Recently, it’s been noticed that Tesla did a tweak on its Model Y taillight design. However small, it’s sure to make a big difference. Both the Model 3 and Model Y’s taillights had the brake lights and the directional signals in red. While this is allowed, regulations require than the brake lights are a brighter red. For this reason, most car manufacturers choose to go with amber for the directional signals. Tesla stuck with red in both instances until now.
You can see the great comparison here highlighting the new Tesla Model Y taillights, which was recently posted by a Reddit user. The user showed the difference between the old signal colors and the new Model Y taillights.
Tesla’s latest improvement on the brake lights has replaced the red with vibrant flashing amber. No doubt this will enhance the overall visibility and certainly help with a better distinction between the braking signals and the turning signals.
It also seems that Tesla improved on the casing within which the taillight assembly lies. That too appears to be visibly clearer as it has a more transparent outer case. It is known that rear-end accidents are the most violent and dangerous to drivers and passengers because it happens so abruptly without anyone being prepared for it. In fact, it is said that the most common injury in a rear-end collision is whiplash, due to the sudden, violent movements of the neck and head-on impact. Whiplash damages the neck’s soft tissue and inevitably leads to chronic neck and back pain.
Tesla has probably become aware of this and hence its revisions to the Model Y taillights to increase the safety of driving and prevent future accidents. We could expect this new design tweak to filter through to the other Tesla models at some point as well.
Elon Musk commented on this latest taillight design on Twitter, saying:
Tesla brake lights are powered by a miniverse inside a microverse
He added a link to a Rick and Morty YouTube video, probably just for the entertainment value.
With its focus on making Tesla one of the safest electric vehicles to drive, it has also released other improvements as part of its software releases. Recently, in the 2020.32.1 update, Tesla rolled out the Dynamic Brake Light. This was aimed at minimizing the rear-end collisions. The update was released for both the Model S and Model X that had at least Hardware 2. Later, the Model 3 got the same software update.
The Dynamic Brake Lights feature is described as:
If you are driving over 50 km/h (31 mph) and brake forcefully, the brake lights will now flash quickly to warn other drivers that your car is rapidly slowing down. If your car stops completely, the hazard warning lights will flash until you press the accelerator or manually press the hazard warning lights button to turn them off.
So, we can rest assured that Tesla will continually make conscious efforts to increase the safety of Tesla vehicles be it through software and hardware improvements.
Just as a side note, the Model 3 also received a recent design change in the hardware by updating the size of the Model 3’s front trunk – the frunk. A newer version of the Model 3 shows that the frunk is now smaller than before. Speculation around this change is that it could be to accommodate a heat pump, which was included in the Model Y to improve efficiency in colder climates. However, for now, it’s a guessing game as to why this change was made. But we will surely find out why...sometime soon.
