New update 2021.44.25 adds customizable app launcher like Model S refresh plus other major upgrades to system.

[BuzzinAround]

Not entirely sure to be honest. It’s more gray than black. I feel like the old night mode was darker/black. Here’s a pic. This lighter version feels more useable during the day...otherwise not much difference.

Ahh I see you have the same issue I am having!

How many people see their previous vehicle notifications (ex. Sentry, charging, etc.) faded right below their vehicles icons on the left of the screen? I can't find any way to access or clear them. See KRG21's picture as an example. My guess is this is a bug?

 

[PhantomX]

My main issue isn’t the updated graphical interface, it’s the user experience and functional design. I like the customizable menu and some of the new design elements. However, I really don’t like how they make it more difficult to perform important and/or safety related functions, such as windshield defroster, dash cam, or tire pressure monitoring. I don’t understand why browser can be added as a shortcut in the customizable menu whereas defroster and driver profile cannot? Also, functionally, why should a tap on the wiper button on the left stalk cancel the blind spot camera, especially knowing their auto wiper function isn’t very robust. I think it’s fair to say that these are items that make people frustrated, not necessary just the fact that the interface looks different.

 

[Needsdecaf]

I had a great delivery experience, and have (so far) never needed any service. I was exceedingly happy with the car and with Tesla until the 2020 holiday update. The last year of software has really turned me off of the brand and the ownership experience. There is no excuse for a car company not taking seriously the operation of safety-critical controls in their cars, or in making frequently needed things more difficult to use. At this moment there is no way in hell I would buy another Tesla (or recommend one to a friend) even though it is the best car I have ever driven. It would be very easy for them to win me back, just show any effort whatsoever toward driver-focused design in their UI, and some sense that the needs and preferences of owners are being catered to.

Yup. This is exactly it for me. The 2020 holiday release and subsequent lack of updates after that clearly pointed the way that Tesla was focused on FSD uber alles, and the UI clearly reflects that. There should be divergent paths at this point. A UI specifically for FSD and one without. Some of us love actually driving our Teslas, not riding in them, and we don’t really appreciate having to work harder to do so.

This is definitely not just about “I don’t like change“. It’s about “why make it harder to use while driving”. And it’s definitely not because we dislike the cars or company and like to complain. It’s actually quite the opposite.

 

[jabloomf1230]

But on to the bad. The waypoints implementation is clunky, even though one can now edit a trip and rearrange individual waypoints. My main hope for the waypoint option was to be able to create better routing. Unfortunately, if I add a waypoint to assure that the navigation takes a route through a specific waypoint, it tends to go around the block in a convoluted fashion rather than taking a straight path through the waypoint. This seems like this is an artifact of the implementation. I'm guessing that it just "glues" two completely separate trips together. That would be great if I delivered mail for the post office I suppose.

I want to update my thoughts on this. The trick is to pick the intermediate waypoint(s) carefully. With some experimentation, I have been able to create acceptable alternate routes. Now if the nav system would allow saving of complete routes, that would be even better.

 

[Trilodroid]

Regarding #4, I saw a screenshot of that ribbon on the Model Y forum and there is a note explaining that the items on that ribbon have been moved to the control menu. So it is not a depiction of a new quick menu, just pointing out that those items are in a new (harder to find) location.

This ribbon needs to be all over twitter with the caption of “Best new secret UI feature” to get Elon’s attention since it is not accessible or functional. Enough people talk about it maybe they’ll add it in later.

 

[Trilodroid]

Yup. This is exactly it for me. The 2020 holiday release and subsequent lack of updates after that clearly pointed the way that Tesla was focused on FSD uber alles, and the UI clearly reflects that. There should be divergent paths at this point. A UI specifically for FSD and one without. Some of us love actually driving our Teslas, not riding in them, and we don’t really appreciate having to work harder to do so.

This is definitely not just about “I don’t like change“. It’s about “why make it harder to use while driving”. And it’s definitely not because we dislike the cars or company and like to complain. It’s actually quite the opposite.

These complaints are legit. Tesla has been moving way too much towards automatic everything, and there needs to be a non-auto mode for everything from non-adaptive cruise (for curvy 2 way roads that trigger phantom braking) to giving us actual control over the UI.

I live in a hot state, so moving heated seats away from accidental touches (and then triple tap to turn off… that was a pain) is good for me 10 months out of the year, but if you live in Scandanavia, Canada, Oregon… you surely want the things front and center for a big part of the year.

Tesla absolutely needs a non-FSD UI option. 40% of the screen for something you shouldnt be looking at is crazy. All my buttons I need to tap are further from my reach and vision because of the car visualization.

 

[Trilodroid]

My complains. :

1.- Ridiculous as it sounds you are now forced to open a screen covering the entire map/navigation info if you want to see the odometer (or energy consumption) in real time while driving. And that's on a car with a 15" screen. The trip info card was so nice... I can't believe it's gone. I used it literally all the time.

