2021-2022 Tesla Model 3/Y Matrix LED Projector Headlight Disassembly

In this video I will show you how to do a teardown on the updated/facelift headlights for the 2021+ Tesla Model 3 and Y Projector headlights.
These new lights are made by Hella and have a small matrix LED projector.
Part number: 1514953-00-C

[@goainge2]

I love the elegant and precise disassembly. Kind of reminds me of a wrecking ball.

[@idriveanagerar]

I thought with the extreme precision dismemberment it reminded me more of a bundle of TNT with det cord.

[@hiddeninsweden]

Looking forward to re assembly🤗

[@b3l14l]

lol

[@jsouto77]

Just watch this in reverse.

[@SCWgreg]

Yes please!

[@billnipp2309]

What this video tells me is that if theres ever any problem with a headlight, its getting replaced not fixed...

[@SupremeRuleroftheWorld]

the projector itself is a standard SSL 100 hella light module. other brands also use them so if one breaks you can find plenty of replacements.

[@ledretrofit]

Looks like benz ones.

[@exoticcar5482]

Only problem I believe is these are sealed shut so you can't get inside to change modules in the first place without being irreparably destructive

[@alexron2023]

Very well done. I love the way it was edited and the simplicity in showing how to disassemble such complex light system.

[@bluenycom]

Nicely done. Been waiting for someone to do this since it was released.

[@SubLimation7]

For anyone else looking for the led matrix, skip to 16 minutes, that was painful scrubbing ^^

[@vadimus2007]

15:24 to be precise!

[@christianedelmann6880]

Naaaaa there was some very interesting injection molding engineering and thermal management engineering on display

[@giorgiorocchi8313]

loved the precision and the attention to detail! the editing is accurate and amazing too!

[@fkporsche1]

Thanks for sharing the disassemble of this matrix head lights. Lovin it I had many German headlights but this model 3 headlights are pretty unique. I have no complaint.

[@konrad7592]

AFAIK the last projector you disassembled was the high beam. The single LED you mentioned in the end is actually 102 LEDs that can cut out oncoming traffic as soon as software and legislation allows for that.

[@OpticalMan]

This head light was designed with CAD software using metric units so it would make sense to use a millimetre tape measure.

[@sekopiski]

That is not a high beam reflector, high beam comes only from the projector. Reflector is used to light up foreground.

[@stynov83]

This is correct. The projector tilts up and illuminates all the pixels when high beam is toggled on. And if you only flash high beam, it only illuminates all the pixels but doesn't tilt the projector itself.

[@_zach]

@@stynov83Correct

[@adrianvallejo3396]

Thank you for putting the electronics on sale, life saver

[@MrElo]

Now I want to see you assemble it in part 2. That I look forward to :)

[@tytymeta9999]

INCROYABLE !!! 🤯🤯😍👍

[@TimPollerkind]

Cool Video. Very interesting.

[@Sourdough_Humboldt]

Hella lighting! Nice

[@3dFirefly]

for those looking for what the part looks like that does the Matrix, jump to 15:24

[@rice4u]

amazing useful video: 50k views in 1 month useless mr beast video: 50b in 1 day you sir, deserve more views

[@MalBackTalkingTesla]

Thanks for this excellent tear down so informative helpful and interesting Can these be retrofitted to the model 3 2019

[@jayshank3740]

I was wondering the same

@@jayshank3740 no

[@27thSF]

As of right now no.

[@rgms573]

This headlight has the Samsung PixCell led matrix beam, very cool peace of technology!

[@originalsubwayjones]

Fantastic

[@xplmr1]

The one question that I didn't see answered was can this entire headlight assembly be installed on a vehicle without LED matrix and work with a software update? Our '21 Model 3P was delivered during the changeover. There were literally cars being delivered the same day with the matrix setup and yellow rear blinkers. Is there different wiring to the headlights like there is on the yellow blinker rear taillights?

[@jwaneis]

hello! I don't know the answer to your initial question but about the rear yellow blinkers, no model 3 has rear yellow blinkers. the model y has rear yellow blinkers and all model 3's are red. my LR M3 was delivered Sep. 27, 2021 and it has red rear blinkers and matrix headlights!

