As of approximately early August 2024, Tesla has now begun to charge for Supercharging by the partial kWh, rather than by rounding down to the nearest kWh. So far, this change appears to be applicable throughout North America and Europe.
We speculated that Tesla may start doing this when the Tesla app was updated to v4.34.1. Previously, Tesla only displayed whole numbers for kWh charged. With this app update, Tesla started showing four decimal places, however, until recently the decimals were always zero.
As of now Tesla now rounds charging to four decimal places (the ten-thousandth place) for the energy provided.
Not a Tesla App
Partial Charges
This means that your Supercharging bills will be more accurate and possibly more expensive, but also nets Tesla a few additional cents on the transaction.
For example, if you previously Supercharged 30.3245 kWh in July at $0.50 per kWh, you’d have been billed exactly $15 since the energy used would have been rounded to 30 kWh. However, with these changes, you would now be billed for the exact kWh used, so your bill would be $15.16 (rounded down to the nearest cent).
This isn’t a hugely impactful change for most of us who use Superchargers occasionally, but for Tesla as a whole, these partial charges likely add up to thousands of dollars of revenue every day.
Superchargers are expensive to plan, permit, produce, install, and commission, so each additional cent helps justify Tesla’s expansion of its Supercharging network. In fact, Tesla just bought a parking lot in NYC to presumably build a new Supercharger for $18 million. Additionally, this change helps Tesla to be more accurate in accounting for electricity delivered to vehicles.
Supercharger Expansion
Even after the big shakeup of the Supercharger team, Tesla has committed itself to expanding its network in North America, with new locations still being planned and prepared, and some new ones being commissioned between then and today.
Tesla has set out to expand and continue its Supercharger program, so we can get behind the Supercharger team eking out the last few drops of revenue to keep the expansion going. Hopefully, some of the new locations are in relatively remote locations to help close of the charging gaps.
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Tesla’s upcoming Home Wireless Charging Pad – the so-called “Project Garfield,” will get special Autopark support. Vehicle backup cameras will be able to locate the Wireless Charging Pad and then Autopark the vehicle in the best spot for the charging session to begin.
This information comes from Gizmodo China, who found this information from a reputable local source. We previously looked into Tesla’s Wireless Charging Patents in-depth and how Tesla intends to make this a simple and easy-to-use system, but one that’s also fairly high performance.
Automatic Docking
Similar to your robotic vacuum automatically docking to charge, eventually, your Tesla will be able to automatically locate your Home Wireless Charging Pad, and then maneuver itself into the perfect spot to take advantage of the highest charging speeds with the least energy leakage.
Automatically docking the vehicle is a fantastic solution to the woes of Wireless Charging, where even minor misalignment creates heat and wastes lots of energy. This fixes that issue at the vehicle level, so owners won’t have to move their wireless charging pads under the vehicle or move their vehicle around to find the perfect spot on their own.
In combination with Tesla’s patent to automatically adapt to variations in wireless charging layouts and systems, it seems that Tesla will be able to adapt to most circumstances that previous wireless EV charging companies were having difficulties with. Tesla will be able to vary the coil induction across its Wireless Charging Pad to “steer” or aim the wireless charging at different parts of the inductive coil inside the vehicle, enabling them to reduce heat, reduce waste energy, and accommodate variances in how vehicles line-up with the Wireless Charging Pad.
This feature may be limited to owners or subscribers of Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, which come with AutoPark as a standard feature. It could also be a software-level feature that’s enabled when a Home Wireless Charging Pad is detected nearby—which could also be an excellent option. We don’t know how Tesla plans to implement this just yet, but it will be very cool.
While we expect Tesla’s upcoming Robotaxi to feature the first Wireless Charging tech inside an EV, the Cybertruck already has the connectors for it and is ready to be retrofitted with the induction coils in a future update. The upcoming Model Y Juniper may also bring Wireless Charging en-masse to EVs.
We’re super excited to hear more about Tesla’s Home Wireless Charging Pads, as they’ll add even more convenience to owning a Tesla.
Rendering of what Tesla's integration could look like
@dkrasniy
Tesla is adding support for Smart Child Seats in an upcoming update. Greentheonly, who typically decompiles and analyzes Tesla’s software updates, found references to smart car seats in update 2024.32. Tesla will sometimes release code in a software update that isn’t exposed to end users. There could be various reasons for this, such as Tesla wanting to collect data and running the feature in shadow mode, which is often the case with features like Park Assist, Autopark, or Autopilot changes.
Tesla also has the capability to turn on a certain feature in a remote configuration, letting them enable or disable the feature at their discretion. Whatever the case, Tesla appears close to releasing support for these new car seats that help alert parents of potential dangers.
Smart Child Seats
The Smart Child Seat in the preview image is the Babyark Convertible Car Seat, which retails for approximately $1,200 USD. In the code of Tesla’s update, they specifically refer to an “ISOFIX” base. ISOFIX is a standardized car seat fitting system that automatically locks onto a car seat.
The Babyark comes with a slew of smart features, including real-time notifications, buckle alerts, status notifications, and approximately how much time your baby has spent in the seat. Additionally, the Babyark can remind owners of reconfiguring the seat as your child grows. One of the key features of Babyark is a forgotten child alert – which prevents parents from leaving their child in the car.
At this point, we’re not quite sure exactly how many of these smart features will be integrated into Tesla’s UI, but most likely the forgotten child alert will be integrated, as well as possibly a means to automatically recognize when an ISOFIX style seat is installed. Currently, child seats need to be manually marked in the UI – which will dismiss the seatbelt indicator for that seat.
Tesla has time and time again placed a huge focus on safety features, and this upcoming support for smart child seats is another interesting integration to help ensure that parents can keep their children safe. And when they grow up – you can use Tesla’s parental controls to ensure that they drive their Tesla in a safe manner.
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