Tesla introduced the Model 3 in late 2017. The Model 3 came equipped with a phone dock that was capable of charging your device when you slid it into the dock.
However, adding a wireless phone charger to your Tesla quickly became a popular upgrade. Companies such as Jeda and Nomad offer retrofits to make your vehicle capable of wireless charging your phone.
In 2019 Tesla added their own built-in wireless charger to the Model 3. However, some users prefer to use the phone caddy as a simple phone holder and would like the option to turn it off.
There are various reasons why you may not want to constantly charge your device.
In the same way that charging your car battery to 100% isn't a good idea (unless you have an LFP battery), keeping your phone at 100% isn't ideal either.
It's a good idea to stop charging your device when the additional charge isn’t needed because excess heat and keeping your battery at a high state of charge can have negative effects on your battery life.
Some users prefer not to wirelessly charge their phones due to heat issues while some users' phone cases are incompatible due to their design, material or other reasons.
As per the request of Twitter user @24_7TeslaNews, Tesla will soon add the ability to turn off wireless phone chargers in your vehicle.
Another potential feature for this update could be to automatically turn the wireless charger off once the phone is sufficiently charged.
If the phone is connected to Bluetooth, the vehicle can read the phone’s battery level and charge it accordingly. It would be advantageous if Tesla automatically disabled the wireless charger when the phone is fully charged and automatically enabled it when the battery is low.
All Tesla owners that have wireless phone chargers can at minimum expect a manual on/off feature to come in an upcoming software update.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Teslas, in the future, may have a century of battery life if Tesla’s research group in Canada can turn their recent research paper into reality. Dr. Jeff Dahn and his team at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada have been working exclusively with Tesla since 2015 to develop new Li-ion batteries.
Tesla described the partnership in 2015 as, “Jeff Dahn is helping to develop Li-ion batteries with improved lifetime, increased energy density, and lower cost. This collaboration is a natural fit.” While it remains to be seen if the research team’s dream will be developed into a working production battery, the partnership appears to have paid off.
Tesla recently renewed their contract with Dahn’s team, ensuring a partnership through 2026. In addition, Dahn has added Dr. Chongyin Yang and Dr. Michael Metzger to his team in order to further enhance the research group’s ability to file for battery patents on behalf of Tesla. Dr. Yang is actually Tesla Canada’s Research Chair. He’s worked in energy storage and conversion for over thirteen years, having come from the University of Maryland in the United States. Dr. Metzger, a former Bosch scientist, brings an interesting background in battery design with an emphasis in desalination uses.
The team recently wrote a research paper called “Li[Ni0.5Mn0.3Co0.2]O2 as a Superior Alternative to LiFePO4 for Long-Lived Low Voltage Li-Ion Cells” in the Journal of the Electrochemical Society. The paper focuses on using a nickel-based battery (NMC) to allow for a greater number of charging cycles. The researchers specifically state, “NMC cells, particularly those balanced and charged to 3.8 V, show better coulombic efficiency, less capacity fade and higher energy density compared to LFP cells and are projected to yield lifetimes approaching a century at 25 °C.”
Maintaining a temperature of 25 °C (77 °F) may be unrealistic in real-world conditions. But, Teslas do have the best battery thermal management systems currently available on the market. It has long been known that relatively stable temperatures result in a prolonged battery life expectancy.
Many prospective EV owners wonder about the life expectancy of Tesla batteries, noting that the replacement cost for a car’s battery pack can range from $12,000 - $22,000. There isn’t a consistent answer to the life expectancy question.
Current Tesla battery life can be affected by factors including temperature, discharge activity, Fast Charger use, and driving habits. It is believed that Tesla batteries typically last approximately 1,500 charge cycles. If Tesla’s research team can implement the new battery design in the future, Tesla battery life expectancy would indeed increase (becoming an heirloom for us to pass on to our children’s children.)
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View the release notes for the upcoming version 2022.16.0.3.
When we get a new car we love to add those little touches that make it our own. Tesla owners are no different, except…
Teslas, in the future, may have a century of battery life if Tesla’s research group in Canada can turn their recent…
The newest FSD Beta, version 10.12 uses more detailed car models for its visualizations, but these new vehicle model…
Tesla is continuing to add additional language support. Support for Russian and Hindi is now starting to show up a…
Take a look at features that Elon Musk has said will be coming soon.
Estimated days until version 2022.20 is released.
Subscribe to be notified when new software is released.
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There’s an article in “The Drive” that’s been repeated in other media. Here’s a link if you want to read the …
The Jeda 256GB SSD drive custom-made for Teslas. Get $20 off with promo: NotATeslaApp
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A welcome feature that allows Tesla driver profiles to independently control their streaming accounts has dropped as…
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View all known voice commands for your Tesla.
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TeslaFi is a service that logs your drives and charging sessions so that you can later refer back to them. We highly recommend checking them out if you use your car for business trips and would like to keep track of reimbursements, if you like to see how much you spend on charging or if you just love statistics. View their about us page and see everything they have to offer!
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Although we share official Tesla release notes, we are not affiliated with Tesla Motors. We are Tesla fans and supporters.
When we get a new car we love to add those little touches that make it our own. Tesla owners are no different, except…
Teslas, in the future, may have a century of battery life if Tesla’s research group in Canada can turn their recent…
The newest FSD Beta, version 10.12 uses more detailed car models for its visualizations, but these new vehicle model…
View the release notes for the upcoming version 2022.16.0.3.
Tesla’s AutoPilot is a great feature, far beyond what cruise control can provide. However it currently limits speeds…
Take a look at features that Elon Musk has said will be coming soon.
If you use the quick, three-blink turn signals to change lanes, then you may have come across this slight annoyance. Up…
Tesla AI lead, Andrej Karpathy gave a really great interview on the Robot Brains podcast recently. If you follow Tesla'…
We have all been accustomed to turning cars on and turning them off when we’re done driving. However, with Tesla ther…
The Model S image will zoom away and be replaced with a picture of the development team for the vehicle. To acti…
Estimated days until version 2022.20 is released.
Subscribe to be notified when new software is released.
The Jeda 256GB SSD drive custom-made for Teslas. Get $20 off with promo: NotATeslaApp
View all known voice commands for your Tesla.
Subscribe to be notified when new software is released.