[@Xanthopteryx]

@@jwaneis Swedish versions, and other countries, have orange blinker. Since read blinker is not legal...

[@jwaneis]

@@Xanthopteryxthanks for clarifying!

[@aw2926]

@gftgrill Do the turn signal LEDs look like they can be controlled individually? E.g. for a dynamic sequence turn signal? Or are they all connected in parallel?

[@teslaguy5311]

connection in parallel will allow you to create a sequential circuit to control each of the inputs on individual leds. You’ll just need to control them via software with probably an arduino. Tesla’s control unit for these leds aren’t programmed to do such a thing.

[@JeromeDemers]

9 chips at 12 channel is 108 pixels. This lamp is 102 pixel. The chip is TPS92662-Q1 ACTIVE 12-channel high-brightness LED matrix manager for automotive headlight systems

[@chadjohnsondash]

Nice breakdown can you do a Cadillac XT4 headlight ?

[@peterbbsk]

Those non-main beam LEDs are made by Nichia. Everyone is using them. Main projector looks awesome, it must be excellent on the road.

[@CubbyTech]

Sandy Munroe would say there's room for improvement: So many parts!

[@djsinusoid]

Thanks a lot for this interesting video! How many individual leds has the matrix projector of Tesla model 3 headlight unit? Good luck!

[@danedane6613]

28 in each of the two upper rows, 24 in the third row, 22 in the fourth row. A total of 102 leds.

[@loengunblade]

Can you show powering on, would be great to 3D a frame and retrofit into other headlight housings.

[@saabnico]

Has this headlight the same mounting as the 2019 one?

[@Liepez]

15:50 with this LEDs it can "write" TESLA during LightShow?

[@justinmallaiz4549]

Yes. Each yellow square being 1 of 102 pixels. Just enough for 5 letters :) - I think its good resolution for the real intended purpose thou..

[@philorgneopolotin8762]

Justin Mallaiz what’s the real intended purpose? AFAIK older models didn’t have this and they worked fine

[@justinmallaiz4549]

@@philorgneopolotin8762 The (hi-beam) light can be 'steered' into corners, and not into traffic.. More percisely: Each pixel has its own light cone and direction. As an oncoming driver is driving towards you.. The car can use the cameras to detect the on-coming driver, and turn OFF that LED directly pointed in their drivers eyes. Effectively: It can Light up all around other drivers with Hi beams, without blinding them. (It leaves a dark spot on them) -Currently this feature is not implemented by Tesla. There are currently outdated laws in North America preventing its use.

[@drtracking]

I think they can do more than that. I notice that while using FSD it will ... like flash and take pictures of the signs or something, it's very fast like less than half a second.

[@justinmallaiz4549]

@@drtracking Interesting thought. maybe it takes a quick peek ahead when wants to. Its software controlled.. so ideas are the limit

[@ericy.2108]

PIXCELL_102PX means 102 individually controllable LEDs? Lower count than I thought (how do you write TESLA with 4 vertical LED resolution?)

[@ericy.2108]

watched a light show video, the E is projected like this: ▫️▫️▫️ ▫️▫️ ▫️ ▫️▫️▫️

[@dropdestroy]

was the outer projection lens glass? sounded like it. interesting design on it for being glass. cant imagine hella using plastic in the projector as it would eventually melt or distort

[@sasajungic89]

Yes. Projector needs to be glass. Plastic isn’t as clear. Kinda like the reason why they use glass lenses for a telescope

[@christianedelmann6880]

They are all most likely polycarbonate. It can handle the heat, are relatively cheap to make and very optically clear.

[@balajidoppalapudi728]

Its PMMA lens, only the smallest lens is glass and the other two are of plastic, it doesn't melt, great engineering efforts were put down for thermal managent.

[@CustomTeslaLightshows]

16:01 so when you do a lightshow with tesla, those individual LEDS turn on spelling TESLA?

