It wouldn’t be a Holiday Update without the feature that started it all: Santa Mode. But for 2025, Tesla improved the entire experience, adding new features and improving existing ones to better match the winter wonderland outside.
The Return of Santa (Optimus)
The biggest change sits right in the driver’s seat. The generic Santa Claus avatar has been retired. In his place sits a festive Santa Optimus, donning the red suit and iconic hat, driving almost every vehicle in the fleet - not just Cybertruck anymore — which has its own unique Santa Mode.
Surprisingly, while the legacy Model S and Model X didn’t list the updated Santa Mode 2.0 in their release notes, they did receive a new batch of features - with the critical exception of Santa Optimus. For those older legacy vehicle owners, you’ve still got Santa Claus driving - but it does include everything else below as well.
New Santa Mode Visuals
The visualization team clearly had a ton of fun with this update, as they extended the holiday cheer to more things on the road itself. The visualization now reimagines mundane street signs and objects as decorations lifted straight from the North Pole. They even add actual falling snowflakes, instead of the previous white blobs.
Speed limit signs now sit atop red-and-white candy cane poles, adorned with a red bow and dripping with blue icicles. Stop signs also got the candy cane treatment, with some donning stars on top. Traffic signals also got a sprinkle of Christmas magic - each light is topped with a golden star and finished with a red bow and icicles at the base.
If you thought it ended there, you clearly need some more Holiday Cheer. Even the trash bins in the visualization now feature a festive red bow tie. However, trash cans are only visible with regular Autopilot and not FSD.
Parked Visualization and Animations
When you get in your vehicle and when you arrive and shift into Park, the visualization transforms into an updated Holiday scene. You’ll be greeted by a cheerful dancing snowman and a bedecked Christmas tree topped with a glowing star, perfect for keeping the Holiday vibe.
The full-screen parked visualization and the animations are only available on AMD Ryzen-based vehicles.
@NotATeslaApp @DriveTeslaca New image for Santa mode on my 2022 model X 🎅🎅🎅 pic.twitter.com/I7k95n6vQ9
— Mary, FSD V12 (supervised) 🇨🇦 (@MaryX75D) December 10, 2025
Santa Lock Sound
While you can set your lock sound to anything you’d like by downloading custom sounds, Santa Mode now includes its own unique lock sound for the first time.
The sound is a little jingle that helps spread a little extra holiday cheer.
Here is the new jingle lock sound for the new Santa mode. pic.twitter.com/sgL3wxJCaS
— Robert Mathews (@little_nipas) December 11, 2025
Ambient Lights
Like before, vehicles equipped with ambient lighting, Santa Mode also extends throughout the cabin. When engaged, your cabin’s ambient lighting will now automatically shift to a custom Santa Mode palette as well.
Nice touch how Tesla Santa Mode changes the ambient light color to Christmas colors pic.twitter.com/9nX7aEohuZ
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) December 1, 2025
