Put your garage door opener behind the screen on the bottom. Get some double-sided sticky tape and place it on the back side of the screen centered. It is completely hidden and you can just reach behind the screen on the bottom and push the button. Works great on my wife's M3 SR+.

so the “fix” is just using a garage door opener like we’ve been doing for decades? that’s what the video is about?

There is one distinct advantage to Homelink over the traditional garage door opener. It is security. We have had several cars broken into in our neighborhood over the years. Many times the garage door opener is also taken. Yes, most of the time your car is in your garage, but sometimes it is not. In some extreme cases, cars have been broken into and then the thieves followed up by actually going into the garage to see if they can steal stuff. Bottom line is I am not a fan of garage door openers being inside of cars. Yes, you can hide them.....but then you have yet another step when you get home. They should have included this with a 60K car. Silly they didn't. No other discussion needed. Btw, love your vids. My wife is a big fan of your vids as well. We pick up our Model Y tomorrow. Wish us luck!

Best part of the video was Ben adding the code in for Tesla to add Homelink at time of ordering! LOL!

They should add a button “check & fix trunk alignment” for 0$, too.

Why I mean why charge extra for a garage opener. Literally a 2003 Toyota Camry has one

Lol! This isn’t standard in 3 and Y? Wow.

Android user here: I have a similar wifi garage opener made by Meross that was less than $35. I connected it to IFTTT to open my garage with a certain command. Now as I approach the alley I just verbally say, "Hey Google, the eagle has landed" and my garage opens.

Absolutely agree... Ordering separately, processing the order, then scheduling service adds cost to all. Having this as an option at time of order should be a no brainer, and simple to implement.

Wow, this fix also works with my 1982 Mini Cooper. It feels like I'm driving a Tesla now. Thanks for sharing this!

I strongly recommend AGAINST using the auto open/close feature of Homelink. I've had to replace the glass roof on my M3 twice because of that "feature". To give an example, the second time I came home and the garage door happened to be already open, so I just drove in. But Homelink doesn't know if the door is open or closed, it just knows you are coming home, and activates the door. So, as I was driving into the garage, the door closed down on the glass roof, cracking it. :-(

Homelink charges 450$ per vehicle in factory, and 175$ licensing for the chip. Tesla's 300$ includes installation, which is admittedly, open Frunk, remove shield, install module, route cable, reinstall shield. I had mine done mobile service, and I see no reason you couldn't *order* the module, and when called/coordinated for delivery, ask for it to be accomplished at the same time. The problem, in this case, is Chamberlain/MyQ. They've been charging IFTTT users to use their platform as well.

I use MyQ and its amazing... no hard wiring...it uses most garage door openers incl yours Ben!!! That purple button will connect it to the MyQ and Boom Wifi garage door opener

All Tesla needs to do is publish a REST API specification for Garage door openers, where all you then need to do in the car is to enter the hostname and some credentials and it will be registered as an opener the same way as Homelink is. Two days later, you will find a downloadable package for a rasperry pi,pi with a shield to connect to major garage door connectors to puchase, within a month, you'll get complete kits on ebay/tesmanian etc.

0:31 I can’t that was so funny

The chamberlain myq smart garage hub allows you to turn almost any garage door opener into on that can be controlled from your phone. It doesn’t require any rewiring and it has an integration that allows it to be controlled from your tesla. Also I recently replaced a garage door opener and apparently newer ones aren’t even supporting homelink anymore because homelink isn’t as secure as newer standards

You have try Tailwind iQ3. Much less than $300 Homelink. Works on multiple garage doors. Has geo-fencing, so you don't have to pull out your phone to operate.

My garage opener is Chamberlain Ultra Quiet Belt Drive, that has MyQ / Smart Home option built it. It also supports Google Assistant (so you can use Ok Google voice-control on your smart phone to open / close it). That is useful when I go walking / biking around the neighborhood. For how I get in / out of garage with my Tesla Model 3, I greatly prefer how the Homelink option works (automatically opening / closing). Whenever we get our next Tesla, if it doesn't have that included, we would end up paying the $300 to get it added. I agree that it makes sense for Tesla to just provide the option during the configuration with the added cost if they don't want to include in all cars built into the base price, even for people that don't need / use it.

