Tesla has redesigned the area surrounding a crucial piece of hardware for its new Model Y that should improve the vehicle’s visibility and functionality for systems like Autopilot and Supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD).
As detailed in an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage released on Monday, Tesla has redesigned the area around the side repeater camera for the new Model Y, now featuring an additional lip for self-cleaning. Tesla Vice President of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy detailed the change, saying that the redesigned shape creates a natural current to protect the camera from water or other elemental factors.
“We’ve got this little lip here on the edge of the side repeater that’s actually to self-clean the camera,” Moravy explains. “So it creates an eddy current, then the air comes up and flows over and it cleans that camera and makes sure that there’s no water getting on the camera there.”
🚨SELF-CLEANING CAMERAS: Tesla designed a lip on the edge of the side-repeater camera to enable self-cleaning, which helps with Full Self-Driving operation and overall safety https://t.co/zkphg11LsS pic.twitter.com/hL1ZPqEPsH
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 10, 2025
Credit: Tesla
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The design change, while subtle, should make camera visibility even better than the legacy Model Y for the company’s Autopilot and Supervised FSD systems, and it comes ahead of Tesla’s plans to launch unsupervised FSD and autonomous ride-hailing sometime this year.
The statement came during a conversation about new design features on the Model Y that actually leveled up the vehicle’s overall aerodynamics compared to the legacy version, and Head Designer Franz von Holzhausen goes on to explain how the bumper, tires and overall shape create an air curtain that improves the vehicle’s drag coefficient.
Moravy also says the new Model Y features the lowest combination of rolling resistance and aerodynamics with a wheel and tire set that Tesla has ever put on an SUV.
Check out Jay Leno’s full episode with the refreshed Model Y below, which runs 55 minutes and features Franz von Holzhausen and Lars Moravy.
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