[@idriveanagerar]

Somewhere a Tesla engineer is crying out of this headlight carnage. 🤣

[@ksmith660]

Wow! so much electronics for the matrix LED board. It must be able to do more than write TESLA on the holiday update. I wonder if it will ever get an update to drive it in the intended way?

[@PlaidDad]

Once the ancient horse and buggy laws are changed and we finally catch the laws up to the technology.

[@addi271]

@@PlaidDad Here in Germany other brands have this matrix dynamic high beam. If it's not allowed in US, nobody gets this feature on a Tesla. Also the "normal" automatic high beam doesn't work very good with the camera detection. For me, it always detects signs as oncoming traffic and turns it off.

[@PlaidDad]

@@addi271 I wish our laws here were like they are in Germany. I know the true feature(s) won’t be in place until the laws here change in the U.S.. Then, I assume Tesla would send out an update for it to work like the matrix feature(s) are supposed to work.

[@gbigfoot71]

@@PlaidDad i heard about fresh new update of the laws in US allowing use of LEDs for adaptive lights... Am I right? On 16th November: "Adaptive headlights finally legal in US with Biden's infrastructure bill signed into law We'll finally be treated to some great tech that outdated regulations kept from our shores."

[@PlaidDad]

@@gbigfoot71 I certainly hope so!

[@DoingthingswithDAN]

I want that screwdriver. I didn't know milwaukee made one

[@DoingthingswithDAN]

Damn it doesnt use an m12 battery

[@schlott1970]

Your commentary could do with some work I think - you just told us what you were doing, but we could see what you were doing. We could have done with which lights were which, indicators, highbeam, lowbeam, how the led's are so bright, how the lenses work, what the motors do, etc. Ingineerix channel is very good at this! Still a very very interesting video, thumbs up, can we have more.

[@christianedelmann6880]

Low key it was really fun to look up what different parts were and figure out how the mechanisms work. I think his commentary was great.

[@shaneturner4630]

Was the a new model for the 2023 version? I’m not referring to the highland version but the last version

[@gftgrill]

No, the 2023 comes with either the reflector or projector based lamps that the 2022 models had. There was nothing new for 2023.

[@shaneturner4630]

Thx, strange the replacement headlight I got has different colours than my other headlight display

[@Pennychaser1]

Geez that is one complicated headlight. I own 21 MYP and not looking forward to having these go bad. Wondering if they sell parts for it like DRL. Appreciate archaic headlights on my other cars. All bulbs are replaceable

[@xploration1437]

Gloves?

[@abelmesfin4848]

So that the projector lens that projects Tesla on the wall on 2021 holiday update

[@davidbanning7026]

This is good - clear - descriptive - could be faster - but you would miss out something - HAD NO IDEA HOW MANY SCREWS AND PARTS THERE ARE TO A LIGHT

[@kitesforfuture577]

Don't tell Sandy Munro about the screws.

[@philgower292]

@@kitesforfuture577 LOL I was thinking at the part of the vid where it was described the circuit board clipped into place without screws that Sandy would be happy!

[@cyronader]

so can the matrix led be retrofitted into a model y?

[@27thSF]

No

[@jamzempire]

@@27thSF why not?

[@27thSF]

@@jamzempire I asked and was told no at my service center.

[@maeguk1]

I got hit in a parking lot to the front bumper, left fog lights and headlight enclosure all suffered (M3 LR 2019). I hope when they do the fix they will install these new matrix headlights. Hopefully it's possible.

[@27thSF]

No retrofit available. They will repair them with the old one.

[@maeguk1]

@@27thSF yes got the car on Monday this week and indeed I got the "old" lamp

[@27thSF]

@@maeguk1 I hope they offer retrofit someday

[@maeguk1]

@@27thSF possible, but then again the newer M3 models are equipped with so many more new stuff, I might change the car completely 😉

[@walthooker1434]

What does AFS stand for and what are the fans used for? Asking for a friend. LOL

[@christianedelmann6880]

I don't know what it stands for but the top motor looks like it steers the projector assembly left and right and the bottom motor moves both the project assembly and the reflector assembly up and down. A very fascinating mechanism.

