Mexico. This means all the Alcantara fabric has been replaced with the same textile fabric as the seats.

Alongside the lack of vegan leatherette, Tesla has also removed heated front and rear seats, as well as the heated steering wheel. This isn’t a surprising move in a warmer market like Mexico and it makes a lot of sense as Tesla makes its way into other markets that don’t require heated elements such as India and parts of Africa. However, due to the fabric textile seating, ventilated seats have also been removed from this model.

While we can see the advantages of not having leather-like seats in the Mexican heat, the lack of ventilated seats is a big disappointment.

Rear Screen Removed

The rear screen is also removed in this model

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There are a few changes that strike us as odd as well. The rear screen is powered by the same infotainment unit that powers the front screen, so the cost for Tesla is extremely minimal. Think of the rear screen as an additional display on a computer.

Tesla is unlikely to create a custom harness that would power the rear screen for this vehicle, so it’s possible the rear screen could be retrofitted in these models.

Ambient Lighting, Glass, and Speakers

In addition, Tesla has replaced its RGB ambient lighting with a white-only version. This seems like an odd choice, especially as in the open market, a color-capable LED strip versus a single-color strip is only the difference of a few dollars. While this may not provide significant savings for Tesla, it could be a tactic to upsell their higher trim levels that include the RGB feature.

The colorful, customizable ambient lighting feature likely helps sell quite a few cars. Tesla has recently been expanding the capabilities of its ambient lighting feature. With update 2024.26 Tesla added the ability to choose the brightness of the ambient lighting, as well as adding the option to have it only turn on at night time. Both of these features are expected to remain in this Mexican version. However, the ability for the ambient lighting to turn red when Service Mode is active won’t be available.

In addition to ambient lighting changes, Tesla is limiting its acoustic glass, which helps reduce road noise, to just the front windows.

The audio performance in this model has also been reduced. The number of speakers has gone from 17 down to 9. In addition, both subwoofers have been removed and there is now a single amplifier.

The Model 3 RWD's interior in Mexico

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Price

In exchange for dropping all of these changes, Tesla has dropped the price of the Model 3 RWD by $50,000 MXN – which is approximately $2,680 USD at the time of writing. We’re not sure that these significant changes will have a positive impact on Mexican sales. Tesla may be testing the waters with these changes, and if it bodes well for sales, we could see these changes be applied to other factories and markets as well.

Next-Gen Vehicle

Most interesting is that this new format could be the standard for Tesla’s upcoming next-generation vehicle – which is expected to be priced at around $25,000 USD. Earlier this year, Tesla pivoted and said that its next-gen vehicle will be built using the same manufacturing process as current models instead of the new unboxed process, which Tesla is now saving for the robotaxi.

The changes we’re seeing with this Mexican model will be something to keep an eye on, as the lack of a heated steering wheel and seat heating won’t be taken too well in most European countries or northern US states, nor in China and other colder climates. We’ll keep an eye out to see if this model makes its way into any other regions. For now, the Model 3 Long Range and Performance come with all the usual features we’ve come to expect.

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Is Tesla Planning to Add Steam Support to All Vehicles?

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Yesterday, we reported that Tesla updated their Steam integration on Model S and Model X vehicles. The update was part of their 2024 Holiday Update, but it looks like there may be more to this than a simple update.

Steam, a video game library app, makes it easy for users to buy or launch games on their computers. However, a couple of years ago, Valve, who created Steam, launched their own standalone device, the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck runs a custom OS based on Linux.

Steam Launch

When Tesla launched the redesigned Model S and Model X, Tesla introduced a dedicated gaming GPU with 16GB of RAM and touted the ability to play top-tier PC games in Tesla vehicles.

In 2022, Tesla finally launched the Steam app for the Model S and Model X as part of its 2022 Holiday Update. The Steam app runs Steam OS, the same OS as the Steam Deck in a virtual environment.

However, earlier this year, Tesla stopped including the GPU and Steam (Beta) in their vehicles, and we haven’t seen any updates to the Steam in quite some time. In fact, we thought Tesla was axing their gaming-on-the-go dreams.

SteamOS Update

The Steam app, which is still in Beta, is getting an interesting update for the Model S and Model X vehicles with the discrete GPU.

Those vehicles received an update to SteamOS 3.6 - the same version of SteamOS that runs on the Steam Deck. While nothing has visually changed, there’s a long list of performance optimizations under the hood to get things running smoother.

