When we get a new car we love to add those little touches that make it our own. Tesla owners are no different, except you’ll probably find a higher percentage of serious ride-pimpers amongst Tesla owners than other car brands.
And there are so many options. Want to organize the vast central console space more efficiently? Need to protect the boot carpets from your wet skis? Even upgraded hard drives for Sentry Mode and in-car refrigerators are available.
But all these perks and polishes are best appreciated by you, inside the car. What about projecting your personality to those around you? A custom wrap or a paint job is nice, but there’s another way. License plates.
What better way to let your sense of humor show, give a gentle ribbing to the gas guzzlers following you, or make a serious point about why you went green. Let’s take a look at some of the options you might want to consider for a custom plate.
Many countries allow you to purchase a license plate with your own choice of letters and numbers. Sure, you could go for your name or something that means something to you alone.
But why not lean into the Tesla vibe with your plate, and make a statement! Here are five genuine plates already out there.
LOL OIL
While quite a nice sentiment at the best of times, the recent skyrocketing of oil and gas prices has probably made this Tesla owner more ROFL OIL than a mere LOL.
3VOLVED
@Lucybri83
This Model 3 owner shared her new plate on Twitter, and admitted that she reserved this plate 2.5 years before getting hold of the car itself. That’s dedication to the cause: in this case throwing out a cleverly ambiguous statement that could be taken as an observation on Teslas, EVs, or EV owners’ level of evolution. Nice twist on replacing the E with a 3, a la Model 3.
THX 3LON
@sampagnepapi_
Continuing the ‘Tesla E’ theme of throwing in the number 3 instead, this owner knows who is responsible for this slice of happiness. I wonder if it’s appreciation for the vision and achievements of Elon Musk and his team, or whether the car was a personal gift from Elon?! Probably not the latter.
BUY TSLA
@sampagnepapi_
You don’t need to be a certified financial advisor to offer this advice. This Model X owner is clearly playing the long game, in more ways than one. Looking at the healthy level of dirt on the bodywork, this license plate is a commitment to the stock market strategy of going long on Tesla, and the owner doesn’t look like they’ll be changing their advice any time soon.
NOPLANETB
@smarlo35
Straight to the point, if you’d rather not beat around the bush with the environmental message through gentle humor, lest the message be lost, you could take a leaf out of this Australian owner’s book.
Unfortunately, some folk can’t get a vanity plate and are forced to go with a regular random assigned plate. Where I am in Switzerland, you can choose your number from a catalog, and it looks like that’s the case for @thevoltmonkey in Germany too:
Quite an inventive way of proclaiming this Tesla as not just any old Tesla, but ‘Dah Tesla’.
So maybe you can see if one of these options are available in your area, or perhaps you can think along some other pun lines. Model Y owners can have some fun with Y OH Y, Y BE MAD, or YNOT. Or any Tesla owner could consider an electricity pun, for example, OHM RUN, PLUG IN or SAY WATT.
There’ll be some limits, depending on where you are. There’s usually a minimum and maximum number of characters allowed. Often, nothing that can appear obscene or offensive will be allowed, and there are stories of people in Canada and some US states retrospectively being ordered to give up their plates due to bad language or perceived discrimination against an ethnic minority group. In the UK, you can’t have a Q at the start of your number (they are reserved for kit cars) or display a number that could appear to show the car as younger than it really is, as standard plates include the year of registration - so including ‘22’ on a car manufactured in 2020, for example.
Of course, whether or not you’ve got the perfect plate, there’s nothing stopping you from making a little nod to your likes and wants through the plate holder…
Now, when the full self-driving revolution is complete, will there still be a need for license plates anyway? If there are no more driving infractions, and the Robotaxi fleet means the end of parking fines, do the authorities need the plates anymore? Or will every car be identifiable through a unique identifier broadcast by the computer?
In the meantime, make the most of those customized plates.
In an updated filing to the US Department of Energy, the Cybertruck is now eligible for the $7,500 USD EV tax rebate. However, what’s most interesting is that this same filing also confirmed the upcoming production of the Single Motor Rear Wheel Drive - for model year 2025.
Rear Wheel Drive
The Rear Wheel Drive Cybertruck was initially announced at the original Cybertruck reveal, but when the Foundation Series was announced, only the Tri-motor Cyberbeast and Dual Motor AWD models were made available. Tesla initially indicated that the RWD model would arrive sometime in 2025, but that text was later removed from the website.
In the second half of 2024, Tesla launched the non-Foundation series, but it once again arrived without mention of the RWD variant. Many have expressed a great amount of interest in the RWD variant, especially given the higher-than-expected pricing of the Cybertruck at launch.
Cybertruck EV Rebate
In addition to the reveal of the 2025 RWD variant, the Cybertruck is now also eligible for the US Federal EV Tax Rebate. For buyers of the vehicle, that means the AWD Cybertruck is now eligible for the full rebate if you don’t add any additional options since it needs to stay under the $80,000 cap.
FSD can still be added for $8,000 since it’s not considered a vehicle add-on and won’t count toward the total price of the truck. The incoming US Administration has already said it intends to cancel the US Federal EV Tax Rebate sometime in late January, so if you’ve been on the fence, this may be a good opportunity to buy the truck.
