Tesla Matrix Headlight Support Arrives in the U.S. and Canada With Update 2024.20 (2024)

Tesla has been on a roll with updates recently, and now update 2024.20 was released to employees over the weekend. This update builds on the many features in the Spring Update and adds a few big improvements.

Update: Matrix Support in the US & Canada

Tesla recently tweeted that update 2024.20 is now rolling out to vehicles - and they included some surprises in this tweet. This update includes Adaptive Headlights for the United States and Canada! North America will receive matrix headlight support, including the curve adaption feature discussed below. South Korea and Puerto Rico will also gain the feature.

However, Europe and possibly other regions also receive an additional matrix headlight feature — the ability to illuminate further on highways.

Tesla also shed some light on what’s included in the hot weather improvements. All Model 3s and Ys, as well as refresh Model S and X’s will now cool down faster in hot temperatures. They will also better regulate high-voltage battery temperature for improved Supercharging performance. The Cybertruck in particular will also benefit from a quieter AC.

The full list of improvements in update 2024.20 is discussed below.

Adaptive Headlights

New updates to Adaptive Headlights are arriving for European cars with matrix headlights. The new update allows the headlights to adapt to curves in the road ahead of you, enabling better illumination. Having the adaptive headlights work for curves is the second major update for matrix headlights. Update 2024.8 added adaptive high-beam support, letting your high beams stay on longer by turning off select LEDs in the headlights.

Update 2024.2 first brought adaptive high beams to the new Model 3, before it was later introduced to older vehicles with matrix headlights. At this time, it’s not clear whether the improvements to headlights around curves will be exclusive to matrix headlights or also support the new Model 3.

How to Tell If You Have Matrix Headlights

How do you know if you have matrix headlights on your Tesla? On the outer edge of the headlight, there will be a large, round projector dome, like in the image below. If there isn’t a dome, those are standard non-matrix headlights.
Another way to tell is to run a stock light show while facing a wall. If the Tesla logo, in letters, pops up, you have matrix headlights.

For now, North America still does not have adaptive headlight support, mostly due to legislative and testing issues in the United States. The US recently approved adaptive headlights, and a Tesla employee mentioned they’re working on it. Canada has legalized adaptive headlights since 2018, so we see this deployed in North America at some point in the future.

Supercharger Races on Beach Buggy Racing 2

Tesla is still improving its Arcade functionality, with the addition of local leaderboards at Superchargers in Beach Buggy Racing 2. It appears that each individual Supercharger site will have its own leaderboard, which drivers can compete on while their cars charge. Tesla says there will also be special races to compete in this Beach Buggy Racing 2 update.

Tesla owners can plug in and play with a controller, the touchscreen, or their vehicle’s steering wheel. Thanks to steer-by-wire on the Cybertruck, the actual wheels on the truck won’t move like they do on other Tesla models when playing the game.

We continue to hope that future refreshes to the S, 3, X, and Y will eventually receive steer-by-wire as well, as the feature has quite a few unique uses, whether driving or parked.

Autopilot Strikes and Suspension

An updated Autopilot Strike system, similar to the one that is on Tesla’s upcoming FSD V12.4 update, is on 2024.20 as well. At five strikes, users will be suspended from the use of Autopilot like before, but now Tesla will remove a strike for each 7-day period the driver goes without receiving a strike.

FSD 12.4 also improves vision-based monitoring and removes the steering wheel nag, but that’s not in this latest Tesla update, but will likely be added in the future.

Tesla tends to release new Autopilot features in their FSD updates before releasing them to the wider public for regular Autopilot use.

Hot Weather Improvements

The last set of user-end improvements coming in 2024.20 will be related to hot weather, the opposite of 2024.2.6’s cold weather update. This set of changes intends to improve AUTO mode HVAC performance in hot weather, helping to cool down the cabin faster, while also maintaining comfort at lower noise levels.

There have been several updates in the last six months to Tesla’s HVAC systems, all helping to deliver a quieter, more comfortable experience, with one of the last major ones introducing cool-down or warm-up periods before blowing air into the car cabin.

