Light sensor position

[buzescu]

To me it is extremely annoying that the car almost always decides to turn on the lights when cloudy outside. Can anyone tell me where the light sensor might be? Or the Tesla is using one of the front cameras for that? Any way around the auto lights? I end up always manually turning them off but it is only good till I put it in park first time.
thanks

 

[drklain]

If you have an AP2 car (your profile pic appears to be one), the light sensor is one of the forward facing autopilot cameras and the ambient light level to trigger auto-on is set by Tesla. I believe if you go to your headlights setting, there is an option for "on, off, parking or auto" and you can manually force them off, but why bother. You have LED headlights with an almost unlimited life on them (20,000 plus hours). What's the harm in their being on?

 

[buzescu]

range ... even LEDs they still consume enough energy. Here is Seattle is mostly cloudy this time of the year, you end up running with them on the whole day and you really don't need them. DLR looks also nicer without the whole headlamp on.

 

[sjokomelk]

You might get 300 extra feet of range from 100 to 0% discharge cycle with your lights off. Not worth if for the safety of you and others around you. Leave them in the auto position.

 

[Ande]

Save on safety , for.... Few meters of range ?

 

[buzescu]

I guess energy consumption is not a real big deal ... probably with all lights on it should at around 50Whr but still the settings should allow it to be manual not just ON/OFF/Auto. It bugs me lights turning on when car is simply in the shade. Also it bothers me it always turns to auto. It resets to auto after you get out of the car. This is not about safety ... A bit odd. Same issue with the changes to the AC after the 9.0 update - you can't have the HVAC on Auto but the AC off versus before you could. It is that way or the highway

 

[sjokomelk]

Also it bothers me it always turns to auto. It resets to auto after you get out of the car. This is not about safety ... A bit odd.

That is by legislation. The default mode has to be Auto. And it is all about safety to keep the DRL on when driving during daytime, and normal head and tail lights turning on when needed.

 

[shred86]

I don't think the OP is talking about DRLs. He's talking about the actual headlight bulb. I think claiming it's a safety issue is bit of a stretch since the DRLs are still on. My understanding is the only way to turn off DRLs is on U.S. model Tesla's using Range Mode. Otherwise, they're always on. Having an option to adjust the sensitivity would be nice, as well as the option to not have the headlights turn on when you use the windshield wipers.

 

[drklain]

I guess energy consumption is not a real big deal ... probably with all lights on it should at around 50Whr

I think your estimate may be a bit high. LEDs draw milliamps of electricity and use very little power. When I replaced the navigation, strobe and landing/taxi lights in a plane with LED products, the electrical draw was so small that it was not even measurable without a digital meter. There is no doubt that the biggest electrical loads in a Tesla are:
- Drive Unit(s)
- seat heaters
- air conditioning heater
- battery heater
Everything is is pretty much a negligible load on the battery but I'd put the LED lights at or near the bottom of any list of electrical loads. Perhaps one of the engineers on this forum who has really analyzed things can tell us how big of a load they actually are.

 

[buzescu]

Correct, I am not talking DRL.
All lights are on - back, front, DRL .. I think with 50 wattt I should be close. Sure LEDs use much less but there are are lots of them.

 

[pinball_player]

I prefer the lights being on even when it is just cloudy. To me it helps others see the car.

 

[SabrToothSqrl]

...please I WISH auto headlights was mandatory on all cars. I see SO many cars at dawn/dusk/ even at night, with NO headlights. Heavy rain, dark out, dark colored grey car... yeah... no lights! awesome!

This would be so cheap to do, but instead we got forced TPMS... not forced auto headlights...

sorry, that's my take

 

[f205v]

In a number of countries (mostly Europe) headlight are mandatory-on always! Car is much more visible with lights on.

 

[buzescu]

We should also add some bells to it.

 

[f205v]

All Teslas already have cow-bells!

 

[SabrToothSqrl]

I read something in (i think) popular Mechanics YEARS ago that said how much fuel it would take to run headlights 24/7 on all cars and it was crazy. Here in the US we put money #1. Human life #2... so... we will do it... but.... not if it costs too much...

 

[f205v]

I saw similar calculation many years ago, when lights-always-on came into force in Italy (in 2002), and the number was huge in absolute terms, but was already negligible in comparison to the TOTAL consumption of fuel for cars.
But now more and more cars are using LEDs and not standard bulbs, so the same calculation should show much smaller numbers. Also, the efficiency of the average car (not to talk about the efficiency of Teslas!) is way higher than it was back in the days.

 

[DocAlsetAus]

I own a Nose Cone with Xenon lights. When getting the car out of the shed it switches the lights on for a few seconds and then off again. Same when i park the car. Can't be heathy for the bulbs and yes, a few days ago one failed. The exchange was an amazing experience....but i really like to know where that sensor is which controls the lights. Would be better, if the car would memorize my setting. You can't even trick it with switching the lights off in Park because when you reverese they jump back to Auto.