Improved Trunk lighting - Is there demand?

[artisjr]

You are very welcome! If/when you get your welcome lights, can you post a photo? I am curious on which type you get. As for the door sills, there is existing wiring that I tapped into. In the directions it tells you were you can tie in. It was fairly easy - if I can do it anyone can.

BTW- I did not use the drill bit for the lights. I simply used a pocket knife.

 

[MDMGSO47]

We're working on a couple of options ;-) The connector is nothing standard; creating the female version on the bulb was easy since we just scanned and copied it, so now we need to separate that into a stand-alone socket. Also easy enough, just takes a little time.

@pete8314
Any progress?

 

[pete8314]

Sorry for the delay, I was hoping to have an answer back from the factory by now, but no, nothing so far. I've pinged them again, and provided detailed diagrams, so hopefully I'll hear something soon.

 

[MDMGSO47]

Does anyone know what gauge of the wiring used by Tesla to supply electricity to the trunk lights? Is it 20 gauge?

 

[wilheldp]

I've been upgrading my interior lights with the AbstractOcean ones for a while. I'll be done once the rear passenger footwell brackets and red replacement lights show up and I get them in. I figured out that I would have one extra white light left over from AO in addition to the 7 Telsa lights. I couldn't help myself, so I took them apart, soldered some wires to the inputs and tested how much power they use. I hooked both of them up to a bench power supply set to 14 volts at up to 3 amps (didn't want to current-limit them). The AO lights draw almost exactly 1 watt, while the stock Tesla lights are around 1/3 watt. That's pretty surprising given that the AO bulbs have 4 emitters on the circuit board compared to 1 on the stock Teslas, and AO advertises them at 16 times as bright (which is believable, given the photo below). So 4 times the LEDs and 16 times the brightness for only 3 times the power consumption. Not bad, pete.

 

[FlatSix911]

I've been upgrading my interior lights with the AbstractOcean ones for a while. I'll be done once the rear passenger footwell brackets and red replacement lights show up and I get them in. I figured out that I would have one extra white light left over from AO in addition to the 7 Telsa lights. I couldn't help myself, so I took them apart, soldered some wires to the inputs and tested how much power they use. I hooked both of them up to a bench power supply set to 14 volts at up to 3 amps (didn't want to current-limit them). The AO lights draw almost exactly 1 watt, while the stock Tesla lights are around 1/3 watt. That's pretty surprising given that the AO bulbs have 4 emitters on the circuit board compared to 1 on the stock Teslas, and AO advertises them at 16 times as bright (which is believable, given the photo below). So 4 times the LEDs and 16 times the brightness for only 3 times the power consumption. Not bad, pete.

Thanks for the data. Do you have a light meter to measure the output in lumens?

 

[pete8314]

That's great info - thanks @wilheldp ! The 16x brightness is something of a arbitrary statement; that's not to say it's not true, but because the perception of brightness is not linear, it really doesn't mean much in real terms. So if someone does have an accurate way to measure lumens, I'd be really interested. My tests were somewhat inconclusive. That said, I don't think many people would actually want them much brighter, I think they're about right for this application.

PS Your test rig puts mine to shame!

 

[wilheldp]

I don't have a light meter, so I can't test the 16x brightness claims. And that power supply is one small part of my electronics bench. I have a couple of bench multimeters, 4 portable meters, a signal generator, 4 channel oscilloscope, and programmable electronic load. I'm an electrical engineer and electronics is my hobby...so I have a pretty nice set up.

Here's a pic of the whole bench while I was testing a battery pack out of a hoverboard (I had several borrowed multimeters, and now I have an 8-channel DAQ).

 

[pete8314]

Wow!

 

[wilheldp]

Well, I now own a light meter, and I did some more testing. At 12 volts, the AbstractOcean lights are 15.99 times brighter than the stock Tesla lights (423 lux v. 24.9 lux, or 39.6 FC v. 2.33 FC) and they only consume 2.5 times the power (0.822 watts v. 0.236 watts). The difference between light output and power consumption narrows at higher voltages because the AO lights are designed to draw a constant current regardless of input voltage, but the AO lights certainly meet their design specifications.

