Tesla Adds New Ambient Lighting Options in Update 2024.26.1 (2024)

Tesla recently added ambient accent lighting to several of its vehicles, including the 2024 Model 3 Highland Refresh and the Cybertruck. Additionally, the Model Y in China also received ambient lighting, but this hasn’t come to other regions yet.

The Model S and Model X are also supposed to eventually receive this ambient lighting feature, alongside a rumoured front camera.

New Options for Ambient Lighting

As part of update 2024.26.1, Tesla is adding on to the already great ambient lighting feature. In update 2024.14 Tesla added the ability for the ambient lights to turn red when you enter Service Mode, which is a nice touch.

Now, they’re taking it a step further with update 2024.26.1. You’ll now be able to control the brightness of the ambient lights in the Cybertruck and the 2024 Model 3. Previously, you could adjust the color to whatever you liked, but not how bright they were. The brightness of the lights was directly linked to the brightness of the vehicle display.

Tesla has also added a new “Night Only” option, which turns on the accent lights when conditions outside get dim. This is a nice addition, as while the strips are visible during daytime, in direct-light they’re not very noticeable. While LEDs do last for a considerable amount of time, this could help reduce the wear on the accent lights and let them last longer.

If you want to adjust the brightness or enable the new Night Only mode, you can navigate to Controls, and then look under Lights > Accent Lights. Since this is now uncoupled from the vehicle display brightness, you won’t have to worry about having your display too bright at night.

We’re not quite sure yet whether this applies to the Chinese Model Y with accent lighting, but it should.

We’re happy to see Tesla updating the accent light controls with the ability to adjust the brightness. Next up, we’re hoping to see Tesla change the color of the lights for certain features, such as when there’s a vehicle in your blind spot and perhaps even fun things such as syncing to the music being played.

Tesla added some long-awaited features in update 2024.26.1, which we’ve dubbed the Summer Update, due to the huge amount of new features that have been added.

The update has rolled out to just a small fraction of the fleet, but it’ll continue to roll out to more features in the coming weeks.

Two of the new features in this update have been hotly requested – a Weather Forecast and an Air Quality Index (AQI) indicator. So, let’s take a look at what’s been added.

Weather Forecast

Tesla has added a two-part weather UI to all vehicles in the 2024.26.1 update. The first portion is a forecast preview, located at the top of the screen, next to the current time and current outdoor temperature. There will be an icon that displays the current weather – overcast, cloudy, rainy, sunny, snowing – there should be plenty of preset weather types to see.

The second part is what happens when you tap on that icon or the current temperature. This will display a pop-out menu showing the forecast for the day, including current temperature and conditions, as well as a scrollable hour-by-hour forecast. It’ll also include the chance of rain, humidity, wind (and direction), UV Index, and Air Quality Index information.

Air Quality Index

The Air Quality Index originally came to China a couple of years ago. In China, this information is displayed constantly on the vehicle UI. However, in North America and Europe, the AQI information in the UI is only shown if the AQI is considered “poor” or lower. If it’s below the threshold, it’ll be displayed next to the current temperature in the status bar.

If it’s not being shown, and you want to know what it is – the expanded weather prompt (by touching the weather forecast or temperature icons) – will show the current AQI at the bottom.

The Air Quality Index ranges from 0-500, with a lower number meaning cleaner air. We’re not quite sure how Tesla has categorized them, but the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), defines the AQIs as below:

We haven’t seen the Tesla names for ‘Very Unhealthy’ and ‘Hazardous’, but we’d expect them to be similar.

February 18, 2024