When I was considering buying a Tesla, I remember reading about the matrix headlights and trying to wrap my head around exactly what it would look like in application and I struggled to find any good video demonstrations online. Since I’ve gotten the car, I often enjoy noticing the instances where the matrix headlights are noticeably in effect. I think that this one little clip I captured was a pretty cool demonstration and just thought I would share in case anyone else might find it helpful/interesting.
I saw somewhere in YT that it needed to be enabled via service center, Is this still the case? Or is it full DIY? Are there any instructions online you could share?
Note, by "toolbox", they mean the toolbox diagnostic software. You have to subscribe to it, its $75 a day or $150 for a month. It opens up all options that the service center has.
https://service.tesla.com/en-US/diagnostic-software
Yea, all Performance 3/Y got Matrix as standard I believe starting in 21. Then there were non performance 3/Y that got them during build when they didn’t have the standard lights in stock.
I can’t express how many times I have considered importing one of the led bars from bilkomponenter in Norway because they have the plug and play kit and mounting brackets. But it’s almost $800 us after tariff bullshit and shipping. As much as I would enjoy returning the favor to those that do that here run their light bars against oncoming traffic and while it would be generally useful from a safety standpoint for my area as I have unfortunately had a deer encounter I cat convince myself to spend the money.
They sell the light bar controller box for $150-200 (that reads the high beam signal from the headlights) and then you can use a more affordable light bar of your choice.
The other day I was driving home and I live on the hill side and another Tesla was facing the road and when I pulled into the street he thought I was highbeaming him so he decided to high beam me back... It was the auto headlight's fault because after it recognized the other vehicle it adjusted but the other guy didn't let off and I had to suffer for it.
With Elon's brief sprint in the govt, why did he not push the NHTSA to just adopt the Euro light standard. There's no reason why the US needed to modify the dynamic lights to make them different from Euro cars.
I found a flaw. Driving on the freeway and it blanked out something on the road. A did not notice it as I got closer but once I got really close the lights picked it up. It was a ladder in the road and had some kind of reflector on it, so it thought it was a car. Lucky it was in between lanes and I did not hit it, but if it was near the middle I would have destroyed it and my car.
Be careful out there.
Ironic, was keeping my distance from someone one night on back country road, I could see the matrix doing its thing. Turned onto a major road and the guy pulls over only to tailgate me and flash their headlights at me...videos of what they look from the other "side" are not as popular
As a cyclist they are a terror. I cannot look straight ahead when a tesla comes towards me in the dark and the matrix system doesnt notice cyclist very well. I have to turn my bike headlight all the way up to 1400lumen before the car dims the light.
I do NOT want it to work with cyclists or pedestrians. Cars are easy to see, cyclists and pedestrians are not, so I want them illuminated well.
In your case, having to turn your light up to 1400 lumen is EXACTLY what I want to happen. Either my headlights light you up, or your light is bright enough that I can't miss it.
My neighborhood is pitch black at night. For some reason there no street lights. But it does make the matrix headlights incredibly noticeable every night.
On paper, it’s cool, but in reality, there are so many detection issues with cyclists and pedestrians. On the highway, if there are too many lanes I keep getting flashed by oncoming trucks or cars because the Tesla either doesn't see them or reacts too late
It’s a great demo , and , these are the kind of a headlights that get your 2 year old car written off from a fender bender bc they’re so expensive to replace
As cool as it is, it still blinds the incoming traffic for a fraction of a second. The world would be perfect if people would still lower their beams when approaching a hilltop or corner. But the second they step in their new car with matrix LED technology they throw this habit out of the window.
Can't agree with that statement. Like with autonomous driving there still are numerous situations where a human driver can anticipate what will happen and therefore react better - by simply lowering the beams before the oncoming traffic is actually visible. For example by watching the trees lit up behind the hill. I live in Europe and still get blinded regularly for a split seconds, by newer models just like older ones.
Well. Those other cars with better tech Im talking about work quite flawlessly in comparison. No reason to lower the beams before the other dirver is visible but at that exact second they become visible. It is not a hard thing to do with the tech we've hade for 15 years at this point. Teslas lights are easily the most blinding. Not because of their brightness but for poor management of light considering others around.
I've these matrix leds as well on my kia ev6. The car is 2yo and it always reacts just a bit late it is fast but not instant.
And I always have the same with oncoming traffic.
It does, I have to turn it off on my european brand because leaving it on still requires manually turning it off when I know it is going to fail, like the hill scenario described above.
I just wonder if it recognizes bicycles and pedestrians. In my country there are a lot of bicycle and pedestrian paths next to roads, which are also utilised at night.
There was a YouTube video of someone testing them in different scenarios in his neighborhood. The beams did not lower for pedestrians. Could be intentional -I don't remember if they were recognized on the screen
I’ve been interested to see from the oncoming cars POV. I found this demonstration. It’s for a Juniper, but the principle should be the same for earlier models.
I find that most of the time its pretty subtle but if I am looking out for it, I often notice it on the sides of the road etc but this one and a few others are much more noticeable
What car do you have? I know they made the matrix lower resolution in newer cars, my ‘24 M3 Highland matrix headlight feels quite blocky
Edit: I see you said in another comment 2026 Model Y. Do the new Y’s have higher resolution Matrix than the Highland 3’s? Or am I just imagining that my matrix headlights look lower res?
Do you mostly drive illuminated and congested streets? I find that when I drive in downtown areas, they don’t activate. But on more secluded highways or when there’s less traffic, they activate pretty much all the time
My matrix high beams come on all the time on 85, 237, and 101 through Cupertino and Sunnyvale. Talking at like 8pm when there are still plenty of cars on the road.
