I am wondering, what happens with the head light when you drive from UK to Europe? Do the headlights adjust automatically? Will the car know to overtake on the left?
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What happens when you drive from UK to Europe? Headlight? Self drive overtaking?
- Thread starter RichardTheKing
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At least on model S, the headlight beam is not particularly biased against left or right so you don't need to perform any changes to the headlights. As for overtaking, the car will adjust to the country you are in automatically.
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New Model 3 [matrix] Headlights - adjust for LHD countries?
With my 2019 model 3, common advice was that the headlight beam was “flat” and didn’t need adjusting when driving on the right side of the road. I drove on the Continent with this car on a few trips in the “before times” and never had much of an issue and without any sort of adjustments. With...
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I've had no issues with my 20 reg M3 driving in France or Spain, albeit a lot of daylight driving doesn't provide much experience re: headlight problems
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Cardo
Active Member
The 2021 matrix headlights have a very pronounced bias towards the nearside. I can see how they would be a nuisance when driving on the ”wrong“ side.New Model 3 [matrix] Headlights - adjust for LHD countries?
With my 2019 model 3, common advice was that the headlight beam was “flat” and didn’t need adjusting when driving on the right side of the road. I drove on the Continent with this car on a few trips in the “before times” and never had much of an issue and without any sort of adjustments. With...
I've had no issues with my 20 reg M3 driving in France or Spain, albeit a lot of daylight driving doesn't provide much experience re: headlight problems
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I drove about 800 miles at night on the continent with pre-matrix lights, was flashed once, can't assume it was because of the angle or brightness of my lights though.
Autopilot felt a lot more sure of itself compared to using it in the UK. In particular when overtaking lorries, the visualisation showed the lorries move away from your car rather than towards your car. Didn't incur any phantom braking.
The car knew where you were and all driving aids adjusted to driving on the right. Handily, it's very easy to change the display to KM.
Autopilot felt a lot more sure of itself compared to using it in the UK. In particular when overtaking lorries, the visualisation showed the lorries move away from your car rather than towards your car. Didn't incur any phantom braking.
The car knew where you were and all driving aids adjusted to driving on the right. Handily, it's very easy to change the display to KM.
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Depends on your car. In my non matrix 2019 SR+, nothing. The beam was flat and I had no problem in France or anywhere else on the continent. The models with the matrix headlights are a different story. Big bias to the left (light much higher) and was getting flashed non stop. I had to pull over and manually play the guessing game to get them balanced the opposite way (and then had to repeat in the Uk on return). Took them to Tesla who recalibrated them and they came back with the original left bias.
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My UK MY is ordered and I will spend 4 to 6 month in Europe with the car. Do you know if the UK MY will have matrix headlight?
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AutomaticMan
Member
Just resurrecting this thread, any newer info? I’m currently on a ferry to Dieppe and my Model 3 is sleeping peacefully on the car deck below. I thought I had read in the manual that my lights will automatically change the beam pattern for driving on the right when I get to France, but reading this thread makes me now wonder whether I dreamt that? Guess I’ll be annoying many of our French friends as I drive from the ferry terminal to my hotel in the dark tonight!! 
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Masklin
Member
Just resurrecting this thread, any newer info? I’m currently on a ferry to Dieppe and my Model 3 is sleeping peacefully on the car deck below. I thought I had read in the manual that my lights will automatically change the beam pattern for driving on the right when I get to France, but reading this thread makes me now wonder whether I dreamt that? Guess I’ll be annoying many of our French friends as I drive from the ferry terminal to my hotel in the dark tonight!!
This is what the online manual says…
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AutomaticMan
Member
Thanks! I was sure I read that. But posts further up the thread suggest it doesn’t actually work? Maybe a bug they’ve since fixed?
I haven’t had a chance to test my beam pattern against a wall since I’ve been here, but I’ve had no headlight flashes from annoyed French people thus far so I’ll assume it’s ok I think!
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I was driving during 1 month in April in France and I did not have any issue with the headlight. The only issue I have had that was the map was not updated straight away and the Tesla Map show me driving in UK instead of France. This was not good because the car wasn't recognised anything and beeping all the time. Hopefully I have used my Google map during that time and disable the sound, It took 24 hours for Tesla to sort out that issue. When I drove back in UK. Same issue but only for 20 mn. Very strange .....
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AutomaticMan
Member
Nope, still broken. The low beam pattern kicks up on the left. Many annoyed French drivers flashed their headlights at me on my drive along country roads this evening!
Bit dangerous really, the manual saying things that aren’t true like that. I might have bought one of those beam blanking stickers people used to get in the olden days before my trip otherwise.
Bit dangerous really, the manual saying things that aren’t true like that. I might have bought one of those beam blanking stickers people used to get in the olden days before my trip otherwise.
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WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
Are they correctly adjusted? I had a lot of trouble with alignment of my M3 headlights - software updates mucking up the alignment.
As a workaround: it is possible to (manually) adjust them down (in the way that used to be possible to adjust for load in people carriers etc)
As a workaround: it is possible to (manually) adjust them down (in the way that used to be possible to adjust for load in people carriers etc)
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you can but the new matrix ones are so flat on the ‘road’ part and so kicked up on the ‘pavement’ part that you’d have very little road lit up if you adjusted them to avoid annoying oncoming cars.
I’m surprised its so high - its lovely for single lane roads but even in the UK its annoying if a modern tesla is in the lane to your right overtaking for example - shines right through your rear window.
Also with the matrix the entire point of the marketing spiel for them is that one unit can handle all country’s legal requirements. And they will be the same unit installed in French/EU cars and just the software saying ‘lights point that way’. So it should be a pretty simple fix and my guess is its the US-centric engineers not considering situations where you might take your car to a country where you need to change the lights.
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This is strange, I did not have any flash from the french drivers, but to be fair I did drive during the night but not too much.
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This is 100% my experience. Completely different from the flat ones in my 2019 SR+. My 2021 3 and 2022 Y both have the new style and both have the kick that is impossible to get rid of. Extremely frustrating.
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Do you happen to remember what kind of adjustment you settled for in the end? Was it just something like lower left (+higher right) or did you have to play with the center alignment as well? Dreading the trip to the continent with my model Y, and thinking whether the stickers would be more useful (although that would be a guessing game of a different kind).
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