 

[pete8314]

Helpful before and after review from @Bjorn (thanks!):

 

[Lyon]

@pete8314, I got the package with the complete sets of lights for the Model X and the new Model S. I suppose I could have taken them out of the current S at trade-in but I want the next owner to get the benefit as well!

 

[Lyon]

@pete8314, I got the package with the complete sets of lights for the Model X and the new Model S. I suppose I could have taken them out of the current S at trade-in but I want the next owner to get the benefit as well!

Just installed the Model X lights. They were all easy... except the glove compartment and the one in the rear hatch. Those were a b!#ch. The ones for the Model S are going to have to wait until the new one comes....

 

[wilheldp]

Just installed the Model X lights. They were all easy... except the glove compartment and the one in the rear hatch. Those were a b!#ch. The ones for the Model S are going to have to wait until the new one comes....

Yeah, I had way more trouble with the the one in the Model S hatch than I did with the glovebox. I had to get rid of plastic spudger marks on the hatch where it slipped trying to pry the old light out.

 

[skyhix]

Does changing out any of these lights could possible affect any electrical warrantees or cause any electrical service lights? When I changed my tail lights on my bmw to LEDs, it gives a constant light outage service light on my vehicle that I just have to ignore.

 

[bmah]

Does changing out any of these lights could possible affect any electrical warrantees or cause any electrical service lights? When I changed my tail lights on my bmw to LEDs, it gives a constant light outage service light on my vehicle that I just have to ignore.

No errors or warnings on my car (S85D), nor have I heard of this happening. I'm pretty sure if this was an issue, @pete8314 would not have released the product, or at the very least you would have seen some discussion of the problem in this thread.

Bruce.

 

[pete8314]

No, there's not been a single reported electical issue due to the lights; the draw difference is small given that they're LED, 0.23w for the OEM bulbs, 0.82w for the AO bulbs. There's plenty of people on this forum that have many after-market upgrades (dash cams, subs, lights etc etc) which draw a far larger load, but none of which have thrown any errors, so that doesn't seem to be something that the Tesla's are particularly fussy about. As @wilheldp points out above, our bulbs will only draw a constant current regardless of input voltage, so they're quite well disciplined in that regard.

In terms of removing from the hatch, that was by far the easiest bulb on my 2013 S, but on my 2016 S, it's waaay tighter. The spudger still did it, but requires quite a bit of digging around. If you willing to take the chance that the out-going bulb might crack, a screwdriver with masking tape beneath it to protect the trim is a good, and easy, alternative:

 

[DDotJ]

In terms of removing from the hatch, that was by far the easiest bulb on my 2013 S, but on my 2016 S, it's waaay tighter. The spudger still did it, but requires quite a bit of digging around. If you willing to take the chance that the out-going bulb might crack, a screwdriver with masking tape beneath it to protect the trim is a good, and easy, alternative:

View attachment 193559

If only I saw this yesterday . I reattempted the hatch light yesterday and my fingers still hurt as I'm typing this from trying to remove the light. Out of all the lights (other than the glovebox that I didn't do), the trunk hatch was by far the hardest to install.

The rear footwell was hard too, but I cheated by using scissors to cut off the plastic clips on the OEM bulbs.

But the new footwell lights look really nice, awesome bulbs!

 

[Ingineer]

FYI: If you overload the lighting outputs from the Body ECU it will detect that and shut down the circuit. If you are right on the edge by adding a lot of load, it may work initially, but once the MOSTFET starts to overheat, it will shut down the load. None of these faults will cause any errors in the car, and they will self-clear.

The Abstract Ocean lights are a slight increase in draw, but nowhere near the limit.

 

[Boatguy]

If only I saw this yesterday . I reattempted the hatch light yesterday and my fingers still hurt as I'm typing this from trying to remove the light. Out of all the lights (other than the glovebox that I didn't do), the trunk hatch was by far the hardest to install.

The rear footwell was hard too, but I cheated by using scissors to cut off the plastic clips on the OEM bulbs.

But the new footwell lights look really nice, awesome bulbs!

I had no problem with the two lower trunk lights, but today I gave up trying to get the trunk hatch light removed. I used plastic, then screwdriver, all it did was break the recess out of the light.

Was there any secret move? Did you just use lots of force until it finally came out?