As the holiday season kicks off, it’s time to turn our attention to our Christmas list of items we’d love to see in Tesla’s annual Holiday update—a tradition that brings some of the most exciting software features of the year. From game-changing additions to fun surprises, the Holiday update has become the most anticipated update each year.
This year’s update promises to be no exception, with Blind Spot Monitoring While Parked already leaking in an employee release earlier this month.
So, grab your hot cocoa and cozy up—it’s time to see what Tesla might have in store for the most wonderful time of the year.
Smart Voice Assistant
Tesla’s current system is a list of voice commands that, while useful, leaves a lot to be desired when compared to modern voice assistants such as Google Assistant and even Alexa. However, a smart voice assistant based on an LLM that uses AI like xAI’s Grok could be coming this season. Elon previously confirmed that Grok would make its way into Tesla vehicles—and what better time than the Holiday season?
Group Text Support
Today, if you’re in a group chat using RCS or iMessage and use your Tesla messages app to respond, you’ll likely send a direct message to the first person in the group rather than the whole group. What’s even worse is you can’t tell the difference between a message that’s sent directly to you or to a group.
That’s annoying at best, and downright a hassle at worst if you’re driving for a long time and unable to use your phone. It would be a fantastic wish come true if Tesla brought full support for group texts.
Hi-Fi Audio & Dolby Surround Support
Previously, we saw a bug where Apple Music began showing as HiFi for certain tracks in July. We assumed that Tesla would eventually support lossless Hi-Fi audio streaming, but so far, TIDAL remains the only streaming option with high-quality streaming.
Bringing Dolby Atmos support to Tesla vehicles would make even better use of Tesla’s jaw-dropping soundstages. Dolby Atmos delivers an immersive, 360-degree music experience, making it feel like the sound is coming from all around you. This would be the perfect Holiday update feature to make those bells truly jingle.
Tesla has been on a roll with adding music streaming services over the last couple of years. Tesla most recently launched Amazon Music and YouTube Music support. While the biggest players have now been incorporated into Teslas, many users would still love to see Pandora added to the mix.
Adding additional music services means that more users subscribe to Tesla’s Premium Connectivity package, so expect this one to be added as well.
SiriusXM Streaming
While SiriusXM is already available in the Model S and Model X through a satellite receiver, SiriusXM may soon be available to a lot more users. We previously reported on SiriusXM mistakenly publishing a web post revealing a web streaming version of SiriusXM for Teslas, and it has been a few months since then. It's a quick update and seems to have already been partially implemented, given SiriusXM’s website. We could expect this wishlist item to be real, and hopefully soon.
Prime Video
While video streaming integration is much less important than music streaming, it still serves its purpose, especially in vehicles with a rear screen, where videos can be watched while the vehicle is in motion. With Tesla’s addition of Amazon Music this summer, we expect Tesla to add Amazon Prime Video as well.
X Integration
While you can pop open X pretty quickly in the web browser and have a fairly OK browsing experience, it's clear the site is designed for use with a mouse, not your fingers. A dedicated X app would definitely be easier for fans of the platform. Don’t forget to follow us on X or your favorite network (we’re “NotATeslaApp” on just about all of them, including Facebook, Threads, and Bluesky).
Productivity Apps
Zoom is the highlight of Tesla’s productivity apps—and it’s also the only one. With YouTube Music recently arriving, we could see Google Hangouts, Google Meet, and even Microsoft Teams making inroads as productivity applications to have in your Tesla. However, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Tesla App Store
While a suite of productivity apps would be a nice addition, it’s likely not a practical solution for Tesla. With so many available services, it would be a challenge to integrate each one individually.
Elon Musk once hinted at the possibility of an App Store for Tesla vehicles, where developers could create apps specifically designed for Teslas. However, we haven’t seen this come to fruition yet. So, the question remains: Is Tesla still working on an App Store, or is the expectation that users will rely on tablets and computers in their cars?
If Tesla does plan to launch an App Store, they would need to find a way to leverage existing platforms instead of building each app from scratch. One possibility is running Android apps through an emulation layer, allowing access to a wide array of apps from the Google Play Store, such as video streaming, video conferencing, and messaging platforms like Discord and Slack.
Another approach, similar to what Tesla already does with video streaming services, could involve using web-based versions of apps. While many services offer web versions, not all perform as well or provide the same functionality as native apps.
Both solutions are feasible, but we have to consider: What does Tesla gain by allowing users to run any existing apps on the car’s screen instead of using a separate device? While such apps could be useful, we believe Tesla will likely focus on integrating them where it makes sense—like music services—where a custom implementation improves the user experience and keeps the user interface consistent between services. For most other apps, users will probably continue to rely on their phones and other nearby devices.
