Firmware
An in-depth look at ‘Valet Mode’ for the Tesla Model S
Having the ability to disable driving features through a valet mode on the Model S has been a top wish list item for owners since the car’s debut.
With the release of Firmware 6.2, Tesla finally provided the ‘Valet Mode’ capability which discreetly limits driving performance but also hides personal information such as your home and work addresses. I finally received the over-the-air update and wanted to take this time to do detailed review of the feature.
The Need for Valet Mode
Valet Mode sounds like something you’d only need when valet parking your car, but the concept is actually larger than that. While I have no plans on letting a valet park my car, I think the functionality will come in useful for my own needs.
The changes for Valet Mode falls into two major categories:
- Limits access to personal information
- Limits performance
We’ll explore how each of these features were introduced in this latest update.
Valet Mode is accessible from the Driver Profiles drop down through the main display.
The first time you enable Valet Mode you’ll be asked for a 4 digit PIN which will be the same PIN used for disabling the feature. It’s important to note that once the PIN is set, you will no longer be prompted for it again.
If you forget or want to change the PIN Tesla allows you to reset the PIN using your Teslamotors.com (“My Tesla”) login information.
Valet Mode can only be enabled and disabled while the car is parked. Once enabled you’ll see the user profile set to “Valet” towards the top of the 17″ display. Other indicators such as limited power, limited speed and disabled Navigation functionality (ie. hidden search results) let’s a driver know that they’re driving in a feature limited mode.
Increased Privacy
Tesla already limits access to your calendar data and phone contacts when you’re not in the car since it requires close proximity to your bluetooth device.
Because of that Valet Mode will not hide your information. If you happen to leave your phone in the car and enable Valet Mode, anyone using the car will still be able to see your phone contacts and personal calendar information.
TIP: Don’t leave your phone in the car after enabling Valet Mode.
Tesla disables the following functions when Valet Mode is enabled:
- The ability to disable mobile app access.
- Homelink access is disabled.
- Bluetooth and Wifi settings are disabled.
- The “Places” function is disabled and will hide your favorites, home and work addresses.
What isn’t hidden, but probably should be, are the following:
- Charge locations (click on lightning bolt) — They can find your home address and places you’ve charged at which may or may not include a family member or other sensitive information that you wouldn’t necessarily want to share.
- Web favorites — all your saved websites are still accessible to the valet. If you have logged into sites such as webmail then they can potentially read your mail. This is one of the more glaring omissions in my opinion.
Tesla didn’t hide all personal data but may want to consider it in a future update of Valet Mode.
Limited Performance
In addition to limiting access in Valet Mode, Tesla also limits the performance of the Model S in two ways:
- Maximum speed is limited to 70 MPH (113 kmh)
- Maximum performance is limited to 80kW.
The limited speed and power can be seen on the driver’s display with the higher limits greyed out.
Driving in Valet Mode is no fun at all especially if you’ve gotten used to the amazing performance of the Model S. Not only will you be capped at 70 mph, you really feel the difference in driving due to the limited power.
Summary
The intent of Valet Mode is to provide additional security by locking down most of your personal data but also act as reassurance that other drivers won’t take advantage of the car’s performance by going on a spirited joy ride. Valet Mode, 1.0 we’ll call it, in many ways meets its goals. Valet Mode will certainly take the fun out of driving a Tesla Model S but then again this will hopefully lead to more responsible driving.
My daughter is still working on her driver’s license and needs more experience behind the wheel. I think it’s good for family members to be able to comfortably drive every car in the household especially in the event of an emergency. Some day I’ll let her drive the Tesla, but it will be in Valet Mode in order to curb performance so that it’s far less frightening to drive as a newbie. I don’t have insane mode but a regular Model S 85 is still scary fast, especially for new drivers.
Despite the few gaps I noticed in Valet Mode, I expect future updates to further refine security and driving performance, but as a whole I think this is a great feature that provides many of the needs expressed by Model S owners.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Tesla announced its Spring 2026 software update, and it’s the most feature-dense seasonal release the company has put out. The update covers twelve named changes spanning FSD, voice AI, safety lighting, dashcam storage, and pet display customization, among other things.