Why the hell would Tesla remove this much needed item? I for one think $300 is highway robbery and someone at Tesla made a big mistake removing this. Shouldn’t be an option...it should be part of the package.

What I really think 🤔 it’s that should be already included with the already Super expensive price you should pay for a Tesla .

Watching code on the Tesla site was historic 🤯 lol nice flex

JACK cussing HAHAHAHA. I loved the intro Ben. Keep em coming!

This is crazy you even have to pay for this on a 50-60K car. That part probably costs them less than $50

Keeping the GDO in your car can be a security issue. Say for instance you leave the car parked outside. Bad people can jimmy your car door and gain access to your garage with the GDO. On most cars with built-in GDO, the ignition needs to be on for the GDO to work. Also, thieves can break into your car away from your home, get your address from the registration, and access your garage with the GDO.

Tailwind is another option. it has a similar feature of self open/close at different distances from the garage plus you can use it in any vehicle and not just Tesla.

*Issue is* - Tesla doesn't manufacture your exact car trim the moment you customize it on the website. Your customized trim is matched from an already manufactured lot, so now Tesla having to estimate who would order your exact trim plus Homelink is something highly variable/difficult to forecast in the manufactured cars.

Unfortunately it doesn't work that way, because when you take delivery of a vehicle you're being matched to vehicles already manufactured with the same configuration. Now they have to double the number of types of vehicles they ship: ones with and without homelink? Vehicles with white seats are rare enough, coming prebuilt with homelink would be extra rare.... If you've noticed, Tesla over the years has greately simplified the configurations and options available so they don't have to make so many vehicles on demand custom for each individual order. They just mass manufacture vehicles in the different colours, sometimes alter the seats or whether they are performance or not, and that's it. And ship them out to delivery centers. Then those vehicles are matched to orders.

I use MyQ from Champerlain and Apple Home app. It is set to close the door when I leave and open when I arrive home. You can also manually open and close it from the phone or the Apple Watch. Works great and you get a notification when the door opens and closes. Super easy.

I got the Homelink garage door opener and I didn't have to go anywhere to get it installed. They sent a service tech to my house! In fact, for all my service calls they came to my house. I have yet to take it to a service center for anything and I've had my MY for more than a year!

Check out the Tailwind garage door opener system. $60 and can support 3 doors by adding sensors. Pairs with both your car and phone(s) to know which door to open automatically. Lots of great features and is more secure than just about anything out there. No I don't work for them, just own the product.

Mine was done by Mobile Service at home. Other option is to wait for WiFi-enabled garage opening with same -or more- home link features coming soon OTA.

I've been told by my garage-door supplier that Homelink is an "old" interface being replaced by Bisecur now.

I took my Model Y in for some fit and finish fixes. I was told that the regular service center couldn't address those issues (one was a paint issue) and I had to go the service center at the delivery hub (Fremont, CA). I had purchased a Homelink unit, but that service center said they did not have the equipment to install it, so I need to get another service appoint now to get the Homelink unit installed. What a waste of time.

I have the 3 button homelink from old Mercedes rear view mirrors and I just hardwired it to 12 volts and then stealthy mount the 3 buttons and I now have a very cool and hidden 3 button garage door opener

Rofl I love how stingy your wife is lol just like my wife. She drives to another supermarket when she knows bread is 50 cents cheaper.... Except she drives a twin turbo V8 ... so really she’s just spending even more lol

I could not believe when I bought my model Y and got it home when I googled how to set up the garage door opener and found that it didn't have a basic built in universal opener that I could set up. Then to learn it would be $350 and a service appointment to get it set up was infuriating. I park outside, so keeping a garage door opener in the car is a security risk beyond just the frustration of not having a well integrated solution. SO ANNOYING!

