Lifestyle
How to repair your Tesla Model S Door handle (DIY Kit)
The sudden failure of Tesla Model S self-presenting door handles as a result of component failure is a common and often aggravating experience for many early owners.
The design of the earlier Model S door handle was comprised of cheaper, cast components that often led to breakage, which Tesla finally addressed in the 3rd Gen of Model S door handles.
Under warranty, the answer is simple; call the service center, and schedule an appointment for a replacement, but for many early Model S owners, their warranty has been long gone, and thus stuck with an expensive repair bill that ran upwards of $1000.00 per self-presenting door handle. It also requires a special calibration that only the service center can perform.
The owners of the Electrified Garage have addressed this common issue with a comprehensive DIY Model S Door Handle Rebuild Kit that any handy person can tackle.
The kit includes a stronger machined stainless steel gear, a new e-clip for retaining the pivot gear on the shaft, Original Equipment Panasonic replacement micro-switches, push nuts to hold the vapor barrier securely, and new door panel clips.
Here’s a basic guideline on how to repair your Model S door handle.
To remove the door handle assembly
- With the door opened, pull the hatch into a position as if you were opening the door.
- Pop off the trim piece with a flat tool, like a flathead screwdriver. Do not apply excessive force.
- Use a Torx T30 bit to remove the two screws behind the door hatch.
- Use the 9mm socket wrench to remove the single bolt that lies under the door handle.
- Use your hands to pop the speaker grille off from the bottom portion of the door.
- Then grab the underside above the speaker and the door handle and pull the door covering off firmly.
- Remove any wiring that connects the door covering to the door itself. This includes lights, speaker system wires, and door sensor connectors.
- Use a Torx T20 bit to remove the door cover panel. There will be five screws to remove.
- Use a flathead to push the rubber gasket through the hole on the panel that was most recently removed.
- Use a flathead to push the switch on the side of the door. This will trick the window into thinking the door is closed, which will push the window glass upward. It will give you easier access to screws at the top of the door frame.
- Use a trim removal device or flat tool to remove the small white piece from the door panel. This secures the door handle harness into place.
- Unplug the door handle harness.
- Remove the two black plastic door covers from the door panel that are shown below. This is done by simply pressing from the back of the pieces with your hand.
- Use a 10mm socket wrench to remove the two bolts that are in each of these two holes and another that lies within the open space in the center of the door.
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- Push the door handle on the exterior of the door back into the door assembly. Use your right hand to stabilize the door and your left hand to push the door handle in.
- Reconnect the blue window power wire into the appropriate connection point. This is located at the bottom of the door. Once this is completed, roll the window down and disconnect the connection once again.
- Grab the top chrome-colored trim piece located at the top of the outside of the door. Gently remove this piece by slightly pulling and working your way down the piece. Do this gradually and try not to remove it in one pull. It could damage the trim or the door itself.
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- Remove the bolt located under the chrome trim piece. It is easiest to do this with a regular wrench and slowly loosen. You can wrap the wrench in electrical tape to prevent possible scratching of the window glass.
- Reconnect the blue window power connector once again and roll the window all the way up. Once the window is rolled up, disconnect the connector wire once again.
- The door assembly can then be pulled out. Pull in a firm, controlled fashion.
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To repair the door assembly:
- Remove the vapor cover from the assembly. This is usually connected with zip ties. Be careful to not cut any wires while removing.
- Remove the five centrally located bolts with the correctly-sized Torx bits.
- Remove the motor, which is the small cylindrical black piece held in by these bolts.
- Remove the two screws that maintain the position of the door handle.
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- Remove the pin that is housed on the rear side of the assembly. This can be lubricated with WD-40 and pushed out with a pair of needlenose pliers.
- Install the new gear into the door assembly by pressing down on the door handle.
- Slide the pin back through and make sure the center notch on the pin is aligned with the middle slot. Install a new metal clip from the kit in the center notch.
