New headlights retrofit

[Adam3]

I was able to convert my Austin-built 2023 Model Y Long Range that came with reflector headlights to Matrix LED with all functions working. It took about an hour to remove the frunk liner and front bumper and swap the headlights, then about 40 mins to put it all back together. Really not that difficult. I was left with headlights that were on all the time (if the car was on), but I had no control to turn them off, go to parking lights only, etc., and NO turn signal function. I tried the service menu reset--I did the software update and a reboot and after that I had zero headlight or turn function. The other thing that worked was a very dimly lit DRL.

I did a deep-dive on how to get them working, which led me to this thread as well as others where people have not had good luck getting the headlight firmware updated to have the Matrix work like the car came with them. I had an independent shop successfully change the configuration. All functions work as they should, and even the car's visualization is now updated with the new headlights.

Nice!! What was the total cost and was it worth it?

 

[Durzel]

Great job. Would be interested to know the overall cost. I’m struggling to find decent quality used headlights, most advertised seem to have broken tabs from being unceremoniously yanked out of salvage cars etc.

 

[ev_musings]

Nice!! What was the total cost and was it worth it?

I did this for a few reasons. NHTSA issued a rule last year that finally allows use of adaptive headlights in the U.S. There's still a certification process for OEMs, but this was one large hurdle in getting there. There has been a number of news articles lately, one of which I will link here, that seems to indicate some momentum towards activating matrix functions to reduce the blinding effect of modern headlights. I see Tesla as one of the most likely to activate these functions since they are the best at OTA updates. I wanted to have these lights up and running before the demand for coding them raises prices. Even w/o the matrix function working, the Tesla reflector headlights receive a "acceptable" score from NHTSA while the matrix projectors get a "good" rating, the highest the scale goes. LINK.

I found a set of nice condition lights for a little under $400. (I can recoup much of that by selling my perfect condition PPF'd reflector lights.). Coding was $500. I'll be out $600 or so after selling my lights, and for perspective, the HID headlight option on my Mercedes was $900, so I feel it was worth it. I also like the darker housing, just looks more modern. While having your lights coded you can pay to have other things like the trailer tow mode activated.

 

[Mrbrock]

I did this for a few reasons. NHTSA issued a rule last year that finally allows use of adaptive headlights in the U.S. There's still a certification process for OEMs, but this was one large hurdle in getting there. There has been a number of news articles lately, one of which I will link here, that seems to indicate some momentum towards activating matrix functions to reduce the blinding effect of modern headlights. I see Tesla as one of the most likely to activate these functions since they are the best at OTA updates. I wanted to have these lights up and running before the demand for coding them raises prices. Even w/o the matrix function working, the Tesla reflector headlights receive a "acceptable" score from NHTSA while the matrix projectors get a "good" rating, the highest the scale goes. LINK.

I found a set of nice condition lights for a little under $400. (I can recoup much of that by selling my perfect condition PPF'd reflector lights.). Coding was $500. I'll be out $600 or so after selling my lights, and for perspective, the HID headlight option on my Mercedes was $900, so I feel it was worth it. I also like the darker housing, just looks more modern. While having your lights coded you can pay to have other things like the trailer tow mode activated.

Is the coding guaranteed through all future software upgrades?

 

[goRt]

I did this for a few reasons. NHTSA issued a rule last year that finally allows use of adaptive headlights in the U.S. There's still a certification process for OEMs, but this was one large hurdle in getting there. There has been a number of news articles lately, one of which I will link here, that seems to indicate some momentum towards activating matrix functions to reduce the blinding effect of modern headlights. I see Tesla as one of the most likely to activate these functions since they are the best at OTA updates. I wanted to have these lights up and running before the demand for coding them raises prices. Even w/o the matrix function working, the Tesla reflector headlights receive a "acceptable" score from NHTSA while the matrix projectors get a "good" rating, the highest the scale goes. LINK.

I found a set of nice condition lights for a little under $400. (I can recoup much of that by selling my perfect condition PPF'd reflector lights.). Coding was $500. I'll be out $600 or so after selling my lights, and for perspective, the HID headlight option on my Mercedes was $900, so I feel it was worth it. I also like the darker housing, just looks more modern. While having your lights coded you can pay to have other things like the trailer tow mode activated.

No need to wait for approval in the USA, just activate the matrix everywhere else, but maybe sky won't let us have toys he can't have

 

[terranx]

Do you really think Tesla can make a competent matrix headlamp when they can't even get their auto highbeams to work?

 

[goRt]

Do you really think Tesla can make a competent matrix headlamp when they can't even get their auto highbeams to work?

For me the auto highbeems are massively improved
It's now a simple problem - knowing where vehicles are activate the likely matrix and throw in an AI to adjust to each car

 

[ev_musings]

Is the coding guaranteed through all future software upgrades?

I asked this question specifically. They changed the actual configuration of the car in the same way Tesla would, and it's no different than if the car came from the factory with matrix. The way they described it to me (and hopefully I am repeating it correctly), is my car rolled in with errors that the hardware configuration and firmware of the left and right headlights did not match the car's programmed configuration. They connected to the car and changed the configuration of the car to tell it the "global headlights" are installed, rebooted the car and now the installed hardware matches the car's configuration. Over the air software updates will not affect the revised configuration of the car.

The confirmation for me that they did the configuration correctly was the fact that the headlights perform all of their typical functions plus the car displays "Tesla" during the lightshow and both the in-car and Tesla app visualizations now display my car with the darker projector lights.

