Tesla Model S
Life With a Dash Cam in Your Tesla Model S
A while ago I wrote about reasons for installing a dash cam in your Model S and then followed up with instructions on how to install one yourself. This post will discuss the basics of how I use the dash cam in my everyday life.
Capturing the moment
Whether you have a permanent 12V supply to your dash cam or switched power, you will want to preserve interesting moments soon after they happen such as this encounter I had with deer in NJ.
Most dash cams will recycle space on the memory cards leaving you with just enough space beofore it gets overwritten. A 32GB card will generally capture a day’s worth of video during a “normal” day. I say normal because the depending on how you configure the BlackVue dash cam – whether it’s set to turn on automatically through its motion and sound sensing capabilities – the amount of recording time can vary depending on what takes place during idle time.
Memory Cards
You’ll want to have a second memory card for your dash cam and keep that handy within the car. Make sure that it is formatted for your dash cam. The easiest way to set up a new card if you still have an old one is to copy the old card to the new card. Another option is to make a backup to your computer. Either way, I recommend testing the new card before using it.
The micro SD card that the BlackVue uses is extremely tiny and can easily be lost if not careful. To prevent from losing my back up memory card, I’ll have it inserted into the card reader that comes with the card and plugged into the one of the USB ports in my Model S.
Capturing the moment
Once something interesting is caught on dash cam, the process over downloading it is fairly simple. You’ll have many hours of video that can be captured before your special moment is overwritten but it helps to remember the time the event happened. A good time to do a swap is at a Supercharger stop or when you reach a particular destination. The memory is small and fiddling with it while the car is moving isn’t very safe.
First power down your dash cam by unplugging the power cord. Wait about 15 seconds for it to finish powering down then flip open the little door protecting the memory before popping it out by pressing down on the memory card.
Swap the card with the spare memory card that’s temporarily inserted in the Model S USB slot and power back up your camera.
Downloading Video
Once I’m off the road and near a computer, I take the card reader containing my media and plug it into the computer’s ESB port. If I don’t have time to process and view the videos, I simply copy all videos under the “Record” folder from the memory card to a location on disk that I can access later.
The best way to find the video footage you want is to use your dash cam’s software. The BlackVue viewer also serves as a means for changing camera settings. Select preferences from the file menu when your memory card is loaded.
Click the folder icon on the right of the screen and browse to the proper media source to get started.
Pick an event time that is just before the moment you want to preserve and double click to start playing. I typically use the speed selector and play the video at max speed as most of the footage will likely be monotonous. Each video clip defaults to being a minute long. As you click through each video segment, find the ones that are interesting to you and drop them into a video editor as a way to add some movie magic to them. On OS X that’s iMovie.
Editing Video
Using iMovie, I select File, Import Movies and create a new event to put the clips into. From here you use iMovie to trim, add titles, speed things up etc:
I typically upload my edited video to YouTube as a way to share interesting moments with my buddies.
Once all is said and done with the USB card reader, be sure to insert it back into the Model S USB port as backup to the primary card that’s running on the dash cam.
Summary
Capturing great vacation moments or events from your favorite Tesla Superchargers is simple with a dash cam.
While the instruction manual recommends periodic reformatting of cards, I find that completely unnecessary. I have a low maintenance car and fortunately the cameras are low maintenance too!
Check out my dash cam videos on YouTube to get a perspective on the quality taken by the BlackVue. Feel free to share your best dash cam moments by leaving a link in the comments below!
Elon Musk
Trump’s invite for Elon just reshuffled Tesla’s big Signature Delivery Event
Tesla rescheduled its final Model S farewell to May 20 after Musk joined Trump in China.
Tesla has rescheduled its Model S and Model X Signature Edition delivery event to Wednesday, May 20, 2026, after abruptly calling off the original May 12 celebration. The event will take place at Tesla’s factory at 45500 Fremont Boulevard in Fremont, California, the same location where the Model S first rolled off the line in 2012. Invitees received a follow-up email asking them to reconfirm attendance and download a new QR code ticket, with Tesla noting that all travel and accommodation expenses remain the buyer’s responsibility.
The reason behind the original cancellation came into focus the same day it was announced. President Trump invited Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, and executives from Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Citigroup, and Meta to join his trip to China this week for a summit with President Xi Jinping. The agenda covers trade, artificial intelligence, export controls, Taiwan, and the Iran war, following weeks of escalating friction between Washington and Beijing over AI technology, sanctions, and rare earth exports. Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I am very much looking forward to my trip to China, an amazing Country, with a Leader, President Xi, respected by all.”
Tesla launches 200mph Model S “Gold” Signature in invite-only purchase
The vehicles at the center of all this are the last Model S and Model X units Tesla will ever build. Priced at $159,420 each, the 250 Model S and 100 Model X Signature Edition units come finished in Garnet Red with a one-year no-resale agreement, giving Tesla right of first refusal if the owner decides to sell. As Teslarati reported, the Model S defined Tesla’s early identity as a serious luxury automaker, and the Fremont factory line that built it is now being converted to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots.
Musk’s inclusion in the China delegation drew attention given his very public relationship with Trump, and the invitation signals the two have moved past and past grievances. Trump originally brought Musk on to lead the Department of Government Efficiency following his inauguration, and despite a sharp public dispute in mid-2025, the two have appeared together repeatedly in recent months. A seat on the China trip, the most diplomatically consequential visit of Trump’s current term, puts Musk back at the table on U.S. economic policy at a moment when Tesla’s China revenue remains one of the company’s most important financial pillars.
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
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