How To View Tesla Odometer in the Car or App

July 17, 2023

By Lennon Cihak

You can easily view your Tesla's trip meters and odometer in the vehicle

Not a Tesla App

Do you need to view how many miles are on your Tesla? Are you looking to see how far you’ve driven on a trip or figure out your vehicle's efficiency?

In this post, we’ll discuss how you can access Tesla’s odometers, both, trips odometers and the overall odometer, as well as accessing quick view trip cards on the Model 3 and Model Y.

View Odometer

The primary odometer in Teslas is located under the software tab in the vehicle’s controls. To access it, tap the car button at the bottom-left side of the screen (called “Controls”) and then touch the “Software” tab. Underneath the car's image, you'll see the vehicle model, along with the odometer and the vehicle's VIN.

Trip Odometer / Tripmeter

In addition to the main odometer, Teslas have two trip odometers for more nuanced needs. For example, using the trip odometer during a road trip will allow you to monitor the energy used, distance driven, and average watts per mile or kilometer during your trip.

To use or view the Tesla trip odometers, go to Controls > Trips. Once here, you’ll see “Trip A” and “Trip B.” These can be renamed by tapping on the trip odometer name or reset by using the buttons further down the screen. Like other vehicles, trip odometers will continue to count until they're reset.

Tips

Many vehicle owners like to keep one of the trip odometers counting since they first bought the vehicle, letting them view the energy used and average efficiency from the very beginning. Unfortunately, the vehicle's main odometer only keeps track of miles or kilometers traveled and not efficiency.

You can also use the trip meters to track how many miles you've traveled with your existing tires, or use one of them to track when your tires were last rotated. Unfortunately, you are limited to two trip meters in your Tesla, in addition to the other default meters.

Current Trip Odometer

Tesla also includes two other odometers that make it convenient to track your battery usage and time driven. The 'Current Trip' odometer is reset after each drive. If the vehicle is left in park for more than a few minutes, the current trip odometer will be reset back to 0. The 'Current Trip' odometer is the only odometer in the vehicle that tracks slightly different metrics. Like the other vehicle odometers, distance traveled and average energy usage is displayed, but instead of total energy used, the vehicle will display the amount of time you've been driving in minutes. Similar to Trip A and Trip B, the current trip odometer can also be reset whenever you'd like by tapping the 'Reset Current Trip' button at the bottom of the screen.

Since Last Charge Odometer

The vehicle also tracks the distance traveled and energy used since the vehicle was last charged. This metric could be useful toward the end of a charge cycle to know how many miles or kilometers your vehicle achieves on your typical charge or to get an idea of the average energy used by the vehicle during the season. The only way to reset your 'Since Last Charge' odometer is by charging your vehicle.

Using Tesla's Mobile App

If you have access to the vehicle on Tesla's mobile app, the easiest way to view your primary odometer is to open the app and scroll to the bottom. Your odometer will be displayed at the very bottom of the app, directly underneath the vehicle model. Along with the odometer, you’ll also be able to view the vehicle’s configuration, VIN, software version and more. Unfortunately, the odometer is the only one that is displayed in the app, and the other trip meters aren't available.

View Odometer While Driving

If you’re in a Model 3 or Model Y, Tesla recently brought back trip cards. These small informational cards give you a quick view of your trip meters or vehicle tire pressure.

To access Tesla’s trip cards, simply swipe left on the mini music player controls. You'll be able to choose between the music player, trip cards and tire pressure cards. If you don't see the music player on the left, you'll need to tap on the gray music icon in your vehicle's bottom menu.

Picking the Odometers

Your vehicle can display up to four trip meters of your choice on the Trips card. To choose which to display navigate to Controls > Trips and tap 'Show in Trips Card' for each trip meter you'd like to display. These trip cards are not available in the Model S and Model X.

Tesla Files Patents for Wireless Charging the Robotaxi

September 9, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Tesla has filed four patents for wireless charging. Previously, Tesla acquired the experience and skills of Wiferion’s engineering team in an acquisition in June 2023. Tesla quickly sold off the company but kept the company’s engineers. This was an acqui-hire, where large companies rapidly onboard top talent by purchasing a company for human capital, rather than products, services, or intellectual products.

Following the Wiferion acquisition, Tesla showed off a wireless charging mat several times and even confirmed they are working on wireless inductive home charging. We expected this to arrive with the Cybertruck, but now we hope to see more details at the upcoming Robotaxi reveal event in October, at the Warner Bro.’s studio in Hollywood.

Wireless Charging Patents

First Patent

The first of the four patents looks at temperature sensors and applications for wireless charging. Tesla intends to track the temperatures across both the wireless charging pad, as well as the inductive charging coils in the vehicle. The third patent details how they’re planning to use this in an innovative way.

