teslas.cloud FAQ

teslas.cloud is a web app designed specifically for use with an in-car browser, such as that in a Tesla. It provides news, weather, navigation, and other features optimized for vehicle use. This is an educational father-son project and is not affiliated with Tesla, Inc. We make no promises that this app will always work, or that it will be maintained forever.

Because some guy in China is squatting on the "tesla.cloud" domain.

Yes, teslas.cloud is completely free to use. We made it for fun, and it doesn't cost much to maintain so we're giving it to the community. We don't plan to charge for anything, but we can't guarantee we'll be able to keep all of the features intact. In particular, the weather and news services depend on third-party APIs that may become costly if usage grows too large.

A few bits of data not otherwise available from the car's built-in interface:

• Relative Wind Indicator (Optional): A circular radar display showing wind direction relative to your vehicle's heading
• Altitude Display: Elevation above sea level
• Vehicle Heading: Compass direction in degrees
• Headwind/Tailwind Wind speed in your direction of travel
• Crosswind Wind speed perpendicular to your direction of travel
• Speed (Optional) GPS-derived speed of the car. Should be exactly what is shown in your dashboard, but can be a good sanity check that your speedometer is properly calibrated. Some car companies fudge the speedometer a little bit to avoid liability.
• Vertical rate (Optional) The speed at which you're climbing or descending. Ok, this is just for fun. We have no idea how this could ever be truly useful in a car.
• Embedded TeslaWaze: Real-time traffic and road hazards

Knowing wind conditions can help you understand their impact on your vehicle's range and handling. Headwinds can reduce efficiency, while crosswinds may affect stability as well as range. For example, if you've got a significant headwind, you probably won't get the range you're initially being told by the car, because the car doesn't take forecast winds into account, only observed average efficiency.

TeslaWaze is a service developed by some brilliant unknown engineer that taps into Waze and allows information about traffic and speedtraps to be displayed within a browser. It's a nice complement to your Tesla's built-in navigation. It was NOT developed by us, and we're just embedding it in the app.

GPS data depends on location services being enabled in your Tesla's browser and having a clear view of satellites. If you see "--", try:

• Refreshing the page to re-request location permissions
• Waiting for better GPS reception
• Ensuring location services are enabled in browser settings

The News section aggregates headlines from multiple sources. You can click on the headlines (if you're not moving) to read the full articles. You can also forward articles to your email (see below).

After logging in, you can customize your news feeds in the Settings section. You can enable or disable specific news sources, set update frequencies, and even configure email forwarding for news articles.

When logged in, you can forward interesting articles to yourself for later reading via email. Click the share button on any article, and it will be sent to your configured email address. This feature requires you to have email forwarding enabled in your user settings.

Articles are greyed out to indicate they've been read, and will be removed the next time news is updated. Articles are marked as read when you click on them to view the full content, forward them, or scroll past them in the feed.

The Weather section provides:

• Current Conditions: Temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction
• Extended Forecast: 7-day outlook with highs and lows
• Precipitation Predictions: When rain or snow is predicted in your area within the next hour, a graph will appear showing the amount expected per minute over the next hour.
• Weather Alerts: Severe weather warnings for your area

The Satellite section provides a live satellite map for the continent in which you're located. With some satellite providers we are able to also show an animation of the satelite imagery over the past few hours, which can be useful for tracking large weather systems.

We try to show the right satellite imagery based on your GPS location, but sometimes the mapping between GPS coordinates and satellite source isn't perfect. As you might image, this is a hard one for us to adequately test! If you're seeing the wrong area, you can set it manually in Settings by turning off the automatic location and selecting one of the regions.

Laziness on our part. It takes a bit of work to track down free satellite imagery sources for each region. If somebody is using this from any of those places and they reach out over e-mail (see Support below) and we'll add it.

The Landmarks section provides nearby points of interest from Wikipedia. You can leave it open while you drive and it will continuously update as you move. Is it useful? We're not sure, it's an experiment.

The Network section provides real-time car network diagnostics by measuring latency to our server. It's a complement to the cell signal display in the car that is actually measuring the network performance, not just signal strength.

Network status is shown with color-coded indicators:

• Green: Excellent connection (low latency, high speed)
• Yellow: Good connection with minor limitations
• Orange: Poor connection affecting some features
• Gray: No connection or unable to test

The bar indicator in the top-right corner gives you an at-a-glance view of your actual connection quality, not just the signal strength of the cell connection.

