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Tesla Model S Wish List Items

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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.

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What’s on your Tesla Model S wish list?

"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

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific

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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”

In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.


When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”

The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”

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Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.

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Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love

Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.

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Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.

The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”

The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.

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The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.

Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more

It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat

Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.

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Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.

One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”

Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions

 

What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.

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As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.

If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.

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