Top 5 Tesla apps to improve your Tesla experience

one of Tesla's major competitive advantages is their software they're always working on improving the user experience and adding new features to their cars my car today is objectively better than it was the day that I bought it being able to deliver those updates over-the-air sets them apart from the competition but as good as it is there are sometimes gaps in the user experience history open the trunk I open the trunk ways that we may want to use our cars that aren't covered by the way Tesla built it and that's where third-party software comes in when add voice assistant supports your car or see how much you're paying to charge your car over the course of a month how about smarter schedule charging or automatically heating your car on a cold morning there are some really talented developers and software companies creating software that can fill in those gaps here's my top 5 picks for third party Tesla apps to check out I'm Matt Farrell welcomed and decided [Music] these aren't presented in a ranked or priority order but this first one has come in handy on quite a few trips that I've taken over the past year or so number one a better route planner Tesla's in-car navigation is good and it gets the job done helping you get from point A to point B but it's lacking on a few features kind of like waypoints you can't add those in it's accurate enough for estimates of where and when you might need to charge but again it's limited and that's where a better route planner comes in it started as a web app but now has iOS and Android apps as well you enter your starting point destination as well as any additional stops along your trip what sets this one apart though is that you can also tell it what kind of car you're driving what kind of tires and rims you have equipped and it will calculate an estimated range based on that criteria it also takes things like weather and elevation changes into account you can even manually enter in your estimated driving speed departure charge what charge you'd like your car to have when you reach your destination average energy consumption and more you can go as far down that rabbit hole seed bike but in the end you get a very accurate estimate of what to expect from your trip the flexibility of determining what charging stops you want is also fantastic it not only shows you Tesla superchargers but it also shows you third-party charges as well even better is that you can load a better route planner in the car browser load up your trip and get real-time tracking to compare that to the estimates I can't recommend a better route planner more number two - can you a couple of those Tesla over-the-air and feature updates that I mentioned before where Tesla's dash cam and sentry mode format a USB Drive and plug it into one of the front USB ports and you can have your car automatically save out footage from the cameras while you're driving as well as record footage when someone gets close to your car while it's parked both are great features but you can't view any of the footage directly in the car yet and that's where sentry View for iOS comes in handy and if you're an Android I'd recommend taking a look at Tesla camera viewer both operate in similar ways with iOS 13 you can now plug external drives directly into your phone is something androids been able to do for some time now so if you plug your USB Drive into your phone and load this app you'll be able to scan through all of the recorded footage it automatically groups camera angles together by timestamps so watch all of the angles at once save them that's your camera roll or share them out through email text message whatever you like if you're using either the dash cam or the Sentry mode features this app is a must number 3 Tesla by now if your numbers geek kind of like I am and you want to get into the deep detail of your trips your energy usage your charging battery health and more Tesla Phi is still my go-to recommendation it's definitely one of the nerdiest apps out there for tracking your car's usage to estimate costs and battery health but I found it to be accurate and relatively easy to use this isn't free app so you'll be paying $5 a month or $50 for a year of service but there is a free two week trial now I'm a subscriber of the service so you can use my referral code which I'll put in the description to get an extra two weeks to try it out setting up the service requires logging into your Tesla account so Tesla Phi can get an authentication token to unlock the tracking after that you'll be able to see all of your trips going forward as well as track your charging rates and battery health one of the reasons I've always liked Tesla Phi was for the incredible level of detail that it's tracked from each trip which includes elevations temperatures energy use and more all of this data is also exportable which allows you to slice and dice it any way you like you can view the health of your battery and its degradation as well as see how temperature is affecting your efficiency if you're a data nerd you'll rejoice when it comes to tesla phi number 4 Tesla I reviewed Tesla about a year and a half ago and at that time I had some real nitpicks with the app there were some things I found confusing with the display and I thought it had a little bit of a disjointed navigation but at the time I also said this fixing those UI issues I listed out shouldn't be hard work so I'll be keeping an eye on test lab to see how it evolves over time in six months it may be a product that I find indispensable but not right now Wow it's that's painful watching older videos of myself like that and it's a bit longer than six months from that review but that's on me not test lab I've been keeping tabs on the app and watching all of the improvements they've been rolling out and they've been busy like really busy pretty much every nitpick I had is gone the organisation the screens have been simplified so navigating