Here’s an updated price table for the Cybertruck, which includes pricing with and without the rebate for all three variants.
Variant
Price
After Rebate
RWD*
$60,990
$53,490
AWD
$79,990
$72,490
Cyberbeast
$99,990
Not Eligible
*RWD price has not been confirmed at this point.
If you use a referral code alongside the tax rebate, the AWD starts at $71,490. Some lease incentives can also drive that price down slightly if you choose a lease and then do a lease buyout at the end.
A couple of weeks ago, Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI, announced that Tesla would finally roll out an FSD update for vehicles with Hardware 3. Earlier this week, on December 30th, Tesla did just that and started a public rollout of FSD V12.6.
Since the initial rollout, the update has gone out in several other waves, but they’ve been extremely small. Thanks to several users, we know have our first look at FSD V12.6 and how it compares to the previous FSD version and to the latest version for Hardware 4 vehicles — FSD V13.2.2.1.
How FSD V12.6 Compares to 12.5.4.2
Vehicles receiving the FSD V12.6 update are coming from Tesla’s Holiday update, version 2024.44.25.2, which includes FSD V12.5.4.2.
While FSD V12.5 was a big step up from FSD V12.3.6 for most users, it did include its share of issues. The big two have been lane selection and behavior at traffic lights.
While the release notes for FSD V12.6 highlight features such as End-to-End on Highway, Improved City Streets Behavior, and Smoother and More Accurate Tracking, FSD V12.6 is noticeably smoother and more capable. It now handles turns and scenarios that it struggled with or simply couldn’t perform on FSD V12.5.
How it Compares to FSD V13
One of the key features of FSD V12.6 is a redesigned controller for smoother and more accurate tracking. This feature actually comes from FSD V13, so users should think of FSD 12.6 as a hybrid between FSD V12 and FSD V13. In fact, it seems like Tesla considered calling this version V13, but more on this later.
The controller referenced in the release notes is responsible for tracking objects around the vehicle. The vehicle can only drive as well as it can see, so the improved tracking accuracy directly improves FSD decision-making, leading to smoother driving. This is very evident in FSD V12.6, which now delivers a level of smoothness comparable to what users are experiencing in FSD V13.
Thanks to Rhys Samson, who has both FSD V12.6 and FSD 13.2, they directly compare the two versions and say that FSD V12.6 now operates as smoothly and confidently as his Cybertruck on FSD V13.2.
In their eyes, FSD 12.6 has done a lot to reduce, if not eliminate, the anxiety of not having AI4/HW4 in their Model S. This may change as AI4 vehicles continue to receive improvements while HW3 vehicles are expected to lag in FSD updates, but FSD V12.6 is a big step forward and could have arguably been called FSD V13.
Which Vehicles are Receiving V12.6
Right now, FSD V12.6 is only rolling out to Model S and Model X vehicles with Hardware 3. So far this has only been “refreshed” models, so it doesn’t include Model S/X cars prior to 2021. When the update was released on December 30th, Ashok Elluswamy stated that the update would be available for “other platforms,” presumably the Model 3 and Model Y, within a week. This puts us at around January 6th for other models. Ashok’s timelines have been extremely accurate and we believe Tesla will deliver this update sometime next week.
The Model 3 and Model Y are expected to be supported, but it’s not clear whether it’ll also include legacy Model S/X vehicles as well.
We expect this release to eventually become available for everyone soon, the only question would be whether it’d become available for legacy S/X vehicles with MCU 1. While the upgrade to MCU 2 isn’t cheap, any owners with an MCU 1 vehicle and HW3 would receive a much more capable vehicle by upgrading to the newer infotainment unit.
What About FSD V13 for HW3?
Rhys Samson
While we expected Tesla to release an FSD update for HW3 vehicles with the new end-to-end highway stack, FSD V13 was more of a wildcard. Would Tesla wait to upgrade HW3 vehicles with newer hardware or spend the time creating a smaller V13 model for HW3 vehicles?
Due to a small bug, it looks like we may have some insight into this question. Users who have installed FSD V12.6 will notice that while the release notes and the vehicle will call update 2024.45.25.10 FSD V12.6, the version shown in the app is actually quite different.
At the bottom of the main screen in the Tesla app, Tesla will show several bits of information, including your vehicle’s software version and the FSD version. While the vehicle software is correctly labeled as 2024.45.25.10, the FSD version actually mentions an unreleased FSD version — v13.2.3.
While this could simply be a bug or a typo, it could also be an indication that Tesla was considering calling this release FSD V13.2.3 and that it may have been a last-minute decision. While this may not mean much, it could be a sign that is already thinking about or developing FSD V13 for HW3 vehicles.
Keep in mind that many features for FSD V13 take advantage of the more powerful hardware, such as larger AI models and improved video feeds. However, other features could potentially be carried over to HW3.
Roll Out
While FSD V12.6 is still only available for the Model S and Model X, it continues to go out in increasingly larger waves. The last wave occurred overnight, and there’s a possibility of us seeing more today. Given the continued waves, it looks like everything is on track for a release to other models this weekend or early next week.
You can keep an eye out on our statistics page to track additional roll outs, and we’ll be sure to cover the release when it becomes available to more vehicles.