I added homelink to my Model 3, but it only supports a maximum of 3 doors (or gates). I have 4. I ended up adding MyQ interfaces to all the doors and programmed a website that interfaces with the MyQ API so I can see all door statuses and open or close them from anywhere, including my Tesla browser.

I bought a $25 opener that works with my Genie garage door opener and the Condo complex gate that uses a Linear brand opener. It clips onto the visor but since it was black and the visor is light grey it kept distractingly me so I painted the front and sides light grey. I don't have the self drive feature so it works fine for me and I saved $75 plus a service call.

I think my recently-acquired middle age is starting to show here, but the thing that amazes me about Homelink is that it's not like we couldn't have solved this problem shortly after the first garage door opener was invented. A very low-power signal pinging from the opener itself triggering the remote in your car every few seconds is all you'd need. It just didn't occur to anybody that we needed more than a button to push somewhere in our cars because - not hard. Also maybe that could have added like a brick's worth of volume to the remote depending on when the first one was invented but certainly by the 70s, this was not an expensive problem to solve. But given that there's clearly demand for it now, how does that app not plug into your GPS? Every phone has an API for it. Hell, google maps probably has an API that could handle it. I totally see Musk's point here, and I'm not a superfan. Why add a dedicated scanner/emitter, another part that can break, for a feature that's this limited in scope given the options that practically write themselves in this scenario?

Would have got the homelink, if we could have ordered it with the car, or before delivery. But now that we have it, we just use the old remote and no need to spend the ~$500 CDN (with tax), Also, gives us the option of taking the remote with us when we leave the car. If someone does steal the car, the home address in in the navigation. They can just drive to the house, get not the garage, rob, and leave. Maybe been watching to many TV shows. lol Love the double sided tape/velcro idea.

This is cool! I think for now, I'm good with my solution: I have a simple relay that shows on Google Home / Alexa. That relay is wired in alongside my dumb wired garage door button. I keep my Google Home hub bookmarked on my Tesla's browser and operate the relay from there. I have an automation set to open it when I arrive home. I also keep a Ring door sensor on the door so I can be notified it were to open for some reason accidentally. And then of course, I keep my old trusty RF remote in case I don't have internet for some reason.

My Tesla 3 I purchased in 2018 came with Homelink. Now it is great but I was using it to auto open my garage door when arriving and closing when leaving. I loved it until it cost me $700 to repair my garage door!!! What happened was upon arriving home it opened the door as I backed into my driveway, however I did not go in the garage and sat in the driveway doing something. When I started to back into the garage for some reason it thought I was leaving and the door auto closed as I backed in and I hit the door. Well a lesson learned and now I always use it manually to be safe. LOL and -$700 later. Hope this may help others.

Grab a My Q. (Amazon has been giving credits making it free) Connect it to eve connect. Then use the eve connect dashboard on your web browser in the car and use that to open and close the garage. You can also set it up so it’s automated. Works amazing

I have the worlds most advanced garage door opener, normally works automatically (although occasionally needs to be prompted with a short sharp stick, especially on rainy or cold days for some reason) and also has other uses such as washes cloths and even earns money. It's called a wife, expensive but looks good.

I agree with you that $300 is outrages, but you know of course, that it is not about adding check box on a page, which takes a seconds for every kid these days. You have to make all chains of the process, we do not know much about.

I heard it was a homelink licensing issue. To cut cost per vehicle, the feature was removed. The 350 pays for the simple device, installation, and license.

They didn't want to build a certain number of cars with and without the option so instead of installing it in all cars, like they used to, they now install it in none. Despite what some people think, they do not build to order. What they should do is include it for free in all premium interiors and not in the rest and still offer as an after after market add-on.