around the app is intuitive the apps profile tab is a nice snapshot of your car it's charged a breakdown of stats since you last unplugged like range added versus used as well as trip efficiency versus temp it's a real nice snapshot of the current state of your car the track tab is a straightforward list of your trips and battery report battery graphs give you a really great view into high medium and low efficiency usage as well as phantom drain without having to drill in further it's very clever you can also do a search for superchargers which shows you how many stalls are available and reviews from other users trip details show you efficiency cost average speed and even elevation where tesla phi takes the box for a high level of detail and numbers Tesla have balances that out with high-level snapshots of your car as well as tying all of that into a broader Tesla community there are fun leaderboards to see how you compare it to other drivers out there and you can earn badges and awards based on how you drive plus all of the basic car controls are baked right into the app there's even a webview that you can load up in your car and use while you're driving well test lab is a free app to use you can only access a 7-day rolling window of data they just launched tez lab pro which costs $2.99 a month or $29.99 a year and removes the time limit and locks some additional features like exporting data I love this feature on Tesla Phi and it's great to see it on Tess lab too it's awesome for archiving or being able to look at your data any way you it's definitely worth checking out and giving it a try number five stands this has been one of my go-to recommendations for some time now if you're looking for an app that's straightforward and no-nonsense tracks your trips your energy use your charging rates and presents that info and simple easy to read graphs then stats is your app it's the just the facts ma'am of Tesla apps very intuitive navigation and screen layouts are the core of the experience but stats also adds a lot of really interesting new features to your Tesla it duplicates all the standard Tesla controls so you can open the front the trunk the charge port as well as honk the horn or start the car in its climate controls but it also allows for all of the controls to be added to Siri on your Apple devices you can create custom phrases and controls to start your car warm it up open the front all of it this works from your phone ipad Apple watch and even the home pod if that's not the only thing that it adds the app has smart features like smart heating and cooling smart battery prep smart sentry and smart charging all these built on existing features of the Tesla but also add additional controls and flexibility you can set a temperature for your car and schedule times for it to automatically hit that temperature or use the battery prep feature to warm the battery on cold mornings to ensure that you get better regenerative braking on your drive smart charging also lets you set a specific time to stop charging which can help you avoid high time-of-use rates and finally smart century lets you set multiple locations that you'd like sentry mode to automatically arm and disarm itself it's on a free app but it's well worth the one-time payment but all of this leads to what I think is a huge opportunity for Tesla most these services require that you log into your Tesla account to authenticate so that the service can get a Tesla token to work properly with your car none of the apps I've recommended here record or store your credentials but it's up to them to create these login screens that you have to use they're only getting a Tesla token to get permissions to access the data and the car controls you can revoke these privileges at any time just by changing your Tesla account password which resets the tow but that's something that can and needs to be improved by Tesla Tesla's software is one of the things that really sets them apart adding features and improving the driver experience with over-the-air updates is something that no other car company is doing at the level of Tesla and the fact that Tesla has opened up third-party support to allow apps like these to exist is something that many people talk about as a competitive advantage I think it is the more Tesla embraces third-party apps the more value they bring to their customers and not just with the web and the mobile apps but with the potential of the in-car apps - I really hope Tesla continues down this path and opens up the ink our system to third-party apps as well so every driver can add that must-have missing feature or music service that they want but one of the things I really hope Tesla implements is a true Tesla login and authentication system for third-party services to use something like you see with the login with Google or Twitter or even Apple now users need to trust that they're authenticating directly with Tesla and not through a third party and also to be able to easily revoke privileges to any app they want if they do that plus open up the ink our apps the sky is the limit for what your Tesla experience can be like in the future now jump in the comments and let me know if there are any apps that you think I missed and if you'd like to see Tesla open up the in-car system as well what third-party services would you want to see in your car and as always an extra big thank you to all my patrons and a special welcome to new supporter plus member Keith Gaines I've got a lot of videos in the works and your support is really helping to make them possible be sure to check out the link in the description below for my patreon page for additional details about joining the crew and as always thanks so much for watching I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Undecided with Matt Ferrell

Views: 91,524

Rating: 4.9155126 out of 5

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Id: U271sh3srus

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2020