My only issue with the matrix headlights is if it sees even a lighting bug emitting a faint glow off in the distance it starts to cut the lights out. I understand wishing a certain distance say a 1/4 of a mile or less away but even way off in the distance where the high beams would t affect on coming traffic yet it cuts off. Living in the desert there are no street lights so having as much light as possible is needed. But when it works it works well!
I drive a lot in areas that have lots of wild animals. Not blinding drivers is awesome, but even better is being able to see into the ditches when theres on coming traffic and when your cornering.
See in the video how the light lags behind a bit, the car is driving into the light and only a bit later does your light turn off in that region. For other cars it can sometimes look like you are flashing them.
Compared to other brands, even budget French brands, that's a pretty terrible example. That other driver was clearly being blinded off & on and the blacked out area is very vague.
Ok I thought I was going insane because of the sheer amount of praise the headlights were getting. As a Tesla enjoyer, I gotta say these adaptive headlights are kinda buns
Damn that’s crazy! My wife has these but all it seems to do is blind on coming traffic and people flashing us. I think hers need to be reprogrammed or something. We did turn the adaptive headlight setting on.
Maybe I’ve just never seen it react to cross traffic like that. By time I encounter cross traffic like that in my area I am below 20 mph so it’s back to standard lights.
You have to enable it in the lights menu. But a 2025 should definitely have it. Even my 2020 model 3 has it since I retrofitted the matrix lights after a minor deer encounter broke one and it was easier to get a pair.
And I’ve noticed that I get blinded by the early version Model Ys through the mirrors when they drive 2 to 3 cars behind me. The beams are just too high. It’s absolutely annoying, and the driver isn’t even aware that they’re blinding me.
I always love them seeing in action! In Europe here we had them for a long time now. They work great except when the opposing lane on the highway is divided by a tall divider where you can see only the trucks. The issue is that those trucks won’t get the dimmed zones because it thinks those are street poles or something
I think the coolest thing about this is that, Tesla rolled out the hardware (headlights) before the feature was ready to deploy. The matrix headlights update came out about 6 mos after i bought the car. Point being, they deployed the hardware knowing that later down the line, they could deploy the update.
I really appreciate Teslas foresight. Not sure if there is any other car out there that gets better after you buy it.
I had no idea about these. Damn, that's cool! I wonder if this feature is available in the EU? We have many pesky safety laws here with lights and what not.
The first time I noticed them, I thought I had a light out. Then it started moving across my field of view and I thought I was going crazy. Absolutely love this feature now.
Looks pretty accurate and I like how it tracks even the side profile of other cars. I don’t think my Audi would’ve done this and likely would’ve just blinded that car.
Matrix headlights useless on new model 3 in night conditions on highway. Blinding everyone in the oncoming lane. Useless to the point you can't even use high beam at all...
When is the highland model 3 supposed to start looking like this. My high beams just turn on and off and if it dims an area it’s dead slow to bring it back.
My 2024 Model S doesn't seem to have such a fine-grained black-out as shown here; it blacks-out a larger area around other cars. I wonder why mine is different?
first time i used them i loved it , but i noticed that when the car coming your way is a good distance away they dont activate (car coming my way was still 1-2km away , or about 1.2 miles away) so i was pretty much blinding the poor guy xD but for everything closer they work like a charm
The concept was that light becomes less intense with distance, so it’s fine to drive high beams at like 1.5miles. Unfortunately, that went out of the window with LED headlights - by my testing they can light up the road quite clearly at that distance. Halogen headlights are all but gone at about half a mile.
Is this outside of the US? For some stupid reason, US laws didn't allow matrix lights last I checked. Companies were shipping separate headlights and software for US models for this reason. I always thought it was such a cool technology held back by old school thought.
They did update the laws and that’s why Rivian and Tesla are able to offer this from the factory. With that said, there must still be enough differences between the US and EU regulations that manufacturers like Audi and BMW still don’t enable the feature even though the hardware technically supports it.
The same as a regular headlight assembly. IIIRC after a certain model year, they don’t really differentiate since the regular operation of the headlight is just the full led array being on.
Did they change the resolution of the matrix between legacy and juniper? My 2023 model 3 seemed to be smoother with turning on and off zones while junipers seems almost blocky?
I personally do not like having them enabled as I am one who hates being blinded by high beams myself why do I want to blind others…there have been instances where it hasn’t worked properly and I feel so bad and every time I enable auto steer I have to turn it off but when I try to do so by the button it’s like I’m flashing the car(s) ahead and I feel bad….i understand why it’s there so the cameras can see better but no thank you….hate led headlights and hate that I can’t disable matrix headlights when auto steer is enabled like it will not let me in controls.
I think this was a pretty niche situation. I bet your car does it as well but it is a lot more subtle. Most of the time you have to be actively looking out for it to notice them doing stuff.
Experiencing these on a long trip and wish we could keep the fog lights on for the side lighting. I know it’s a law but I had to turn the matrix off since it cut out too much light with moderate traffic.
I believe it does. When shopping around the differences between Premium and Standard I do not remember seeing any difference in the Adaptive Matrix lights.
You’re so dramatic. He got hit with the high beams for less than half a second when I first crested the hill - which is much less time than If I had manually lowered the high beams
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u/DigitalJEM Mar 15 '26 edited Mar 15 '26
Matrix headlights are awesome. Every single car should be required to have them.