Comparing Steam Deck to Tesla Vehicles

Let’s take a look at the Steam Deck - according to Valve, its onboard Zen4 CPU and GPU combined push a total of 2 TFlops of data, which is fairly respectable, but much lower than today’s home consoles. The Steam Deck is capable of 720p gaming fairly seamlessly on low-to-medium settings on the go and is also built on the AMD platform.

AMD-equipped Teslas, including the Model 3 and Model Y, are packing an older Zen+ (Zen 1.5) APU (processor with a combined CPU and GPU). AMD claims that the V1000 - the same embedded chip as on AMD Tesla vehicles (YE1807C3T4MFB), brings up to 3.6 TFLops of processing power with it, including 4K encoding and decoding with the integrated GPU on board.

While that’s not enough for 4K gaming or comparable to a full-blown console or desktop GPU, that’s enough raw horsepower for light gaming and is currently more powerful than the Steam Deck.

The Model S and Model X’s GPU brings that up to about 10TFlops of power - comparable to modern consoles like the Xbox Series X at 12 TFlops.

Steam Gaming for All Vehicles?

The fact that Tesla is updating SteamOS even though the feature is no longer available in any new vehicles could indicate that Tesla is not only bringing Steam back to Teslas but that it’s going to play a much bigger role.

While SteamOS is run in a virtual environment on top of Tesla’s own OS, we could see Tesla bring SteamOS to all of its current vehicles, including the Model 3, Model Y, and Cybertruck. Steam in these vehicles would likely support any game that’s capable of running on the Steam Deck.

We think this Steam update, which includes performance improvements and a variety of fixes, has quietly passed under most people’s radars. This could be a very exciting update for those who enjoy gaming, especially for those who love to do it in their Tesla.

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Tesla Holiday Update Weather Features: All the Small Details

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As part of Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, Tesla included two awesome new features - Weather at Destination and the long-awaited Weather Radar Overlay. These two features are big upgrades built upon the weather feature that was added in update 2024.26. The original weather feature added an hourly forecast, as well as the chance of precipitation, UV index, Air Quality Index, and other data.

However, this update also added some smaller weather touches, such as the vehicle alerting you if the weather at the destination will be drastically different from the current weather.

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Weather At Destination

When you’re navigating to a destination and viewing the full navigation direction list, the text under the arrival time will show you the expected weather next to your destination. You can also tap this, and the full weather pop-up will show up, showing your destination's full set of weather information.

Note the weather under the arrival time

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You can also tap the weather icon at the top of the interface at any time and tap Destination to switch between the weather at your current location and the weather at your destination.

You’re probably considering that the weather at your destination doesn’t matter when you’re three hours away - but that’s all taken into account by the trip planner. It will add in both charge time and travel time and show you the weather at your destination at your expected arrival time.

And if the weather is drastically different or inclement, such as rain or snow, while you’ve got sunshine and rainbows - the weather will be shown above the destination ETA for a few moments before it tucks itself away.

Tesla also recently introduced a new voice command. Asking, “What’s the weather?” or something similar will now bring up Tesla’s weather popup.

The weather pop-up above the ETA

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One limitation, though—if you’re planning a long road trip that is more than a day of driving, the weather at destination feature won’t be available until you get closer.

Weather Radar Overlay

As part of the improvements to weather, Tesla has also added a radar overlay for precipitation. You can access the new radar overlay by tapping the map and then tapping the weather icon on the right side of the map. It’ll bring up a radar overlay centered on your vehicle. It’ll animate through the radar data over the last 3 hours so that you can see the direction of the storm, but you can also pause it at any point.

You’re able to scroll around in this view and see the weather anywhere, even if you zoom out. It also works while you’re driving, although it can be a little confusing if you’re trying to pay attention to the navigation system. If you like to have Points of Interest enabled on your map, the weather overlay will hide POIs except for Charging POIs.

Requirements / Data

Unfortunately, you’ll need Premium Connectivity for any of the weather features to work, and being on WiFi or using a hotspot will not be enough to get the data to show up. The data, including the weather radar, is provided by The Weather Channel.

As for supported models, weather and weather at destination are available on all vehicles except for the 2012-2020 Model S and Model X. The weather radar has more strict requirements and requires the newer AMD Ryzen-powered infotainment center available on the 2021+ Model S and Model X and more recent Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

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