- Reinstall the screws that were removed in Step 4.
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- Resecure the main power wire for the door handle to the bottom of the assembly with zip ties.
- Reinstall the motor from Step 3 and resecure it with the appropriate screws.
- Resecure all wires with zip ties and reapply the vapor cover.
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Elon Musk
Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map
Tesla confirmed it is building a feature that lets you teach your car where to go.
Tesla is building a feature that will let drivers talk to their car in plain language and teach it exactly what to do, with the vehicle remembering those instructions for every future trip. Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy confirmed it this week on X after a user pointed out one of FSD’s most persistent real-world limitations is that the system has no way to receive contextual instructions the way a human driver would.
“FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home. Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific context like that. Google Maps is also notorious for putting pins on houses that aren’t actually yours.” Tesla owner Chris further noted, “It would be so cool if I could talk to the car while going down my street and say something like, ‘It’s the white house on the left, just past that SUV,’ and then have FSD remember that for next time.”
FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home.
Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific…
— Chris (@ChrissGPT) July 8, 2026
This feature would carry more weight than it might seem. Grok has been available inside Tesla vehicles since July 2025, expanded to European vehicles in February 2026, and gained a hands-free “Hey Grok” wake word with location-based reminders and natural-language navigation in the Spring 2026 update. But up to this point, Grok has had no authority over how FSD actually drives. Lane changes, braking, speed, and parking maneuvers remain entirely within FSD’s autonomous decision-making loop. What Elluswamy confirmed is that the next step pushes Grok into a supervisor role, one that translates spoken intent directly into driving decisions.
Tesla teases greater Grok FSD integration and ‘Banish’ feature ‘in about 3 months’
Elluswamy acknowledged at a January 2026 conference that while fully integrated voice control is on Tesla’s roadmap, “it opens up an entire area of testing that we have to do. For example, you shouldn’t be able to tell the car to crash, and it shouldn’t crash.” Elon Musk subsequently confirmed on June 23 that Grok voice commands will pass to FSD’s planning layer by September 2026, a three month timeline from confirmation to deployment.
The deeper significance is what this does for Tesla’s AI training flywheel. Every time an owner corrects FSD with a spoken instruction and the car learns and remembers it, that interaction becomes a data point covering an edge case that no simulation or scripted test could have generated. A fleet of millions of Tesla vehicles crowdsourcing hyper-local contextual knowledge, which driveway, which gate entrance, which side of the street, builds a layer of geographic and behavioral intelligence that competitors without a comparable fleet simply cannot replicate at the same speed or scale.
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla’s Cybercab and robotaxi operations have expanded to Miami following the Austin launch, with rider profiles already collecting preference data. Voice-taught contextual instructions linked to individual rider profiles means a Cybercab could eventually know before it arrives exactly which entrance to use, where to wait, and how to navigate the final hundred feet of any trip it has made before.
Lifestyle
Tesla app update makes Robotaxi ownership make a lot more sense
Tesla’s app now shows a live indicator when your car is actively driving itself.
A recent Tesla app update, released last week (4.58.5), gives visibility on whether a vehicle is navigating in its semi-autonomous mode or being drive by a human driver. The updated app now displays a live “Self-Driving” indicator in bright blue text directly beneath the vehicle’s speed readout whenever Full Self-Driving is actively engaged, along with the signature glowing blue navigation path that FSD users see on the main touchscreen. It is a small visual update with meaningful implications for how Tesla owners monitor their vehicles remotely.
The feature was first spotted in the wild by X user Jordan Camina, who shared video of a Hardware 3 Model S displaying the new animation through the app while driving. That detail is significant because it confirms the update is not limited to newer HW4 vehicles. It works across hardware generations, and Tesla confirmed it will eventually support all vehicles regardless of chip platform once both the app and vehicle software are updated. The vehicle side requires software version 2026.20.6.1, which has reached nearly 40% of the fleet so far, as monitored by NotaTeslaApp.