Steam Games on AMD Vehicles
Tesla previously removed games from its vehicles, as it removed the dedicated gaming GPU in favor of AMD’s all-purpose APU. However, the all-purpose APU can hold its own while gaming, and in fact, the 45-watt 4-core Ryzen chip is fairly beefy. It could definitely hold its own against the mobile Steam Deck, especially since that also uses an AMD-based platform.
Using Valve’s Proton Compatibility Layer would allow AMD Teslas to game, and game pretty well!
SteamLink App
If Steam support doesn’t come back to allow you to run games directly in your Tesla, SteamLink would definitely do the trick. SteamLink allows you to connect to your own PC at home, letting it do the heavy lifting of rendering the game and letting that device stream the game to you.
Streaming games has become more common, and streaming from your setup at home is the best way to take advantage of that massive display in your Tesla while you’re away from home.
That’s it for our Entertainment wishlist, but we’re sure that you have even more great suggestions. Be sure to let us know your suggestions in our forums.
It shouldn’t be too long before we find out exactly what’s in it, but for now, keep those requests coming!
According to a recently published article by Bloomberg, the Trump administration intends to introduce a federal framework for autonomous vehicles. According to members of the administrative transition team, this new framework will be part of the Transportation Department’s list of priorities.
This places Tesla in a good position to begin working towards establishing and expanding its Robotaxi network and getting production, validation, and approval of the Cybercab off the ground.
Legal Limits
Today’s laws have fairly strict requirements for any vehicle that travels on the road—it needs to have steering wheels, pedals, mirrors, and plenty of driver-awareness or driver-assistance safety features. None of these are needed on a Robotaxi, and Tesla’s Cybercab also has none of these items. Instead, with no pedals and no steering wheel, it takes passengers from origin to destination with minimal user input.
The framework for autonomous vehicles could be spearheaded by former Uber executive Emil Michael, who could potentially take on the Transportation Department under the new administration. Uber previously worked on their autonomy program and is potentially a direct competitor to Tesla’s Robotaxi network.
The current regulation, in addition to having stringent hardware requirements, caps the number of autonomous vehicles a single company can operate at 2,500 units per year. This could drastically limit how Tesla’s Robotaxi network functions, especially since it doesn’t need additional high-resolution mapping to work in a specific location. FSD is extremely adaptable and learns on the fly.
Rather than deploying just a couple thousand units a year, Tesla needs to be able to deploy tens of thousands - the more units on the road, the faster they can collect data and iterate, especially with the recent deployment of their new Cortex Supercomputer.
State Laws
There’s one more obstacle to the mass deployment of autonomous vehicles—state regulations. Every state has its own set of regulations, and even with federal guidance and regulations becoming less limiting and more open, every state can choose to establish exactly how much autonomy it wants.
Tesla and other companies like Waymo, which are pursuing autonomous transportation, will have to navigate a regulatory maze to get their vehicles approved at a state-by-state level.
Tesla has already taken steps to get its Robotaxi network off the ground in Palo Alto, an affluent city that has been struggling to provide affordable transportation for its residents. With looser federal regulations, Elon’s timeline of deployments in Texas and California by late 2025 may move even sooner.
This is definitely a framework to watch — with Tesla’s stock up 8% this morning on the news, unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi could be coming quicker than anyone expects.
We’re eagerly anticipating Tesla’s biggest update of the year — the Holiday update. The update usually arrives in December, typically towards the end of the month. Last year, the rollout was actually earlier, happening in the second week of December.
As part of our ongoing series, we’re sharing our wishlist for features we hope to see in this year’s holiday update. This edition focuses on improvements to Tesla Maps and Autopilot.
User-contributed Map Data
Many users have asked for the integration of more Waze-like features into Tesla’s navigation. Earlier this year, Tesla added Speed Camera locations, traffic lights and stop signs to maps, but users really want it to be a Waze-like experience that lets you contribute data. This includes marking police car locations, accidents, construction, and more. We’re not sure how likely this is to happen. So far, Tesla has relied on the Google API and other vendors to highlight information on the map.
Avoid Highways Option
Users have been asking for an ‘Avoid Highways’ option forever, as it’s a standard option in navigation systems nowadays. While the Alternate Routes feature is helpful, it may not always provide a route that avoids the highway.
In June, Elon Musk confirmed that a “Avoid Highways” option would be added to Tesla navigation. We still haven’t seen it arrive, but we’re fairly confident that it will eventually be available in Tesla vehicles, maybe even for the Holiday update. What better way to enjoy a winter wonderland than to drive through some country roads instead of on the highway?
3D Buildings in Maps
Not a Tesla App
3D maps arrived in China earlier this year, and Google began rolling out 3D maps for various apps just last month. Apple already provides a 3D map with beautiful renderings of nearby buildings, and Rivian already features 3D buildings with an Apple-like look, so Tesla is playing catch-up a little bit here.
