Tesla recently published an article on X detailing some of the improvements they’ve made to the Supercharging ecosystem to make it better for everyone. And boy, have they made a lot of improvements just this year - and with the recent announcement of the V4 Supercharger Cabinets capable of 500kW, it's going to get even better next year.
Since Tesla began opening its Supercharger sites to approved third parties, one key point of contention has been the charge port location. Every Tesla has its charge port on the rear left side of the vehicle, behind the driver. Superchargers before V4 rely on this location, and thus, non-Tesla vehicles with a port in a different location sometimes have to take up two stalls to charge.
Supercharger Improvements
Tesla has been making many improvements recently, even looking beyond the more powerful V4 cabinets coming in early 2025. Let’s take a look at all the work they’ve done and what’s coming up as well.
Cars Plugged In & Faster Data
One of the key updates has been to improve the overall accuracy of stall availability - the backend system refreshes fairly quickly, providing an accurate stall count - which helps to improve navigation and trip planner improvements too. Tesla announced that it’s now able to detect what type of EV is plugged in so that it can better assess charging estimates and determine if a vehicle may be taking up two stalls and automatically takes this into account when routing vehicles.
Max de Zegher, Director of Supercharging North America, mentioned on X that the stall availability now refreshes every 15 seconds, and with mapped Supercharger site layouts, Tesla can see which stalls are available.
The updated stall availability algorithm is a big improvement, with nearby refresh rates now every ~15 seconds. We know car types plugging in and mapped out Supercharger site layouts, to know which stall is not available at short cable sites. Your Tesla's touchscreen now shows… https://t.co/5PF7wruNhQ
As part of the V4 Supercharger stall upgrade, Tesla has been deploying stalls with longer cables and stalls with built-in adapters for CCS vehicles. These new longer cables mean that Tesla’s Supercharger sites can serve more vehicle charge port layouts without having to block a stall. That increases site availability, and Tesla expects to have more V4 charging stalls in the next 18 months than it has V2 and V3 stalls today. Some of these will be due to new locations, but Tesla is also updating current Supercharger locations.
Modifying Current Superchargers
Tesla has also been working to modify its site planning and layouts—both sites that are already built and sites still in planning. Over 1,500 sites have been altered to better serve drivers by widening the parking spaces, ensuring that drivers never have to use more than two ports to charge.
Pull-Through Trailer Chargers
Another big one is the deployment of pull-through Supercharger Trailer spots. These spots mean you don’t need to unhitch your trailer from your vehicle before supercharging, which is excellent for vehicles like the Cybertruck when you’re towing a trailer and need to charge up before continuing on your trip. Tesla update 2024.44 also adds the ability to see which Superchargers have trailer-friendly charging stalls.
The Pull-Through Priority Signs
Not a Tesla App
Standardized Port Location
The last - but one of the most important - things that Tesla is doing is encouraging manufacturers to move their charge ports to either the rear left or front right of vehicles, thereby helping to improve compatibility with Supercharger sites. Manufacturers have already taken steps to standardize in Europe, but these changes really haven’t rolled out globally yet. Rivian recently announced that the charge port for their upcoming R2 and R3 vehicles will be in the rear driver’s side, matching Tesla’s port location.
We hope to see more improvements in this space, especially as NACS becomes the de facto standard in North America.
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.
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.
Not a Tesla App
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
Not a Tesla App
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
Not a Tesla App
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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