[@gftgrill]

AFS = Advanced Front-Light System: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlamp#Advanced_front-lighting_system_(AFS) It is used to move the headlight beam up/down and left/right. this is helpful lighting during cornering and lowering the headlight to not blind oncoming drivers. Trucks use this so that when they have a heavy load, it keeps their headlights from pointing upwards.

[@GarethHall]

How are those tiny LEDs so bright???

[@raphi25895]

only a small piece of wire shines in a lightbulb. In addition, more energy is used here in light than in heat

[@weslim975]

What do you do with the headlights after you disassemble them?

[@gftgrill]

resell or use the parts to fix other headlights.

[@exoticcar5482]

@@gftgrill If you could get in contact with Big Clive, that would be much appreciated as he may show us more about the workings of these along with his opinion on their design

[@kalasknatte]

Watching this disassembly without audio is like watching a neanderthal bashing rocks against a crashed UFO trying to make sense of it. 😂

[@SahandKhayyami]

Have these lights vents on the plastic back cover?🤔

[@gftgrill]

Yes, there are holes at the top of the housing covered in mesh tape

[@SahandKhayyami]

@@gftgrill🙏Thank you for your answer, do the taillights also have air vents? Do these air vents not cause condensation?

[@gftgrill]

@@SahandKhayyami almost every headlight has some sort of vent on them. They are all designed to help reduce condensation by not trapping water vapor in the headlight

[@resrevni]

Is it possible to disable turn signal without disassembling?

[@gftgrill]

No, there are only 3 wires going into the light. I believe it is software controlled through canbus. If you are able to intercept and decode the signal, then it might be possible to disable the turn signal. otherwise there is no physical way to do so.

[@d5p]

@@gftgrill thanks, I was afraid of that. My plan was to delete headlamp blinkers and solely use sequential fogs as turn signal.

[@JeromeDemers]

Sheet metal heatsink and 9 chips!

[@ManKetnas]

in india etc they repair those broken glasses, sad that its not easier to replace just the case and keep the led driver

[@igsgarage]

Someone needs to figure out how to get these led projectors running safely for retrofit.

[@mikeebner8313]

Screw this I’m getting a RAV4 Prime XSE, Toyota knows how to build headlights

[@dankification]

Fuck… didn’t realize how massive the headlights assembly is compared to a human hands/arms. It literally makes your twig arms nonexistent 🤣

[@Oockeshoek]

Now I understand why this has such an unusually blocky cut-off, it uses those pixels to create it and you can’t make a smooth DOT/ECE beam pattern

[@nazhif1]

So basically its got a 'low res' matrix array. If you look at most other makes their beam pattern don't have the same issue. Mercedes' Multibeam is a nice comparison

[@Oockeshoek]

@@nazhif1 yeah you’re right, it does have a lot of light passing through and it looks interesting. It’s a hella design for which they say themselves they don’t have to make different projectors for different markets (only have to adjust something in software). Apparently it must also be DOT compliant, which I wouldn’t think when I saw it

[@t0n4us]

it‘s 102 pixels for each headlight. As a comparison my current car has 16 on each side for the adaptive high beams and it‘s working great with that low amount. I believe Polestar 2 has 84 on each side. So it‘s not really low res, they just chose to make the cutoff lines really hard by not diffusing it further like on the Polestar 2.

[@nazhif1]

@@t0n4us polestar may has less LEDs but my theory, looking and the beam pattern and behaviour, it only does horizontal matrix if that made sense…. So there’s only 2 rows of LEDs one for low beam and one for high beam thus there’s more effective resolution for the polestar. That’s why when it blanks out part of the beam the tracking looks smooth The Tesla meanwhile is doing both vertical and horizontal matrix that’s why you see more rows of LEDs but it does mean lower ‘resolution’.

[@t0n4us]

@@nazhif1 Don‘t quite get what you mean, but the whole difference is the optics here. On my current car it‘s way way smooth on the edges because the beam is defused and slightly overlapping. Tesla could also make it more smooth by just partially enabling the LEDs at a lower brightness at the edges (same thing antialiasing does in 3D rendering) - but that‘s either not possible or they wanted maximum brightness up until the edge of the allowed beam pattern. EDIT: If you meant that the polestar only has 2 rows of LEDs, nope. It has 3. almost the same pattern as these headlights here. You can check it out on the official polestar 2 page, there is a video with an explosion animation of the headlights.