2.- You need to open a menu to see what the current driver profile is, if the dashcam is active or if the heated seats are engaged. Previously you could do that at a glance on the main screen. Not the end of the world but it was better before the upgrade nonetheless.

3.- They removed most of the shortcut buttons not related to streaming. Like Bluetooth, WiFi, Homelink, heated seats, front and rear defrost... This is an inconvenience but it's fairly minor in my opinion, mainly because now you can open the HVAC settings very easily with a swipe up. Having said that, the new temperature quick menu (for quick access to defrost and heated seats) is not as useful as it should because it only shows up when you actually change the temperature which is silly.

#1 is yeah, just not making sense. I have hope they’ll add it back… they have to, seriously.

#2 agreed other than my previous comments on heated seat accidental activations.

#3 I think you can manually move bluetooth to the bottom menu. I sort of am ok with the quick temp me u except for the glaring Safety hazard number 99: I wish front defrost could be added to the bottom menu because around here in the winter it is common to run into a patch of air that instantly (and I really mean instantly) fogs up the front windscreen if you dont have the AC on. And why would I want my AC on in my EV in the winter by default?

 

[Trilodroid]

One more follow up post after driving for 3-4 hours with the Dec update…

1. Hating the lack of touch, hold, and drag up and down to resize music. I would always use this to switch from bigger music menus to a halfscreen to see traffic on the map to seeing my full nav screen in order to see expected battery at arrival and if it is changing due to current speeds / AC use / etc. Now I have to cycle through 3 levels of sizes and that is trash compared to before. I still think I like swipe up for AC controls but… I’d rather a swipe down for AC and keep the old music hold and drag options from the bottom.

2. Renewed my streaming service (before it expires in a couple days) and rebooted as instructed. Now dont have traffic visualizations. Temp Bug? I still have satellite visualizations.

3. Phone screen still laggy and annoying. Top tabs dont register half the time, and since the only useful screen (favorites) refuses to save as default, I am forced to hit the tabs at the top multiple times. So here is my life… tap phone icon I moved to menu, good,… now it shows recent calls, bad, now tap top tab to switch to favorites three times before it registers, really bad, now click on big contact name …. nope doesnt refister, now click on phone number under contact name. This is terrible. In my old Infiniti I clicked a button on the steering wheel, and could pick my favorites from the steering buttons without even looking (hey were in the same place unlike recent calls, and it even read contact names to you if you forgot) or I could touch the screen. Tesla speech recognitio… sure I can sometimes use speech to get a phone contact, but I refuse to reorganize a dozen contacts so speech brings them up in one click. I dont want to separate one contact into three phone numbers… nor do I want to rename all Johns to something unique. Who doesnt have over 1000 contacts these days?

4. AC manual fan controls not nearly as good as hoped. Buttons too small, so even though you can (afte swipe up) try to one tap to get the fan speed you want, you will ALWAYS get the wrong speed. Polestar’s big fat buttons for fan speed are way way better, graduated, and you can’t miss.

5. Many many other things are too small and not click friendly. Split for AC. Dropdown midscreen for switching between music apps.

6. Not having driver profiles, dashcam, etc. easily accessible seems bad.

7. AC temperature at bottom is buggy. Sometimes when turning down the temp with one tap on colder arrow, it instead increased temp by one rather than decreasing by one. I suspect it sometimes reads taps as a hold and slide to the right.

8. I want my odometer, trip, tire pressure one click away!

 

[Zacster]

My wife's biggest complaint about the old interface was finding things and having to click through to get them. Now it is even worse. Settings can be a few clicks away but basic interface items should not and I don't think they've distinguished enough between them. As far as I'm concerned the games and toys could just go away too and yet they seem to spend more time on those than on basics.

 

[malou]

I don't get the fixation with constantly checking tire pressure and odometer? I'm must be the one happy they move the tire pressure in a more logical place.

 

[evannole]

I don't get the fixation with constantly checking tire pressure and odometer? I'm must be the one happy they move the tire pressure in a more logical place.

Having the odometer/trip computer handy is very useful for me. How long is my commute taking (or did it take) today? Is this alternate route I've tried actually faster than what I usually see when going from A to B? How long have we been going on the current leg of our road trip, and are we about due for a rest stop? What's our energy consumption look like on this leg? (Yes, also available on the energy view, but that means another touch of the screen.)

As for the tire pressures, I am less upset about those, but I still find having them in the cards display useful. They're only worth reading when the tires are cold, so sometimes I will exit the car and leave the tire display up, so I can check it as soon as I get in the car on my next trip, with the tires cold. Since the display is already up, it's more likely that I'll remember to glance at them before I've gone a mile or two, at which point it's really too late. With the tire pressures now buried in the service menu, I doubt that I could do that with the new UI.

 

[Needsdecaf]

I don't get the fixation with constantly checking tire pressure and odometer? I'm must be the one happy they move the tire pressure in a more logical place.