The company that did the work is EV's Republic in Rancho Cordova (Sacramento) CA. I worked with Micah. (Feel free to tell them Ken sent you.)

 

[gearchruncher]

I asked this question specifically. They changed the actual configuration of the car in the same way Tesla would, and it's no different than if the car came from the factory with matrix.

This isn't quite true. Tesla of course has a build sheet for the car and could, if they wanted to, see that the config had been changed vs the way it left the factory.

However, Tesla upgrades stuff themselves in the field all the time, such as the AP2->AP3 computer, or adding the homelink garage feature So they don't have a habit of going around and resetting configurations in cars to the way they were built. And the change your shop made is to the gateway config in the car, which is trusted as the ultimate source when you get a software update. So the software updater just sees "matrix headlights" in the gateway, and heads right out and configures all the car software for that, and flat out doesn't care how the car was configured in the factory.

Just a shame that Tesla doesn't let us do this ourselves and requires us to pay $500 for someone to hack this change, when they give us a button right in the service menu to do other changes that are identical technically.

 

[MP3Mike]

They changed the actual configuration of the car in the same way Tesla would, and it's no different than if the car came from the factory with matrix.

But Tesla also maintains the as left the factory configuration on their servers, and they have been known to reach into vehicles and reset the configuration to match that. (They have a "Teleforce" bot that handles that.) Will they do that for the lights? It doesn't appear that they currently do, but they could.

 

[carbonzhp]

Could you share the shop that did the coding? Thanks

 

[gearchruncher]

Last paragraph of the post three posts up.

 

[Durzel]

I asked this question specifically. They changed the actual configuration of the car in the same way Tesla would, and it's no different than if the car came from the factory with matrix. The way they described it to me (and hopefully I am repeating it correctly), is my car rolled in with errors that the hardware configuration and firmware of the left and right headlights did not match the car's programmed configuration. They connected to the car and changed the configuration of the car to tell it the "global headlights" are installed, rebooted the car and now the installed hardware matches the car's configuration. Over the air software updates will not affect the revised configuration of the car.

The confirmation for me that they did the configuration correctly was the fact that the headlights perform all of their typical functions plus the car displays "Tesla" during the lightshow and both the in-car and Tesla app visualizations now display my car with the darker projector lights.

The company that did the work is EV's Republic in Rancho Cordova (Sacramento) CA. I worked with Micah. (Feel free to tell them Ken sent you.)

Care to share a ballpark of what they charged you? I'm in the UK so can't use them anyway, but I've had programming quotes of ~$500 or more, which is quite a bitter pill to swallow.

 

[terranx]

But Tesla also maintains the as left the factory configuration on their servers, and they have been known to reach into vehicles and reset the configuration to match that. (They have a "Teleforce" bot that handles that.) Will they do that for the lights? It doesn't appear that they currently do, but they could.

I haven't heard of them doing this for anything other than "protected" options (usually paid stuff like autopilot/fsd).

 

[Mrbrock]

In the past, anything done without the upper level of Tesla service programming was reset during softwsre updates. Does this shop have that level access? This was thoroughly described earlier in this thread.

 

[dasn]

I'm also super interested in this as well but, I'm in Australia so I have no idea if any shops here have this kind of access =(

 

[goRt]

In the past, anything done without the upper level of Tesla service programming was reset during softwsre updates. Does this shop have that level access? This was thoroughly described earlier in this thread.

Here we go again, evidence your false assertion, for years you asserted that the lights could not be made to work as hardware was required, now this

 

[Mrbrock]

Here we go again, evidence your false assertion, for years you asserted that the lights could not be made to work as hardware was required, now this

I have previously admitted that the upper level service can do this and the retrofit is possible with some possible future issues. I am unaware of anyone doing this without an actual Tesla employee doing the configuration change. Why do you insist on continuing this by putting words in my mouth that I didn't say or intend to say? I just want to verify that this third party has access to upper level Tesla service credentials as has been previously confirmed by you and others to work.

 

[terranx]

In the past, anything done without the upper level of Tesla service programming was reset during softwsre updates. Does this shop have that level access? This was thoroughly described earlier in this thread.

This was speculated, but refuted by people in the know including Green. There is no evidence that Tesla goes around resetting these things during software updates.

 

[cdswm3]

I did this for a few reasons. NHTSA issued a rule last year that finally allows use of adaptive headlights in the U.S. There's still a certification process for OEMs, but this was one large hurdle in getting there. There has been a number of news articles lately, one of which I will link here, that seems to indicate some momentum towards activating matrix functions to reduce the blinding effect of modern headlights. I see Tesla as one of the most likely to activate these functions since they are the best at OTA updates. I wanted to have these lights up and running before the demand for coding them raises prices. Even w/o the matrix function working, the Tesla reflector headlights receive a "acceptable" score from NHTSA while the matrix projectors get a "good" rating, the highest the scale goes. LINK.

I found a set of nice condition lights for a little under $400. (I can recoup much of that by selling my perfect condition PPF'd reflector lights.). Coding was $500. I'll be out $600 or so after selling my lights, and for perspective, the HID headlight option on my Mercedes was $900, so I feel it was worth it. I also like the darker housing, just looks more modern. While having your lights coded you can pay to have other things like the trailer tow mode activated.

That coding may disappear one day after a software update. Good luck.