Based on an update from a senior ex-GEICO executive on LinkedIn, Allen Laben will now be joining Tesla’s Insurance team in the coming days, with an interesting focus.

Laben, who previously worked at GEICO as Director of Claims Specialty Operations will be taking on the role as Head of Insurance Partnerships at Tesla.

Reducing Costs

One of Laben’s goals is to “lower the total cost of Tesla ownership…”, which is a fairly lofty goal. Tesla’s have notoriously had extremely high repair costs, owing to the low availability of parts, and the tendency for third-party insurance services to total vehicles rather than try to repair them.

Laben intends to reduce these costs by partnering with insurance companies, teams across Tesla, and collision shops in the US and Canada.

Tesla Insurance

Tesla launched Tesla Insurance in 2019 in California and now offers insurance in various US states. In most states, the insurance premium is based on a user’s Safety Score, which uses vehicle metrics to determine how the vehicle was being driven. These metrics included Forward Collision Warnings, hard braking, aggressive turning, unsafe following distances, and harsh braking. They also include the rather controversial night-time driving policy, which Tesla has changed multiple times over the years.

In California, the Safety Score isn’t factored into the insurance rates. However, in other states as of 2021, Safety Score directly correlates to the insurance rates. A higher score results in lower rates, with rates changing month-to-month based on your score.

Tesla Insurance Expansion: Canada and Other States

Given Laben’s goals and words – it may seem that Tesla Insurance could eventually make its way to Canada. Today, navigating to Tesla’s Insurance page on its Canadian site provides a 404 error. Canadian owners are often subject to high rates, with few exemptions.

Having Tesla Insurance in Canada could make a big impact on Canadian Tesla ownership costs, which are driven higher by insurance costs. These same goals and words can also apply to other states – not every US state has access to Tesla Insurance just yet, but Tesla continues to expand.

This morning Elon Musk announced on X that Tesla is releasing FSD v12.4.1 to employees today.

FSD v12.4 was released to employees on May 20th and was expected to go out to Tesla owners the following week. However, it looks like Tesla needed to fix some issues before rolling out the update publicly.

Improvements in FSD v12.4

FSD v12.4 is expected to be a vast improvement over the current version of 12.3.6. According to Musk, it's expected to include:

• Improve comfort by reducing hard braking and acceleration

• Retrained models

• Reduced interventions by a scale of 5-10x

• Removal of the steering wheel nag

• Autopark when arriving at a destination

According to the release notes, there will also be an improved strike system in FSD v12.4. Tesla will start removing a strike for every week that you go without gaining any new strikes.

If you reach five strikes (or three with vehicles without a cabin camera), then you'll still be suspended for a week.

Improved Interventions

Musk previously said that FSD v12.4 will see a big decrease in interventions with Tesla’s estimates being a reduction of 5-10x. In his post today, he talked a little bit about FSD v12.5 and v12.6, saying that it’s getting to the point where interventions may be more than a year apart.

Musk also said that the improvements in v12.4.1 are so big that it should arguably be called v13. Although Musk is known for hyping FSD releases, the list of improvements above does indicate a massive release.

Who's Eligible to Receive FSD v12.4.1

There's a lot of confusion and frustration right now around Tesla branches.

Unfortunately, FSD v12.4 is update 2024.9.5, which means that only users on 2024.8.x and below would be eligible to receive this update. This is why if you're on update 2024.8.9 or 2024.3.25, you haven't been updated to the Spring Update (2024.14). Tesla wants to make sure you are eligible for FSD's latest release.

Since Tesla isn't updating FSD owners in the US and Canada to 2024.14, we expect FSD v12.4.1 to still be based on the 2024.9 branch. So unfortunately it appears that FSD users will have to wait a bit longer for Tesla's beautiful redesign in update 2024.14.

Updated Release Date

Musk also provided a new estimate for the release of FSD v12.4.1 to customers. He stated that if all goes well with the employee release today and during testing the update will start rolling out in a limited fashion to customers this coming weekend. This could mean that we just have to wait a few more days until a lucky few start receiving the latest FSD improvements.