Connect with us

Lifestyle

Tesla Model S Wish List Items

Published

on

Grey-Model-S-Solar

After 10,000 miles of ownership, it’s time to compile my Tesla Model S wish list items.

It’s been four months and 10k miles of pure joy since taking delivery of my Model S, but that’s not to say that there aren’t some items that I wish Tesla would have included and/or done better on.

I focused on those areas that can be augmented through a Tesla software update. Many of the things I’d like to see are also in the global wish list being tracked at the Tesla Motors Club but I have my own tastes and priorities, so here goes.

The items in bold below were available on my 2007 Acura MDX which I sorely missed.

Navigation

  • Tesla-Firmware-6-0-Crowd-Source

    Tesla firmware version 6.0 sneak peek

    Waypoints

  • Multiple route options (shortest, shortest time, etc)
  • Traffic-based re-routing (reportedly coming in 6.0)
  • Better map caching – AT&T coverage is spotty and slow.
  • Show Map zoom level
  • Ability to organize favorites (folders)
  • Sort favorites by distance or frequency of use (vs random!)
  • Ability to show points of interest (POI)
  • Ability to set current location as a favorite
  • Ability to route to prior starting locations

USB Music

  • Shuffle
  • Folders need cover art
  • Fast scroll when in USB folders
  • Favorite ability for folders, artists, etc.

ALSO SEE: Playing Music from a USB Drive in the Tesla Model S

Settings

  • Remember rear seat heater settings (it does this for the front but not the rear) across power off/on. If a passenger gets out and the car starts traveling again turn off that passengers seat heater.
  • Ability to “pin” or lock a screen in a position – like NAV always on top so I can flip the bottom one but not lose NAV or have to do the press/drag thing.
  • Let me set % regeneration setting – not just 2 options.
  • Let me set max creep speed – 5mph is far too fast.
  • Show lifetime total/average energy somewhere so we don’t have to “reserve” trip B for this.
  • Let me control how long my headlights are on after I exit (its so long now I never use it).
  • When opening trunk, allow me to press the button to reverse direction.
  • Headlight flash is too long, shorten it or let duration be set.
  • Don’t allow car in drive if rear trunk is open. Or require special override.
  • Graphs always default to “instantaneous” which is basically useless. Default to average or remember the setting.

Service

  • Service reminders for tire rotations, annual service etc.
  • Show actual tire pressure settings for all 4 tires.
  • Provide full release notes on every software update.
  • Provide release notes prior to install for software updates.

Charging

  • Report on estimated time to complete charge to set level (in car and in app). Make this work right with non-linear charge rates at Superchargers etc.
  • Allow me to set desired charge end time (not start time).

Driving

  • Allow cruise control resume from stop (other vendors can do this).
  • Be smarter on regeneration when cancelling cruise control – its harsh.
  • If driver gets out of car (in park!) and passenger is still present don’t let the car go to sleep (or have a setting around this).
  • Using washer to clean windshield turns on lights. Be smarter about this.

Audio

  • Remember volume setting by audio source (book tapes from my iPhone are a different volume than music from Slacker)

Tesla-Browser-Optimized

Web Browser

  • Make it work with Google apps (cookies, sessions, mobile flavor, etc.)
  • Fix return/caps lock behavior.
  • Have the ability for it to report itself as a mobile browser for faster loads/better visibility.
  • Support tabs
  • Support favorite syncing with desktop/mobile devices.
  • Allow organization of favorites including some kind of sorting.
  • Make window scrolling smoother/more obvious.
  • Make it faster/more standard (Chrome/Firefox/Safari like).
  • Fix web browser time zone setting/function – many sites think I’m in PST based on IP address.

Slacker

  • Allow display of lyrics.
  • Support custom playlists.
  • Fix car stop/start while a song is playing resulting in a partial song resume.
  • If you cant play/find the searched song, offer to do nothing.

RELATED: Slacker Internet Radio on the Tesla Model S

iOS App

  • Show internal temperature (without requiring me to turn on climate control first).
  • Receive all alerts/warnings that car shows.

That’s a long wish list in 4 months and its not even Christmas yet. I love the car even if I didn’t have any of these wish list items, but imagine what the Model S would be like with all these (very possible) improvements.

What I find interesting is that there are news reports that Tesla is hiring up to 30 hackers to make security improvements to the Model S. Security is important and they should definitely invest in that area. But 30 decent programmers focused on the list above could knock out most of that in 6 months or less. How many programmers do they have now and what are they doing? Did all the resources get diverted to supporting new international markets? Is Tesla still investing in the software layer for the Model S or are all investments going into the Model X?

I’ll be tracking this list over time to see if and when the Tesla team delivers on it.

What’s on your Tesla Model S wish list?

Advertisement
-

"Rob's passion is technology and gadgets. An engineer by profession and an executive and founder at several high tech startups Rob has a unique view on technology and some strong opinions. When he's not writing about Tesla

Advertisement
Comments

Lifestyle

Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory

Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.

Published

on

By

Tesla Cybertruck construction site

Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.

The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.

The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.

Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years

Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.

Published

on

By

Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.

In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.

The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.

Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.

Advertisement
-

This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.

Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip

Published

on

By

neuralink-patient-registry-volunteers

A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.

“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.

Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.

Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.

He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.

Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.

Advertisement
-

The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.

Continue Reading