Tesla has made it easier for owners to purchase upgrades or subscriptions by allowing them to purchase them from inside the car.
First discovered in the source code of the 2021.12.25 software update earlier this summer by hacker @greentheonly, Tesla has now turned on the option to purchase in-car upgrades or subscriptions.
The implementation of the feature was again discovered by green, who shared a photo of a new ‘Upgrades’ tab on the car’s main menu. For green, the only option available is a Premium Connectivity subscription.
To help avoid accidental purchases, instead of a single-tap to purchase button, Tesla went with a long ‘Swipe to subscribe’ button instead.
Hm, this seems to be new?
Did I miss in-car subscriptions going live? pic.twitter.com/hJx4nE0yF3— green (@greentheonly) November 23, 2021
According to green, the change is not tied to a specific software update. In a discussion with Drive Tesla, the hacker says the tab itself has been around for a long time, but was only visible if he manually forced it to turn on.
However, when he did that the tab had no upgrades to purchase and only displayed an error. Now it appears Tesla has flipped the switch and made it visible to some owners.
We checked the Model 3 cars in the Drive Tesla fleet and none of them had the new tab.
Since the tab is called ‘Upgrades’ we assume that for other owners this will display things like the Acceleration Boost, Full Self-Driving (FSD) package, and heated rear seats for original Model 3 Standard Range Plus (SR+) owners.
UPDATE Nov 23 7:37am PST: One of our readers has confirmed they also have the Upgrades tab, and it has Acceleration Boost and Premium Connectivity (even though they’re still on their free trial).
Let us know in the comments below if you also have this new tab, and if so, what options are there for you to purchase or subscribe to.