[@spedracer55]

This thing owes him money💀💀

[@feger481]

I have no idea why he tore apart this headlight unit, and what's even worse is I have no idea why I watched it all the way through.

[@AKENOXTRM]

I get why its so complicated but why the hell did they make it so hard to disassemble ?

[@cozzm0AU]

They're not designed to be serviced/repaired. If it is faulty, it is replaced.

[@moestrei]

There are a lot of points of failure, each requiring replacement at around $1500 per lamp. Why didnt you heat the lamp to melt the glue and open it without destruction?

[@jadenbright3854]

It's already broken

[@russta19801]

All this is completely irrelevant if you can’t take the glass away from the case in a nice way so that you can replace it once you fix whatever’s broken inside.

[@StefanSkyman]

these things are such made if one 5 cent led is broken you need to replace everything

[@raaah]

The price you pay for waterproof

[@HelmutTschemernjak]

There is a chance that the LEDs works for decades, more likely that a driver chip gives up. Can be all repaired by electronic guys, however swapping is less expensive.

[@StefanSkyman]

@@raaah 50 years the headlights were made out of glass and with parts replaceable and perfectly waterproof, now they are made out of plastic and garbage parts and cannot replace anything so you can pay 10 times more for anything

[@hedgehogthesonic3181]

@@StefanSkyman I can replace every single light in my 2012 Prius C, and the light is made of plastic, but is waterproof.

[@yabd792]

That headlight cost more than my car

[@raaah]

why?

[@tarassu]

As a rookie engineer I would state that this design is not optimal - not revolutional, not even evolutional. 2 grams of LEDs are on a PCB that is 200x larger/heavier. Plus bulky connectors that are prone to corrosion. Also WTF, connectors?! for a product that can NOT be dismantled.

[@4bluesun4]

I assume in this case the PCB also has a function of cooling the LEDs, so there's no need of additional passive cooler. And harness must have option of disassembly to be able to replace the PCB or harness in production if its tested and not working. Without that option you throw away whole headlamp.

[@maxl7827]

Nothing was destroyed in the video.

[@ur_a_buS]

Jesus christ what ever happened to 9005 or HB3 bulbs?.....

[@hedgehogthesonic3181]

They are gone, sadly

[@yogimaster2654]

🤣 God how much is a headlights replacement?

[@bjiirn]

9 chips on one Light? No wonder we have a Chip shortage... 🤦‍♂️

[@Dutch-Maker]

Yes, one chip can only controll 12 CSP LEDs. For controlling 102 LED's separately you need 9 chip.

[@SubLimation7]

timestamps would be great

[@vadimus2007]

That inch measuring tape looks like you're going to build a shed... No one designs modern technology with stupid imperial units in mind!

[@pricelesshistory]

A few of the chips on the board is a Texas Instruments TPS92662, likely 92662AQ (ah, see that Jerome Demers already posted)

[@JustTIC]

THE MOST IMPORTANT PART IS TAKING OFF THE LENS AND YOU DIDNT EVEN SHOW THAT! SMH....

[@nicolapevere968]

Macellaio

[@theminicooper]

The headlight is from a 2021 car... but the fan is dated 2012?! Yikes! lollll

[@marcel151]

You call that a dissassembly? Try to reassamble it. That's mor like a destruction.

[@hwood8991]

9:30 proves that modifying your DRL module is pretty much impossible for the 2021+ models without destroying your light. Thanks Tesla. 👎

[@PenkoAngelov]

That was painful to watch... but nevertheless, thank you for the video!

[@tomekwrs]

I ve noticed that you can see those pixels during night on the road which is bad. A low quality headlight. Inside also looks very cheap.

[@mrDeny1004]

Man you are so messy. No hard feelings but whole video was so violent. Cutting of the headlight un even. I'm car mechanic and my heart hurts when I see things like this...