A Tesla driver showed how folks can shut off air flow for front passengers, but some say that it doesn’t work on all of the manufacturer’s vehicles. TikTok user Zane Wehrly (@zanewehrly) published a clip that demonstrates this in action.
“Just in case no one told you,” a text overlay in the video reads. Wehrly then records himself pressing his finger on the climate control toggle located on the bottom-left corner of the Tesla’s infotainment display. Upon doing so, an animation of the vehicle’s cabin air conditioning options populates the screen. Next, Zane then brings his finger toward a graphic of the vent blowing air into the front passenger’s seat.
He then long-presses on the image of the air stream on the right side of the screen, which disables it. This way, if a driver is commuting by themselves, or the front passenger doesn’t want any air coming their way, it’ll stop filtering through that vent.
Other Tesla Air Conditioning Queries
While a number of folks who replied to Wehrly’s video seemed appreciative of his post, others had different questions about interior climate control. One person wanted to learn how to perform the same operation on the other side of the car: “Okay but how do you turn off the driver’s without turning off the passenger’s?”
YouTube user Homeener says this same operation isn’t possible the other way around. That is, if a driver long-presses the animated vent right above the steering column, it’ll just disable air conditioning from flowing out of the vents entirely. They demonstrate this in their video, but they also provide a workaround: the split option, which engages dual-zone climate control settings. This means that if a passenger wants cooler air blowing in their direction in the vehicle, they’re able to adjust their temperature.
Furthermore, if the driver doesn’t want air blowing in their face, they’re able to divert the streams by using multi-gesture inputs to split the stream or direct the air flow away from their body. This method was corroborated by another driver in the Tesla Motor Clubs forum who answered the same question posed by someone else on the site. They wrote that disabling air flow for the driver while the passenger’s is still active isn’t available on Tesla vehicles: “Nope. Just redirect.”
“How Did You Know I Was Struggling With This?”
Several folks said they were grateful to see Wehrly’s TikTok tutorial on how to disable passenger air flow. One wrote, “you just changed my life,” while another said, “thank you my bf is tired of me changing it to 71.”
There was one caveat brought up by other users on the application, however: This functionality is only provided to more recently manufactured Tesla vehicles. “Maybe this works on the newest Model Y, but not on last year’s. Crazy that a simple feature that’s been available on ALL cars for decades is something Tesla, out of all brands, is missing,” one commented.
It’s an issue that others have brought up on different social media platforms, too. This Facebook post uploaded by a Tesla user brought up the same issue: “How do I turn off the passenger AC in a 2025 Tesla Model Y AWD?” they asked. One user commented that they, too, have a 2025 Model Y AWD and said that “there isn’t a way to turn it off.” Moreover, they said they referred to their Tesla’s owner’s manual and saw that the option presented in Wehrly’s vehicle wasn’t available to them. However, they said Cybertrucks do carry the feature.
A different commenter stated that older Model Y vehicles don’t possess the ability to disable air flow entirely. They went on to state the drivers of these vehicles should redirect their air flow. “For all other Model Y’s you cannot turn off the passenger HVAC, you can split controls so the driver and passenger can have different temps or you can redirect the airflow. But you cannot turn it completely off.”
InsideEVs has reached out to Tesla and Wehrly via email for further comment.
