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Less well known Tesla features / information

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DaveW

Active Member
May 21, 2019
1,364
1,161
Beds, UK
Evening all,

Having seen on the Facebook groups how often people are surprised by the fact you can send Sat Nav destinations from your phone to your car, how lots of people seemingly don't know about "urinal etiquette" etc.. I thought I'd start to put together something hopefully useful for others.

Tesla's less known features / useful information - TeslaEV.co.uk

Any gems I've forgotten on this first iteration of the post?
 
Evening all,

Having seen on the Facebook groups how often people are surprised by the fact you can send Sat Nav destinations from your phone to your car, how lots of people seemingly don't know about "urinal etiquette" etc.. I thought I'd start to put together something hopefully useful for others.

Tesla's less known features / useful information - TeslaEV.co.uk

Any gems I've forgotten on this first iteration of the post?
Something that surprised me the other day...

You can use the NFC chip in your Android phone as a key.

It mimics the keycard function and doesn't require the app to be running or Bluetooth enabled.

Useful if your on a road trip and sharing the drive with others. They can have their own profile and their own phone as a key without giving app access or trusting them with one of your two key cards.
 
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Something that surprised me the other day...

You can use the NFC chip in your Android phone as a key.

It mimics the keycard function and doesn't require the app to be running or Bluetooth enabled.

Useful if your on a road trip and sharing the drive with others. They can have their own profile and their own phone as a key without giving app access or trusting them with one of your two key cards.

That's very interesting! How do you go about setting that up?
 
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If you are expecting / hoping for an update to the software version on your vehicle but not receiving a notification, you can “force” a check by going to the Software menu via the car button bottom-left

Pressing the park button on the shift lever after you have pressed park once - unlocks the doors

You don’t have to use the X buttons top-left of windows to close them, just tap anywhere around the pop-up window to return to map view

If you disconnect the door card puddle lights the door handle electronic release stops working and glass will return to highest position until you reconnect the puddle light

The WiFi receiver is in the right-hand door mirror so be sure to park the correct way round to get better connectivity to target router and stop you swearing lots

If you start a wifi-based download for software/game/nav and have premium connectivity (not tested on partial-premium), you can disconnect WiFi and the download will complete via the car’s in-built LTE

Your brakes are in use a lot less than ICE cars so don’t forget to use them properly on a semi-regular basis, they will thank you for it and emergency stops will work better / be more predictable

Your tyres are crucial as with any vehicle but to maintain range/suspension performance be sure to check them regularly when cold and keep an eye on their rolling pressures by swiping left at bottom-right of screen.

Assuming you have reliable home charging, warm the battery up by triggering climate/heating from your phone 20-30 mins before you leave as the weather gets colder, will make your first 1-20 miles much more efficient. It will cost you a few KW on the leccy bill but will pay back through less range anxiety/recharging needed due to lost range.
 
If you start a wifi-based download for software/game/nav and have premium connectivity (not tested on partial-premium), you can disconnect WiFi and the download will complete via the car’s in-built LTE

That didn't work for me today. I was using my phone as a hotspot downloading a software update. As soon as the wifi disconnected the download stopped and only restarted when I reconnected the hotspot.
 
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Changing “lock confirmation sound” or “walk away door lock” settings in the car menu with the driver door open -acts as a one off change and will revert to saved setting once back in Drive.
Useful for not waking neighbours on an evening or if you want to load up car without it locking on you every 2 minutes

Superchargers have a button to pop the charge port and to stop/unlock the charger. No need to stop and unlock in the car or app (often seen at SuCs)

pressing Supercharger handle button 5 times in quick succession will make charger LED go into rainbow mode

Model 3 charge flap will self-close. No need to wack down (often seen)

5 times down on the drive stalk (where/when autopilot is available) will enable cowbell music and rainbow mode on the dash. Changing audio source will cancel the cowbell tune and keep the rainbow UI

keep Nav itinerary on display whilst Nav is in guidance mode by double tapping Nav mode when the Nav is searching for a route. (Likely a bug but should be a feature as it’s useful feature for quick glances at arrival SoC, final destination arrival time if SuC waypoint is programmed as well as next few directions en route.

Tapping the clock several times resyncs the clock with GPS location. Useful if travelling abroad / states / time zones
 
Anyway to manually disable battery heating when driving to a supercharger?
Also any way to manually enable it as well?

possibly depends on model.

ive never seen a preheated notification on my MS so if that appears it must be a M3 thing (although I’m doubtful personally). Not setting the supercharger as the destination would also not trigger a preheat for supercharging (disagreeIng with a valid answer Makes no sense),

On MS and MX performance models with ludicrous you can select Ludy+ which turns on the heaters.
 
My Fitbit annoyingly (it buzzes and prompts for user intervention) detects the car, but pairing fails due to fitbit wallet error.

upload_2020-9-11_8-53-38.png upload_2020-9-11_8-54-0.png
 
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