Tesla vehicles receive constant updates to improve functionality, add features, improve reliability and even add games. Teslas will also send you notifications on your phone when your car alarm goes off, if you left your car unlocked, or if the charge level is critically low.
What is Premium Connectivity?
All Teslas come standard with WiFi and cellular modems. When connecting to WiFi either through your home's network or through a hotspot, most features in your Tesla are free to use. However when utilizing your car's cellular connection some features are limited to Tesla's premium connectivity package.
Cost of Premium Connectivity?
Tesla's Premium Connectivity package currently costs $10/month per car in the US. Cars sold before June 30, 2018 include free premium connectivity.
As of February 2022, Tesla has also added a yearly plan for Premium Connectivity in the US. The price of the annual plan is $99/year. You can subscribe to the monthly or the yearly plan by using the Tesla app. In the Tesla app go to the Upgrades section and then tap Manage. If you currently subscribe to the monthly plan, you can also switch to yearly in this same section.
What is included for free, without Premium Connectivity?
The most important data features are included for free in your Tesla, such as phone notifications, software updates, updated navigation maps and even optimal navigation routing that takes live traffic into account.
What does Premium Connectivity include?
The features that require premium connectivity have mostly to do with entertainment while parked or driving. Keep in mind that all entertainment features are available to you if you're connected to WiFi or a hotspot.
Entertainment features that require premium connectivity include music streaming, such as Slacker and Spotify. It also includes video streaming services while parked such as Netflix, Disney+, YouTube and a few others. Keep in mind that some of those services still require a subscription. For example, YouTube is available for free, but Netflix requires a paid subscription. Tesla's premium connectivity simply lets you use the car's data connection to stream those services.
Additional services included in Premium Connectivity are:
Internet browser - Browse the web to look up restaurants, destinations or other information. It can be used by the passenger while driving.
Caraoke - Tesla's version of Karaoke which features hundreds of songs and displays the lyrics on the screen.
Satellite view maps - This displays satellite imagery in your navigation instead of just the terrain view with streets.
Live traffic visualizations - Traffic visualizations will show you which roads are congested and where traffic jams are located by coloring in the roads in various colors. The traffic view can be turned on or off by tapping the Live Traffic icon on the right side of the maps.
Traffic Along Route - With Premium Connectivity, your route will be colored in various colors to highlight the areas with traffic.
Traffic Lights and Speed Camera Icons - Traffic lights, stop signs, speed camera locations and other icons are displayed on the map.
Traffic in Trip Progress Bar - The vehicle's trip progress bar will show you an overview of the traffic along your entire trip.
Sentry Mode Videos in the App - If your video has Sentry Mode armed and there is an event, the Tesla app will notify you with a notification of the event and a one-minute video clip. The video clips can also be viewed in the app.
Sentry Mode Live Access - You can view the live feed of most cameras on the vehicle within the app. Simply make sure Sentry Mode is activated and go to Security and tap on live view.
Average Speed Zones - If your region uses average speed zones, your Tesla will now display when the speed zone started, how much longer until it ends and your average speed.
Zoom - You can connect to meetings with the Zoom app (AMD Ryzen processor vehiciles only)
Steam - You can download and play some Steam games on Model S and Model X vehicles that have access to Steam.
*These features are only available in some vehicles. Steam requires a 2021+ Model S or Model X with 16GB of ram or more, but it's not available on every model. Zoom is only available on vehicles with the AMD Ryzen processor.
Can I share my phone's data (hotspot) with my Tesla?
Yes, with software update 2021.24 and later, you can now choose to share your phone's data connection with your Tesla. It'll get you access to most of the features included with premium connectivity such as music streaming, internet browsing and you'll be able to use all of them while driving.
However there are two features that aren't available without Tesla's premium connectivity, even if you're using your phone as a hotspot. They include the live traffic visualization and the satellite imagery in maps.
Those two features aren't included when on WiFi or using a hotspot because they cost Tesla more than just the data to get them to you. Google provides Tesla both of those features for a fee. Tesla is simply including those fees they pay Google in their premium connectivity package price. So Tesla decides to not provide these features unless you're paying for the premium package.
Last night on X, Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla will be expanding the service area for its Robotaxi Network pilot in Austin, Texas, this coming weekend. This is the first official confirmation we’ve had of a date for expansion, following news that Tesla is hiring more Vehicle Operators and plans to expand the Robotaxi supervisor ratio in the coming months.
This is a sign of Tesla’s confidence in the Robotaxi pilot program and its current FSD builds.
Expanding to a larger service area in Austin this weekend
The announcement confirms the sights we’ve been seeing of Tesla’s engineering validation vehicles focusing on areas outside the initial geofence. This public test shows that Tesla was likely finalizing FSD builds and gathering the necessary safety data to push the boundaries for the service, and this upcoming weekend’s expansion will be the first direct result of that work.
Given the increase in service zone size, this expansion will also likely include the addition of more vehicles to the initial Robotaxi fleet of approximately 20 vehicles. We expect the new number to be anywhere from 30-50 vehicles serving both the original and new areas, combined, based on Tesla’s previously expected rollout schedule.