While 3D map support could be viewed as mostly eye candy, it can sometimes be useful when navigating an unknown area. Since the Intel infotainment processor is already near its limit and has excluded features in the past, such as improved visualizations and High Fidelity Park Assist, this feature could be limited to newer AMD-powered vehicles.
At Tesla’s recent Robotaxi event, we saw custom 3D maps in the vehicle with a specialized interface, so Tesla knows this is an appealing addition.
Full Screen Visualizations on Intel
BLKMDL3
This year Tesla added support for full screen Autopilot visualizations on AMD-based vehicles. Unfortunately the option to go full screen isn’t available on Intel vehicles, unless you’re in North America and have FSD.
There isn’t a clear reason why this is the case, since Intel vehicles can obviously handle them. It’d be nice if this holiday season Tesla expanded full-screen visualizations to all Intel vehicles, regardless of location.
Detect and Visualize Emergency Vehicles
Greentheonly/X
Tesla already detects emergency vehicles while on Autopilot, however, it doesn’t display them in the visualization any differently than a normal car. Tesla was planning on adding emergency vehicle visualizations as far back as 2021, but they didn’t happen for some reason.
Tesla recently announced that they’re going to step up emergency vehicle detection by not only detecting the vehicles visually but also using audio input as a cue. With FSD v13, which is expected to be released to Tesla employees this month, FSD will detect emergency vehicles using the vehicle’s internal microphone. This should let the vehicle know about emergency vehicles sooner. We’re hoping that on-screen visualization comes along with this update.
If it’s anything like Tesla’s 2021 implementation, Tesla will design emergency lights that could be added to various existing 3D models, such as cars, SUVs, and motorcycles.
FSD Visualizations in Other Regions
This one is long overdue, and we hope it finally arrives. Owners outside of North America have been paying for FSD for years and have almost nothing to show for it. Sure, it includes some features like Summon (with USS vehicles) and, more recently, Autopark, but it doesn’t even include Actually Smart Summon yet.
While Tesla says the FSD is coming to Europe and China in Q1/Q2 next year, it’d be a great addition to add FSD visualizations for the time being.
There’s no doubt that Tesla is already detecting objects and vehicles behind the scenes and comparing what the vehicle would do to what the driver does to help improve Autopilot in these markets. For some reason, Tesla has decided to show different visualizations depending on whether you have Autopilot or FSD and whether you live in North America or elsewhere.
Adding FSD visualizations for everyone, regardless of whether they have Basic Autopilot, EAP, or FSD, would be an exciting addition — and it may even increase the subscription rate to FSD.
Expand Basic Autopilot
Tesla’s Basic Autopilot includes Adaptive Cruise Control and Autosteer, but we’d love for Tesla to expand this further to match what other manufacturers are offering.
Right now, Tesla considers Navigate on Autopilot and automatic lane changes part of Enhanced Autopilot. This means that if you’re on Autopilot and want to change lanes, you need to disable AP, change lanes, and re-enable it. Since many regions no longer offer Enhanced Autopilot for purchase, users are forced to put up with this annoyance or pay for FSD, which isn’t offered as a subscription outside of North America.
By creating a clearer distinction between Autopilot (focused on highway driving) and FSD (designed for city driving), Tesla could improve the Autopilot experience for users while encouraging them to upgrade to FSD.
Actually Smart Summon
Actually Smart Summon is still mostly limited to North America, with some small regions such as Taiwan, also receiving it. However, it still requires you to hold the ‘come’ button currently. The next big leap would be to remove this requirement and enable users to summon their vehicles with a single tap. Tesla previously said this was coming in a future improvement to A.S.S.
Ideally, we’d see the reach of Actually Smart Summon expanded to Europe and other regions and improvements of the feature, although we’re much more likely to see the former for the Christmas update.
Cybertruck is also still waiting for Summon, so this could be an additional surprise.
Autoshift for All Cars
While Autoshift isn’t directly tied to Autopilot, it does leverage AI to decide whether to shift into reverse or drive. This feature has now been released on the new Model S, Model X, the new Model 3, and the Cybertruck. However, Musk once said that it would be added to all Tesla vehicles, so we’re hoping that’s still in the works.
There’s certainly no reason why Tesla can’t add it to older vehicles with stalks. For those not familiar with Autoshift, it allows the vehicle to automatically shift into reverse or drive when the driver is ready to start moving. This makes it even easier to get going: You simply get in the car, press the brake pedal, giving the vehicle a chance to shift, and then press the accelerator.
This is our second wishlist of features we’d love to see in Tesla vehicles this holiday season. If you haven’t seen our first wishlist, the Tesla App Edition, be sure to check it out.
While this is a list of the most popular user requests related to Tesla’s navigation and Autopilot features, we’re sure that there are some we missed. Let us know your thoughts and ideas in our forums.
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