The centerpiece for owners with AI4 hardware is a redesigned Self-Driving app. The new interface lets owners subscribe to Full Self-Driving with a single tap and view ongoing FSD usage stats directly in the vehicle.
Grok gets its biggest in-car upgrade yet. The update adds a “Hey Grok” hands-free wake word along with location-based reminders, so a driver can now say “remind me to pick up groceries when I get home” without touching the screen. Grok first arrived in vehicles in July 2025, but each update has pushed it closer to genuine daily utility. Musk framed the broader vision clearly at Davos in January, saying Tesla is “really moving into a future that is based on autonomy.”
On safety, the update introduces enhanced blind spot warning lights that integrate directly with the cabin’s ambient lighting, building on the blind spot door warning that arrived in update 2026.8.
Dog Mode has been renamed Pet Mode and now lets owners choose a dog, cat, or hedgehog icon and add their pet’s name to the display.
Dashcam retention now extends up to 24 hours, up from the previous one-hour rolling loop, with a permanent save option for any clip. Weather maps now show rain and snow with better color differentiation and include the past hour of precipitation data along the route.
Tesla has now established a clear rhythm of two major OTA pushes per year. As with last year’s Spring update, that cycle started taking shape in 2025 with adaptive headlights and trunk customization. The 2025 Holiday Update then added Grok to the vehicle for the first time. This Spring follows that structure: the Holiday update introduces new architecture, and the Spring update broadens it across the fleet.
Two notable features still did not make it. IFTTT automations, which launched in China earlier this year, were held back from this North American release for unknown reasons, and Apple CarPlay remains absent, reportedly still delayed by iOS 26 and Apple Maps compatibility issues.
Below is the full list of feature updates released by Tesla.
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 13, 2026
It appears that Tesla may be preparing to roll out some subscription-based services soon. Based on the observations of a Wales-based Model 3 owner who performed some reverse-engineering on the Tesla mobile app, it seems that the electric car maker has added a new “Subscribe” option beside the “Buy” option within the “Upgrades” tab, at least behind the scenes.
A screenshot of the new option was posted in the r/TeslaMotors subreddit, and while the Tesla owner in question, u/Callump01, admitted that the screenshot looks like something that could be easily fabricated, he did submit proof of his reverse-engineering to the community’s moderators. The moderators of the r/TeslaMotors subreddit confirmed the legitimacy of the Model 3 owner’s work, further suggesting that subscription options may indeed be coming to Tesla owners soon.
Did some reverse engineering on the app and Tesla looks to be preparing for subscriptions? from r/teslamotors
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite has been heavily speculated to be offered as a subscription option, similar to the company’s Premium Connectivity feature. And back in April, noted Tesla hacker @greentheonly stated that the company’s vehicles already had the source codes for a pay-as-you-go subscription model. The Tesla hacker suggested then that Tesla would likely release such a feature by the end of the year — something that Elon Musk also suggested in the first-quarter earnings call. “I think we will offer Full Self-Driving as a subscription service, but it will be probably towards the end of this year,” Musk stated.
While the signs for an upcoming FSD subscription option seem to be getting more and more prominent as the year approaches its final quarter, the details for such a feature are still quite slim. Pricing for FSD subscriptions, for example, have not been teased by Elon Musk yet, though he has stated on Twitter that purchasing the suite upfront would be more worth it in the long term. References to the feature in the vehicles’ source code, and now in the Tesla mobile app, also listed no references to pricing.
The idea of FSD subscriptions could prove quite popular among electric car owners, especially since it would allow budget-conscious customers to make the most out of the company’s driver-assist and self-driving systems without committing to the features’ full price. The current price of the Full Self-Driving suite is no joke, after all, being listed at $8,000 on top of a vehicle’s cost. By offering subscriptions to features like Navigate on Autopilot with automatic lane changes, owners could gain access to advanced functions only as they are needed.
Elon Musk, for his part, has explained that ultimately, he still believes that purchasing the Full Self-Driving suite outright provides the most value to customers, as it is an investment that would pay off in the future. “I should say, it will still make sense to buy FSD as an option as in our view, buying FSD is an investment in the future. And we are confident that it is an investment that will pay off to the consumer – to the benefit of the consumer.” Musk said.
Tesla Cybercab gets crazy change as mass production begins
Tesla confirms Cybercab with no steering wheel enters production