What to Expect
While the exact new boundaries haven’t been released, it is almost certain that the expansion will include the South Congress Bridge and the downtown core areas of Austin. Expanding into a dense urban zone will include more complex intersections, heavy pedestrian traffic, and a unique road layout. That is a major vote of confidence for Robotaxi FSD’s capabilities.
The expansion will also help Tesla to close the service area gap with Waymo, its primary autonomous competitor in the city. This quick expansion is a sign of just how scalable Tesla’s vision-only approach is, versus Waymo’s arduous and drawn-out mapping processes.
We also expect that with this first service zone expansion, Tesla will continue to invite more people to its Robotaxi Network in the coming weeks. Tesla has already sent out various rounds of events, as they’ll need users to continue using the system. If you’re waiting for an invite, it may be time to start getting excited about the next rollout.
We’ve been hearing about Grok, xAI’s AI assistant, coming to Teslas for almost two years now, but this is finally coming to fruition soon. XAI unveiled Grok 4 last night, but the entire stream didn’t mention Teslas. However, Musk later posted on X that Grok will arrive in Tesla vehicles “by next week.”
Between leaks and the Grok mobile app, there’s a lot we already know about Grok, but there are a few missing pieces that will be cleared when it finally arrives.
Next Week, or Next Next Week?
Musk said that Grok would arrive by next week, meaning it could arrive before then. However, based on how Musk typically states Tesla timelines, there are a few things to consider that give us a better idea of what to expect.
First, whenever Musk posts a Tesla timeline on X, he typically means when it’ll be released to employees and not a public release. Expect this to be the same thing.
Tesla releases software updates to employees first for a final round of testing before starting a gradual release to the public. Sometimes issues are found, especially with FSD updates, and the update needs some fixes before being released publicly. So expect employees to get it by next week, and not necessarily normal Tesla owners.
The second part to this is that Tesla always rolls out their updates gradually, so when it does finally arrive, it’ll only be available on a small percentage of vehicles. Tesla will gradually monitor issues and logs, continuing the rollout as long as no major issues are found.
Which Software Update?
The entire Grok UI was already included in software update 2025.20, but it’s not exposed to users. Typically, a new feature like Grok requires a vehicle update to be added; however, this version may be different, as it’s locked behind a server-side configuration.
Tesla likely has the ability to enable it for all supported vehicles with a simple switch. However, we feel more confident in it being rolled out in Tesla’s next major update, which is likely to be 2025.24 or 2025.26. Rolling it out in a new update aligns with how Tesla has historically introduced features.
If they turned it on for everyone at the same time, they could be exposing everyone to potential new issues, rather than only a smaller segment of users. While Grok is now well-tested through X and the Grok app, there are several elements that are new in Teslas, likely including the ability to control various vehicle functions, such as opening the glove box or other capabilities that voice commands are currently capable of. The Grok interface in the vehicle is also entirely new and may have some bugs associated with it that will need to be addressed, especially if they impact other features.
What we can likely expect is that Tesla will make some tweaks or bug fixes to Grok with the next major update that weren’t included in update 2025.20 and they’ll begin rolling it out to employees and then customers.
Supported Vehicles
Speaking of supported vehicles, thanks to the behind-the-scenes look at Grok, we have a good idea of the vehicles that will be supported. Tesla uses the same code for most of its vehicles, but then it’s compiled for each type of hardware. However, only the needed code is compiled for each vehicle, meaning that some pieces are left out entirely. Unfortunately, Grok code is not included in Intel software builds, meaning that only AMD Ryzen-based vehicles will receive Grok, at least initially.
We’ve seen Tesla go back and add support for Intel vehicles after it initially released a feature for AMD vehicles. We saw this with the weather radar overlay and several other features in the past. However, Tesla has been developing code with web technologies lately. While this makes development easier, it just doesn’t perform as well on the slower Intel hardware, causing it to be left out. We saw this with the new Dashcam Viewer, which is entirely coded in HTML, CSS, and JS. The new viewer was available on HW3 and HW4 vehicles, but only those that included the Ryzen infotainment processor.
Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest.
There’s a lot we’re expecting in Grok for Teslas. Some people will absolutely love it because it’ll completely transform their drives from a singular experience to feeling like they have a knowledgeable person sitting right next to them. Given the recent controversies surrounding Grok, some people will strongly oppose it. Hopefully, Tesla makes it easy for those users to turn off Grok.
The voice command system, which is activated through the steering wheel, is expected to be replaced with Grok. This will mean that you’ll be able to talk to your vehicle much more naturally, rather than having to remember specific syntax and commands, which should be a major improvement.
We’re personally looking forward to just being able to ask questions that pop into our heads while driving, such as What’s the date of Tesla’s next event, or How many miles away is Mars? Knowledge will be available at the touch of a finger and more accessible than ever.
Grok is also expected to support continuous conversations, meaning that you’ll be able to hold a conversation with it and go back and forth about a certain topic. While there are hints of a wake word in the code, for now, it seems like you’ll press the steering wheel button once to activate it, and then again to turn it off.
For those excited about AI and Grok, this will be one of the biggest additions to Tesla’s software in years, possibly only rivaled by the Dashcam / Sentry Mode feature and FSD Beta.
It shouldn’t be long now before we all have a chance to try it out for ourselves.
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