Tesla’s holiday update is scheduled to arrive soon. Whether it’ll start this week or the last week of December is anyone’s guess, but it shouldn’t be too long now.
Let's take a look at the last installment of our Christmas wish list, which covers charging and FSD features. We recently covered the features we’d love to see added to the Tesla app and to Tesla’s infotainment system.
Also, be sure to check out features that we believe may make it into this year’s holiday update.
Charging & Safety
Let’s start off with a look at all the ways Tesla could improve the charging experience, which they’ve already done a lot of this year, from Fleet Cards to Dynamic Pricing and Live Availability to Accessibility, as well as the big kicker — 500kW charging. Tesla even added new charging visualizations.
Supercharger Virtual Queue
With the Supercharger network opening up to NACS and non-NACS equipped vehicles, high-traffic stations are getting busier than ever. Tesla has already put together an internal pilot for Supercharger queuing, and it is supposed to make its way to public testing sometime in Q4 2025. This is a feature we’d love to see arrive before the Holiday rush.
Manual Battery Preconditioning
As it stands today, you can only precondition your vehicle battery for fast charging by selecting a Tesla Supercharger or an approved third-party fast charger. However, sometimes you need to go to one that’s not available on Tesla navigation or not approved to Tesla’s stringent requirements, and having the ability to manually precondition would be a big benefit for road trips.
Expanding V2H and V2L
Tesla introduced PowerShare Vehicle to Home (V2H) and Vehicle to Load (V2L) with the Cybertruck. Now, the Model Y Performance will be arriving with some basic V2L capabilities, but we’d like to see Tesla give some more attention to this feature, especially as many competitors offer both V2H and V2L on their full EV lineups.
Getting power out of your vehicle’s battery would be an easy win.
Blind Spot Indication with Ambient Lighting
Tesla has begun to include ambient lighting in every one of its new vehicles, from the refreshed Model Y to the refreshed Model S and Model X. Integrating ambient lighting with safety features such as Blind Spot Indication would be a great step forward in clarity. Tesla has begun integrating ambient lighting into many features, including Santa Mode and Rainbow Road.
As it stands, the single red LED in the speakers barely suffices as an effective indicator for a vehicle in your blind spot.
Always Display Alternative Routes
Navigation currently defaults to one route, generally the fastest to your destination. Displaying greyed-out alternative routes on the Navigation Map, as Apple and Google Maps do, gives drivers a better sense of how much faster or slower a different route is.
FSD, Autopilot, and Maps
With the launch of V13 and the subsequent launch of V14, FSD has come a very long way in just a year - not to mention Robotaxi being deployed in two major US cities. V14.2 is already out and going to customer vehicles, so progress here has been quite rapid.
Features like Mad Max Mode and Start from Park have been major highlights of 2025 - and we imagine there’s even more coming in the near future.
Cross-Fleet Communication
Tesla’s fleet gathers millions of miles of data every day. If there is a hazard, such as a pothole, a road closure, or anything else, the fleet should take it into account. In fact, it was originally one of the planned features for FSD V12.5, but never really arrived.
Having vehicles communicate with the rest of the fleet will help to improve map data and ensure routing is done faster than ever.
User-Defined Routes
Beyond that, FSD itself is brilliant, but often a stubborn driver. The ability to “teach” your car a preferred route for a daily commute would be a massive quality-of-life upgrade. If I always take a certain gate to get into work, after a few corrections, FSD should learn and emulate that behaviour, rather than requiring a takeover every morning.
FSD-Based Autopilot
It’s high time to retire the legacy Autopilot stack for everyone. The fluid, neural-network behaviour of FSD needs to become the standard for Basic Autopilot - increased safety, better spatial understanding, and increased smoothness.
Autopilot should be a subset of FSD, essentially FSD with limited functionality. Users could then upgrade from Autopilot to FSD to receive auto lane changes, city navigation, and more.
Better Actually Smart Summon
Actually Smart Summon was a huge leap over Smart Summon, but it can still be jerky in busy parking lots, and relies on an older stack of FSD. What we need is BASS — Better A.S.S. That means higher confidence, better decision-making, and more range - pulled from recent improvements from both FSD V13 and V14.
And Actually Smart Summon for Cybertruck. The last missing feature for the Cybertruck to achieve parity with the rest of Tesla’s fleet is Actually Smart Summon and Basic Summon. Bringing full capabilities to Tesla’s halo vehicle would be a fantastic gift for owners who have been waiting for two years while trying to squeeze into a tight parking spot.
Autoshift for All
Autoshift is a fantastic feature, but it's only partially implemented across Tesla’s fleet. Some newer vehicles have full support, while others, like the Cybertruck, have partial support. Many users would also love to see Autoshift added to older vehicles with a stalk, as that was the original plan.
Banish
This is the holy grail and Hail Mary feature. Have FSD pull up to a store, you get out, and your car autonomously disappears to park itself, waiting for you to summon it back. Elon has previously said that FSD v14.3 will include the last big piece for autonomy… and we’re hoping it is Banish.
User-Contributed Map Data
FSD is only as good as its understanding of the world, and Tesla’s maps have always been an area where they’ve lagged. Users need a mechanism to flag map errors directly from the screen, whether it be incorrect speed limits, non-existent turn lanes, or outdated intersection layouts.
Trust the fleet and users to curate the maps, similar to how Google and Apple crowdsource map corrections.
FSD Tow Mode
Currently, when a driver enables Tow Mode, it disables most driver-assistance features on the vehicle. With the Cybertruck being such a capable hauler, we hope to see an FSD profile calibrated for towing, including accounting for the increased stopping distance, turn radius, and trailer sway.
While you can just not turn on Tow Mode with FSD V14, it doesn’t take into account stopping distances and can lead to unsafe situations.
Release Date
In the last couple of years, Tesla has started rolling out the holiday update in the first week of December. It’s possible we'll see the update this week, but if so, it’ll be to a small percentage of vehicles.
In the meantime, check out our other wish lists that include features such as the rumored CarPlay, improved visualizations, Steam gaming, Android Wear support, FSD Stats for the Tesla app and other app features.
