Tesla

• Tesla’s Holiday Update brings several useful features to owners this year.
• Among them, 3D Supercharger maps and snapshots of your dog when you’re away from the car.
• The Dashcam app also gets a nice update, with more data integrated in the video player.

Every year, Tesla flexes its software might, delivering a big software update to its vehicles. Sometimes, it’s full of gimmicks, and other times, the improvements are genuinely useful. This year, it’s a mix of both, but it shows that the American company is still ahead of the competition when it comes to software.

Our own Patrick George said that the updated Tesla Model Y is still the iPhone of cars, and this year’s Holiday Update proves him right. The headlining features include periodic snapshots of the vehicle’s cabin popping up on the owner’s iPhone when Dog Mode is active, together with live updates on temperature, battery and climate conditions.

Then, there’s the really cool 3D Supercharger maps, which show the driver real-time information about the available charging stalls. In fairness, the feature is being tested at just 18 stations currently, but that number is bound to increase if Tesla sees that plenty of people find it useful.

Grok, the artificial intelligence bot, can now add edit and edit navigation destinations through voice commands, making it easier to make adjustments without having to tap the screen. That said, drivers will have to touch the display if they want to reorder the favorites and set their Home or Work locations by tapping anywhere on the map—a feature that has been included in this update.

Another neat improvement is the ability to set charging limits based on the car’s location. The setting is applied automatically when the car is parked and it will be remembered for the next charging session. This is particularly useful for people who charge at several locations during the day, such as ride hailing drivers–they might want close to a full battery when they start their shift in the morning, but might want to keep that charge lower during the day at certain fast chargers to limit battery degradation.

The Dashcam Viewer app, which is exactly what the name suggests, gets new information with this latest update. After installing the newest software, owners can see details like speed, steering angle and the state of the car’s advanced driving assistance systems overlaid on the footage recorded by the various cameras installed on the vehicle. This can be very helpful for those who are trying to prove that they didn’t cause an accident.

There are also a few silly but entertaining new features, like a Santa Mode, which shows the car as Santa’s sleigh on the central touchscreen, along with festive snowmen and Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot. Owners can also apply custom virtual wraps and license plates to their cars, and turn take selfies from inside their Tesla, complete with filters, stickers and emojis.

The car will chime a few seconds after the doors close if a phone key is inside the cabin or a phone is left on the wireless charger and there’s nobody inside. Speaking of the wireless charger, it can now be enabled or disabled. And drivers who have access to HOV carpool lanes can tell the car to automatically select the right lane depending on time, location, passenger count and road restrictions.

These are just the latest additions to a software suite that is already very well thought out, and it will be interesting to see if they’re enough to convince buyers to buy a new Tesla, now that the $7,500 federal tax credit is out of the picture.