You could probably set a setting up in if this than that to trigger the opener to open your garage then you connect to the WiFi or something, that well if doesn't matter which car your driving too, it will be on your phone and will open automatically

I have the Nexx garage door opener on iOS and you can set in the app to auto open the door when you enter a specified radius around your home. This works about 75% of the time. When it doesn’t work,, if I open the app it will start working again. My guess is this is related to the aggressive killing of background apps or maybe a phone restart that I didn’t remember.

I agree that it’s unfortunate that they removed Homelink as standard equipment. The cost of the actual hardware should not be an issue. It’s probably less than $10 if bought in bulk. The license is likely much more than the hardware so eliminating it is a cost savings for Tesla. The app doesn’t help me because we have a community gate with a relatively dumb controller. I don’t like the remotes because, if someone gets into your car, they now have access to your house or at least your garage. With Homelink built in it can’t be used if you can’t power on the car. Regarding your smart opener, does Tesla support Alexa? If so then you could install an Alexa enabled opener then open and close the door with a voice command.

Homelink is really great for Apartment gates, since it opens with GPS when you drive up. (Probably hit or miss if it's compatible with older gate systems)

Happy early Model 3 owner with standard homelink, getting sick of the decontenting of the newer vehicles. The homelink auto open feature is excellent. Direct transmit from car to receiver with no intervention from me. Wifi options need to go through LTE, my carrier, the entire internet, back to my landline ISP, out the router and to the door opener I'm now 30 feet away from? That's a waste and a huge no from me, especially since any lag or outage in this chain means I can't get into my own garage.

Tesla doesn’t build cars on order, if they had to include the homelink for you it means these would need to build the car based on the options selected which is a different production strategy.

If you have to bring the vehicle into the service center to have the homelink module installed, then that's an issue with your market and how the service heads are running it. This is a mobile service capable job. Source: I'm a Tesla Mobile Service technician. I've done tons of these in mobile, takes about 30 minutes and we can do it basically anywhere. They shouldn't be requiring you to come in to have it installed. Different markets have different workflows for how they push something to Mobile Service or not, but if it's not immediately set up as a mobile service, I would recommend requesting if it can be done mobile. They should be able to accommodate.

That app: compete for who has the most supercharger visits? In other words, who damages the batteries the most? First prize- a damaged battery

$5 Sonoff switch also works...

Totally agree. We are located over 500 miles from the nearest service center.

Dang, even our ho-hum Prius Prime has a home link garage-door opener. Very convenient!

I'm sure it's not about website barriers. It's got to be about how can Tesla lower costs in making cars. The simpler the car is to build, the faster they can build them, and the lower their overhead. When Tesla is able to meet demand, and quality issues have been solved, I'm sure they will add more build-to-order options.

Everyone is missing the point. The point of it is the car could talk to your garage, entry gates etc for when FSD, robotaxi etc rolls out

Well my Liftmaster chain garage door opener broke 10 days ago, 2 weeks after having the Y. I did buy a second opener first and now it's useless lol. I bought the Genie opener from Costco, wifi, battery backup, belt driven. Huge upgrade and I can use my Alexa on my watch and open it from a mile away. Smart does are the future, don't expect Homelink to ever come back. I am expecting smart opener integration within a year.

I have it with my Model 3 as it came with the car. It should be standard on all Teslas. Dumb.

Smart garage door is the way to go. Super cheap.

0:31 - You can actually see Mrs. Sullins die inside! That is exactly why you don't swear around young children; they will learn to use that naughty language!

I wonder if Tesla could use the cameras to determine if the garage is already open before activating. So if you drove up and the garage is already open then it wouldn't do anything but if it is not open then it would open it for you. In time I'm sure they will get it right but $300 is pretty ridiculous.

Please do a video about the ongoing issue with hardware 2.5. Screens are freezing, bluetooth issues, reboots etc. Hardware 3.0 came out 3 months after i bought my model 3. They are significantly better at processing...and thats ok, these cars are always improving. Problem is that my car is having tons of issues and they refuse to replace it with 3.0. More and more people are having this issue. Car is two years old, imagine what this will look like in 2-4 more years. You will have failing hardware left and right.

