The Tesla USB Port

Note: I plan to keep this page updated with my findings as I experiment more and more.

Over the years I’ve had a number of cars and in each one I had a stereo system with a USB port to load my music on. After purchasing my 2022 Model Y, I immediately set about on how to do this.

Long story short, there is only one usable USB 3.0 Port (Type-A). The rest of the ports are charging only (no data). This leaves with only one port the Sentry Port & Dashcam needs for storage.

Or does it?

Make more ports!

Tesla will recognize a USB 3.0 hub! I used the Anker Ultra Slim 4-Port USB 3.0 Data Hub. Out of the box just plug it in followed by your Tesla USB storage drive. Now you have 3 ports left to play with!

This drive is the first device on my hub (closest to the wire). My theory is this will make it easier/quicker for the car to locate it.

Store your music locally

In this case I chose a low profile SanDisk USB 2.0 32gb flash drive. This is already out of date. A similar one would be SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.2 Flash Drive. Note it does not have to be USB 3.0 to work. USB 2 works just fine considering you are only playing music.

A couple of notes on how I set it up:

The drive must be a an MSDOS partition table
I used a single partition formatted to ExFAT. Fat32/NTFS will NOT work in this case.
I labeled the partition something meaningful (Tesla Music) to make it easier to copy files from my PC.

The USB experience works, its functional. With a few tweaks Tesla could make this amazing. Here are just some thoughts on my experiences.

I’ve only tested with MP3 files, no issues at all.
Be sure your mp3 files are no deeper than 2 directory levels (artist/album). If you do go deeper the randomize function isn’t so random.
Be patient when plugging in, especially with a large library it takes time for Tesla to index all the songs.
The voice commands (Play artist/title/album/genre) do NOT work with anything USB music related, they default to streaming.
Do not expect your music to resume when you return to your car. Sometimes it works, sometimes it defaults back to Spotify for some annoying reason.
- The voice command “play a song from USB” will resume your last song.
The back button does not remember the artist you selected, it defaults back to the top of the list. Damn frustrating when you have 18gb of music.
All settings for repeat/shuffle are lost when you leave the car.
You can only mark individual songs as favorites. If you update your drive it will take a while for the favorites to come back.
If you have an album with multiple artists it will be listed as multiple albums – for each artist.
Custom Boombox mp3 files can be added:
- Create a directory Boombox in the root of your flash drive, copy the files there.
Playlists (m3u) do not seem to be supported.

Store your movies locally

Sadly no. It would be amazing if it supported mp4 files.

Use a peripheral

✔️ Playstation 4 Controller
❌ Keyboard
❌ Mouse/Trackball

Created: 2024-06-03

Modified: 2024-09-04