Yah, I don’t mind those moving either. It’s the loss of the trip card that is the big loser from that location, IMO. I had it open constantly to check consumption.

 

[luckyy]

For you personally, what does it make better or easier to do vs the previous UI (especially while driving)?

It's hard to say yet, it is certainly taking some getting used to. But I've only driven one short ride since the firmware, as we had a winter ice storm, so I stayed in for the weekend. I'll have some time with it this week to decide if I like the UI changes or not, in regards to driving, as I usually do about 80miles/day in my commute.

 

[Sporty]

On my PLAID S I use the scroll wheel to adjust wiper speed/mode after pressing the wipe button on the yoke. Easy Not Buried. No touching screen at all.

View attachment 747393View attachment 747394

Is that the left wheel? That’s volume control on the 3. How do you control the volume? It would be great if the wheels were setable. I could easily see myself switching out the AP wheel for wipers in rainy weather.

 

[Sporty]

Genuinely curious what the hoopla is regarding wipers and headlights. I’ve left mine in auto since day one and have never manually turned them on/off. If I want to manually trigger them to clean the windshield I use the stalk. They come on automatically when needed, how is a button baked into the UI (which could freeze/fail in extenuating circumstances ) critical? Same with the lights.

Auto goes nuts in light rain / mist. Starts the wipers… ok fine. A moment later let’s try faster… wait we must have the fastest speed possible needed for downpours eventhough it’s a mist and I’m sitting at a stop light.

I have never been able to leave the wipers in auto for a full drive. They always go too fast.

Ken

 

[Sporty]

I love when people sit in their lounge chair, and say it’s super simple and easy to create a usable UI for these applications, and that all the company needs to do is listen to me, and everything will be great.
Maybe you can share a link to a super easy usable UI you programmed and designed, so we can see how it’s supposed to be done.
Lol

That shouldn’t discount feedback. I’m not saying they didn’t do a good job, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be better. Or that people whom don’t have the expertise to do what they have done don’t have valid points. The best results require listening and picking out the good ideas.

 

[john5520]

I don't get the fixation with constantly checking tire pressure and odometer? I'm must be the one happy they move the tire pressure in a more logical place.

True. I liked having the tire pressure monitor card on the screen, but the fact of the matter is, I only paid attention to it once in a while. At the end of the day, it didn't need to be on constantly and is fine where it's at now. With that said, the ability to place it somewhere on the screen if I wanted to would be nice. Hopefully as time goes by, we'll get more customization options.

As for the AC and other comfort settings, I set those even before driving off. I may make an adjustment or 2 if it's a long trip, but not enough to be a bother.

The point made about the FSD visualization screen taking up too much screen space is a good one, IMO. There should be an option to resize it to a minimum that's still safe while using autopilot and to adjust or turn it off completely when autopilot is not in use.

 

[Sporty]

Unfortunately I think the 3rd party CAN bus add-on makers (like S3XY buttons) really need to step up their game for people like us. Not a great solution, but it is not like we are gonna get any progress from Tesla.

That’s interesting! I wonder if it would be possible to build a controller for the wiper settings (speed, on/off) .. maybe mount a small control just off the bottom of the display on driver side.

Does anyone have good links on the M3 can bus usage?

 

[AZ Tim]

I just installed 2021.44.25 and there is one thing I am happy with, and several I don't like.

I like being able to add waypoints and easily re-order them. That said:

The odometer cards disappearing from the bottom of the driving visualization panel is a big gripe for me. Even worse, is that the trip odometers no longer display 1/10s of a mile. I want my 1/10s back! I don't like having the odometers cover the navigation panel. I used the trip odos all the time.

The tire pressure panel is not as big a deal to me. I would check it, then go back to the odo cards.

I also am not happy about the wiper button disappearing, and having to access wiper controls through the button on the stalk or a menu.

Fan speed control - not so good.

I see one real improvement and several annoying digressions.

If I could go back to my previous software version, I definitely would.

 

[smogne41]

That’s interesting! I wonder if it would be possible to build a controller for the wiper settings (speed, on/off) .. maybe mount a small control just off the bottom of the display on driver side.

Does anyone have good links on the M3 can bus usage?

The S3XY button people have wipers on their 'coming soon' list, but I don't know how far along it is. I am starting to get tempted to start messing with this as well, I just can't count on Tesla to provide sensible controls for anything anymore. I have started to collect hardware to get CAN bus access, but I have not personally done any CAN bus hacking before (but have a fair amount of other electronics experience). I do know that one major limitation of any of these 3rd party CAN bus solutions is that any commands you issue or settings you change will not be reflected on the center screen (but honestly with less and less being shown on the screen anymore this is less of an issue ).

I have not used it yet obviously, but in my searching I have found this rather complete looking .dbc file containing CAN for Model 3/Y that you can use with various tools:

GitHub - joshwardell/model3dbc: DBC file for Tesla Model 3 CAN messages

DBC file for Tesla Model 3 CAN messages. Contribute to joshwardell/model3dbc development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com