The feature makes the most practical sense when viewed through the lens of Tesla’s expanding robotaxi operation. In a robotaxi context, the owner of a vehicle generating ride revenue has a direct financial and safety interest in knowing whether their car is operating under autonomous control at any given moment. The app’s new FSD indicator gives fleet owners exactly that visibility, the same way a logistics company monitors whether a delivery driver is following the planned route. It also carries implications for Tesla’s insurance model. Tesla’s own insurance product prices premiums in part based on FSD engagement rates, and real-time visibility into when FSD is active creates a feedback loop that could eventually tie directly into policy pricing. For individual owners who have opted their personal vehicles into the robotaxi network, the update effectively turns the Tesla app into a fleet management dashboard, one that tells you whether your car is earning money, whether it is driving itself to do it, and whether everything is operating the way it should from wherever you happen to be.
Tesla expands Robotaxi to Florida, marking its third state for autonomy
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla launched unsupervised robotaxi rides in Miami this summer, a milestone that makes a remote FSD status indicator significantly more practical than a cosmetic feature. When a vehicle is operating as a robotaxi without a driver present, the owner or fleet operator needs a reliable way to confirm autonomy is engaged. The app now provides exactly that.
As noted by NotATeslaApp, The update also arrived alongside a hint buried in the same app version that Tesla plans to use the cabin camera to verify driver identity before FSD can be activated. Pairing identity verification with a live autonomy status indicator points toward the infrastructure Tesla is building for a fleet of driverless vehicles that owners can monitor the way you would track a package delivery.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The Boring Company’s Prufrock MB2 is commissioned and ready to mine beneath Nashville’s streets.
The Boring Company’s second tunnel boring machine, Prufrock MB2, is officially ready to dig in Nashville. The company confirmed the news on X, posting: “Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here. Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start? And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August!”
MB2 arrives with meaningful improvements over its predecessor. Lessons learned from the launch and operation of MB1 have already been applied to MB2 to improve efficiency and prepare the machine for launch.
Traditional tunnel boring machines operate in a stop-and-go cycle, digging roughly five feet, halt, erect precast concrete segments to line the tunnel wall, then resume. That repeated interruption is one of the main reasons conventional tunneling is slow and expensive. Prufrock is designed to install the tunnel liner simultaneously with mining, eliminating the need to stop every five feet. The machine also skips the need for excavated launch pits. Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and launches into the ground within 24 hours. And when the tunnel is complete, it emerges from the ground and drives to its next launch site on a trailer, eliminating the need for expensive cranes or pit excavation. The machine is also fully electric and runs with zero people in the tunnel during normal operations, controlled remotely from a surface operations center.
Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here.
Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start?
And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August! pic.twitter.com/TTrMql2aRg
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) June 17, 2026
It won’t be long before we hear of another major update on The Boring Company’s Music City Loop project – a planned underground transit network beneath Nashville that would move passengers in electric vehicles through a series of tunnels at highway speeds, and bypassing surface traffic entirely. Nashville was selected in part because of its strong rock conditions that suits the Prufrock machines well, and relatively less regulatory hurdles.
Progress has been steady on multiple fronts. All 37 permits and approvals required ahead of tunneling have been obtained, out of 45 total. Key wins include a fully executed TDOT tunnel permit authorizing 25 miles of tunnel, unanimous airport authority approval for a Nashville International Airport station, and the city’s first residential station agreement serving downtown tower residents.
With MB1 already tunneling, MB2 now commissioned, and MB3 shipping in August, Nashville is becoming something of a live proving ground for scaled tunnel boring. The broader ambition is not limited to one city. The Boring Company’s stated goal is to make underground transportation a practical alternative to surface roads across major metro areas. Nashville is one of many cities, including a successful Las Vegas tunnel system, where that idea is being put to the test at real speed.
Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map
The secret behind Tesla’s Cybercab Gold goes well beyond just the color