WIPO

Second Patent

The second patent is a shorting switch, which is designed to prevent or reduce leakage of energy to ground sources near the wireless charging mat. This shorting switch is used to create a short with the receiving side of the inductive charging, essentially making energy transfer faster and more efficient – while also reducing the amount of energy that is leaked out elsewhere. We’ll leave this one for the electrical engineers to explain in our forums.

Third Patent

The third patent is actually the wireless charging circuit itself, and how to manufacture it. This one is straightforward and explains how Tesla intends to design and build the prototype inductive wireless charging mats. Beyond the basic design, this document also details how Tesla intends to lay out the inductive charging coils and how it expects the entire assembly to function – which includes a small cable that runs to a wall-mounted energy source.

Fourth Patent

The final patent is for intelligently estimating and adapting to variations in wireless charging layouts and systems. This one is probably the most interesting of the four patents, as it involves adjusting the coils in the mat to dynamically account for the positioning of the vehicle, as well as responding to the information from the first patent – the temperature sensors.

Essentially, by varying the coil induction across the mat, Tesla intends to dynamically aim the wireless charger at different parts of the inductive coils in the vehicle, thereby reducing heat. This patent will also help Tesla to determine the adequate charge speed and other key information they may need to relay to the vehicle, or back to fleet management software.

Cybertruck Inductive Charging

While the Cybertruck never actually arrived with inductive charging, it was noted in the Service Manual to have 2 Inductive Charging Headers, so it is ready to be upgraded to have Inductive Charging support. We expect that Tesla will release this as a purchasable upgrade for the Cybertruck sometime in the future – likely as a package with the Inductive Charging Mat.

Robotaxi Inductive Charging

The Robotaxi will likely be the first of Tesla’s vehicles to feature inductive charging – which. makes sense given its autonomous nature. Plugging in a NACS charger will likely be fairly difficult to automate, and the 5-10% efficiency loss of wireless charging isn’t a huge deal. It’s possible Tesla chose this route due to cost, as having an automated NACS cable like the “snake” prototype we saw years ago could be costly.

Having a simple parking stall with an inductive mat on it, alongside all the tech and supplies needed to automatically clean and sanitize the Robotaxi makes far more sense. This means that a Robotaxi will be able to roll in, charge and clean itself, and then roll out to go pick up more customers. Tesla is planning a super-efficient system here that requires minimal intervention from real humans.

Essentially, by effectively managing the Robotaxi fleet, Tesla can offset the increased time that wireless charging would take, and also reduce the amount of waste energy by charging when energy is cheapest. While this could prevent Tesla from taking advantage of the sheer battery mass of a Robotaxi fleet – by selling power when it’s expensive and travel demand is low – this doesn’t make it impossible.

Smartphone manufacturers have demonstrated reverse wireless charging with the inductive charging coils already present in modern smartphones. We could see Tesla low-power bi-directional charging in the future too.

We’re looking forward to seeing Tesla unveil this at the upcoming Robotaxi event. It’ll be something special, for sure.

Tesla Adds Ability to Swipe Left and Right in Browser

September 9, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

Tesla has made a spate of improvements to its vehicle software recently, starting with the big Spring Update, and then the Summer Update more recently. While we see most of the updates mentioned in the release notes, Tesla often also adds smaller quality-of-life improvements along the way.

Browser Controls

When using the Tesla Browser in the vehicle, you can now swipe left and right to go back or forward a page in your browser history. When you start swiping on the screen, Tesla’s Chromium-based browser will now display an arrow that slides out from the left or right. The circular icon is initially white, meaning that the action won’t be executed, but if you continue moving to the left/right, the icon will eventually turn blue. The blue icon means that the action will be executed once you let go of the screen.

This is a simple quality-of-life improvement that makes using the built-in browser easier.

We’re happy to see updates like these come to the browser, whose last major feature was the full-screen button that was added in update 2024.14.

Future Browser Improvements

While we’re on the topic, let’s look at some future Tesla web browser improvements we’d love to see.

Access to the Mic

Full access to the vehicle microphone isn’t allowed through the web browser right now. That means if you want to get into a Discord, Slack, or Teams call, you’ll only be able to listen – not speak. All of these apps fully function in the Tesla browser for sending messages, but are fairly limited for meetings.

Better Bookmarks

Tesla’s current bookmark system is simple and barebones. You can bookmark a page and give it a name. Once you visit a bookmarked page enough, it’ll show up as an icon in the center of the browser when you go to the homepage.

However, it's difficult to keep a larger set of bookmarks since there aren’t any organizational tools provided. A better bookmark system or the ability to sync bookmarks would be a welcomed feature.

Custom Homepage

Tesla’s current homepage in its browser is simply just a Tesla logo in black or white, depending on whether your car is in dark mode or not. A custom homepage that provides widgets with basic local news, stock information or other details would be fantastic. We’d ask for weather too, but the recent Summer update shows weather at the top of your screen.

If you’ve got more ideas for the fairly barebones Tesla web browser, let us know.