People are just starting to get the update to their Tesla models, bringing the software up to 2020.48.26. This is a fairly substantial update, with interface improvements. But the newsmaker here is you can now control what the external pedestrian speaker does.
Fart Mode outside
When the vehicle is in park, you can now tell the Emissions Testing Mode app to play noises on the outside speaker.
When you activate the fart, it’ll play on both the inside speaker as well as the outside speaker.
To hear it in action, because it’s pretty loud, check out this TikTok video we took.
@chad.kirchner Fart mode now works when parked on the outside speaker. #tesla #flatulence #update #model3
Replacing pedestrian warning spaceship sound
If you open the new Boombox app in the Toolbox, you can do some pretty interesting things when the vehicle is in park, and when you are driving the vehicle.
When in park only, you can select a new sound to be played when you press the horn button.
For the driving sound, you can select a new sound that’ll play when you’re driving. It plays both inside the vehicle and outside, though you can lower the volume inside.
In this video here on TikTok, we are driving around with the Carnival sound activated. It sounds like we’re a roaming circus.
@chad.kirchner With Tesla update 2020.48.26 you can change the pedestrian speaker to play other things. Here the circus is coming to town. #tesla #model3 #update
You can also make the same changes to the sound that is played when you are using Summon or Smart Summon for the vehicle, though we didn’t try it.
When you are playing one of these sounds, you won’t be able to play other audio through the audio system, at least it didn’t seem like we were able to. Additionally, you can load your own audio via USB drive to the car to play, but we haven’t had a chance to do that yet or see if there are limitations.
Add feature to older Tesla models
Will it be possible to add the external speaker to older Tesla models? Apparently Elon Musk looking into the possibility.
New voice commands
We aren’t sure the extent of all the new voice commands, but in trying to record a video of the new animations from the vehicle infotainment, we noticed that you can open both the trunk and the frunk using voice commands.
New user interface experience
The graphics of the infotainment have changed significantly with this update. This includes a new view of the car when parked, moving warning lights to the left side of the screen (in left hand drive markets), and improved animations.
Overall, we like the changes we see. Who knows whether some of these audio changes are even legal, so it’s possibly they’ll get pulled in a future update.
But it’s a fun little holiday present to play with, and one of the advantages of proving frequent over-the-air updates to cars.
Updated (3:35pm EST, 12/27/2020): Added a link with Musk discussing adding the pedestrian speaker to older models.
