First Look: 2025 Tesla Model Y ‘Juniper’ Update Leaked

First look at Juniper

I took my car for a wash and simply used a pressure washer to rinse off dirt. After that, I parked my car at 5 PM on Saturday. Then, at 2:40 AM on Sunday, my car’s alarm suddenly went off, and I received a notification that the alarm had been triggered. I rushed to the parking area, but there was no apparent reason for the alarm.

I went back to my apartment, and the alarm triggered again. This time, I noticed the driver’s side door was open, even though I was certain I had closed it earlier. I closed the door again, returned to my apartment, and just 7 minutes later, the alarm went off again. The app once again showed the driver’s door as open.

At this point, I asked my wife to come with me to verify that I was closing the door properly. I also rebooted the car from the screen (without holding the scroll wheels for 15 seconds). About 50 minutes later, the door appeared to open by itself again, triggering the alarm. I went back to the car, sat inside for a while, defrosted it, rebooted it again, and downloaded a software update. After starting the installation process, I left the car and returned to my apartment.

Thankfully, this seems to have fixed the issue.

While troubleshooting, I noticed that when I tried to close the door, it wouldn’t close properly, and the windows were slightly rolled down (though not completely). After rolling up the window and trying again, the door finally shut correctly. I also checked the locking mechanism to make sure nothing was stuck in it, but everything looked clean and fine.

For context, I own a Model 3 RWD Standard Range Highland, purchased at the end of November 2024. I live in Germany and the temperature was around -9 degree centigrade. It was snowing too.

So a friend of mine got a 24 MY RWD Long Range in Nova Scotia, Canada (so all kind of maritime weather, from wet, dry snow to ice rains..)

Now as winter and snow set, he has discovered 3 issues, which I would have expected Tesla to have resolved by now:

Headlights get covered by snow - you cant see nothing, once he was driving out of the street illumination, suddenly it got really dark and he went out to check why and realized the snow blocks them.

Horn - if the snow accumulates at the right location, apparently it blocks out the horn and acts as an insulation - pedestrians cant hear it.. unless he cleans the car entirely.

Handles - had to use significant force to open the handles, after a snow storm.

He says from his experience, Tesla is not well designed for winters yet.. which I find hard to believe, tell me there are solutions to these issues, after years of selling in snow regions?

From riding with him, I can say those handles are inconvenient when carrying two 2 Liters growlers of beers in your hands, and only having 1-2 fingers available to pull on the door handle - I can do that on regular car handles, but not the Tesla handles.. is there a solution?

I also saw those videos of the CT (I am still a reservation holder, but waiting for the cheaper, bug-free versions) - I already saw videos complaining about the headlight snow issue, similar to his complaint #1 above.. is that true as well?

What does Tesla say about all those issues? Moving to SoCal isn't a solution for everyone unfortunately :)

They are cheap and make great visual difference.