When your car connects to the internet, it does so through a cellular connection. Most car companies, like Tesla, actually route you through a network tunnel (VPN) that they control. As such, you may be accessing the internet from a server that is quite a distance from your actual location when all is said and done. This shows you where you actually "appear to be" on the internet. For example, we live in Boston but our car is often connecting to the internet through a server in California, which means that when connecting to the teslas.cloud server (which is in New York), we're going across the country twice.

First, no matter how good the cell network is where you are, you can know to expect lags if the server that is handling your network traffic is far away (as discussed above). Second, some services (like streaming video) may be blocked if they notice a difference between your browser's reported GPS position and your network location. Third, it can let you know if your WiFi connection is working or if the car is falling back to using the on-board cell modem.

Like many of the other sections, this is just a set of links to external website that we thought might be useful while you're parked at a charger, or for your passenger to use while you're driving. The Reference section offers productivity and informational tools, including:

• AI Assistants: Access to ChatGPT and other AI tools
• Password Manager: Secure access to your password vault
• Learning Resources: Educational websites and courses

teslas.cloud provides links to password manager websites but doesn't store or access your credentials. When you click these links, you're taken directly to the official sites where you log in normally. Always verify you're on the correct website before entering sensitive information.

No account is required for basic functionality. However, creating a user ID provides a couple useful things:

• Sync settings across multiple devices and browsers
• Persistent configuration even after browser resets after a software upgrade
• Allows for changing settings from your phone (just login to the same site) which is easier than using the in-car browser for some people

To create a user ID:

1. Click the "Login" button in the bottom-left corner
2. Enter a unique ID of your choosing (9+ characters)
3. Your settings will automatically sync to the cloud
4. Use the same ID on other devices to access your settings

Your user ID can be anything memorable like your phone number or email address - it's encrypted before storage.

We follow a privacy-first approach and store minimal data, none of which can be associated with you personally unless you choose to use an e-mail address that reveals your identity. The only data stored on our servers is:

• Encrypted user ID (only if you create one)
• Settings preferences associated with your ID
• Email address (if you provide one for news forwarding)
• Location of ping requests
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GPS issues are usually related to browser permissions:

1. Refresh the page and allow location access when prompted
2. Check if location services are enabled in your Tesla's browser settings
3. Try moving to an area with better satellite reception
4. Restart the browser application completely
5. If problems persist, try clearing browser cache and cookies

Tesla's browser has some limitations with external content:

• Some websites may not be optimized for the Tesla browser
• Complex sites with heavy JavaScript may load slowly
• Certain plugins or media formats aren't supported
• Network connectivity can affect loading times

Try refreshing the page or accessing the site at a different time if you experience issues.

Performance issues can usually be resolved by:

1. Refreshing the page (Ctrl+R or Cmd+R)
2. Clearing browser cache and cookies
3. Restarting Tesla's browser application
4. Checking your network connection status
5. Closing other browser tabs to free up memory

teslas.cloud is designed to be lightweight, but external content may sometimes affect performance.

Data showing as "--" typically indicates:

• External APIs are temporarily unavailable
• Network connectivity issues
• Services requiring authentication are not configured
• Regional restrictions on certain data sources

This is normal behavior and doesn't affect core teslas.cloud functionality.

• No tracking: We don't use analytics or tracking scripts
• Minimal data collection: Only essential settings are stored
• Encryption: User IDs is encrypted so users can use something like their phone number
• No data selling: We never share or sell user information
• Local storage: Most data (other than settings) is stored locally in your browser

Not in an automated way yet. Given that there's nothing interesting in the settings data (which is all we store) we haven't implemented this feature yet. If you want to delete your user ID and associated settings, please contact us at feedback@teslas.cloud and we'll take care of it.

For support:

• Email: feedback@teslas.cloud for technical issues.
• FAQ: Check this page for common questions; it will be updated often.
• Updates: Follow announcements at the top of the About section.

Please be patient with responses as this is a volunteer-maintained project.

We welcome feedback! You can:

• Email us at feedback@teslas.cloud
• Include specific details about the issue (what you were doing, error messages, etc.)
• Mention your Tesla model and software version if relevant

teslas.cloud is a web application that works in any browser, including mobile devices. We've actually done a bit of work to make it look good on a mobile browser, and if you log in with the same user ID, your settings will sync across devices. In fact, you may find it easier to change settings on your phone or tablet and have them automatically appear in the car; they will generally show up within a few seconds of you changing them on your other device.