Tesla point was to leave the car outside - free commercial for them. Or pay 300 to avoid it. Smart and simple. I, once was a big fan of Tesla. Not now though. Too much of talks, but very low quality and very high price tag.

Garage Doors may be Wi-fi, but not my Community Gate. Even if I agree about the garage door part, I don't see many gated communities moving towards Wi-Fi smart openers anytime soon. So now I go back to two openers on my visor instead of buttons on my mirror. So stupid.

You can do geofencing and it will auto-open with NexxGarage, but not auto-close. It doesn't work very well and supposedly you can have multiple cars use this feature, but I have yet to get that to work...

We just bought the Model Y purchased the Model Y and waiting for a VIN. I heard about this and thought no way this is right since it came standard on my Model 3 from mid 2019. I even called the service center and they said just order it online and schedule a mobile service tech to come and and install it. However, I do believe the logic is cookie cutter stamp and press to get them out the door to not create a bigger bottleneck. Either way this for sure is a process improvement for the company

One thing Tesla got wong or don't care is that buying a car is an emotional event. I picked up the Y today and all I can think about is why the most technological car ever built does not have a garage door opener. Instead of telling friends and family how great the car is, there will be a conversation about getting charged $300 for something that should be standard.

While I understand & agree with your intent, adding the option to include garage opener while building the car is not just a simple HTML edit as you showed. There's a CPQ (configure, price & quote) engine behind the scenes that has rules for pricing and quote generation, and when order is placed those options need to integrate with their ERP (order management) system. From there updates need to me made in the production line to add garage opener for specific orders on the line. Even if not trivial, it should still be done because it saves everyone time, which is money.

The reason for not having it as an option is probably: 1) People would see how expensive such a trivial thing got. and 2) It adds one more option meaning many more different spect cars being built, so matching an open order with a pre-built car will get so much more unlikely. Tesla doesn’t produce on order anymore but in batches and matches open orders with existing cars afterwards. At least for their high-volume cars.

I got Nexx Garage as well with a now 5 or 6 year old chamberlain garage door opener. The issue I normally have with it is network connection issues. Oddly enough the controller kept resetting the clock for the wall mount opening button. So I had to install a secondary unit that essentially just sends a wireless signal to the opener. They sent me that part for free. Overall, it solves the problem that I had and is about 70% convenient. Hopefully Tesla will get integration with it sometime soon as that'd be fantastic.

Ben, I too agree. Just give us the option to pay for it installed during the built.

LOL the quick add coding you cut to made me laugh harder than it should but yeah its that ridiculous that they don't just have it as an option for those who do want it

My model 3 is over 2 years old and I've been too lazy to setup Homelink. I guess I should do it now.

I love that you are not an irrational fan but just a fan. Great content as always.

use smartthings. I have home link in my tesla but i use smartthings. You can program it to open automatically which uses your phone as geo fence and opens the door. Most of the new garage door openers are not using homelink hardware. the same hardware less me if i have left my garage door open etc. I can program a lot of stuff with smartthings.

Hey Ben, I’m a super car nut and have owned 60 brand new cars, including 7 Ferrari’s. Having homelink as an option is ridiculous. That being said, you’re right, let me order it when I buy the car. Anyway, here in Southern California, mobile service came to the house and installed it in 30 minutes. Easy peasy, but stupid!

I had a “home link” style button on my bmw. Didn’t have very good distance. The regular clicker stays on my visor and is way better and cheaper.

This can be solved easily with an OTA software update from tesla adding to the homelink menu the possibility to configure an API endpoint, so for example you can setup it with your nexxgarage or any wifi enabled smart switches.

not that easy adding a check box... since you have to hook it to the back end of the system.... and also have space in the factory in the line that will add that hardware. Probably not worth it imho.

Good to know. I'm waiting on my Model Y right now. When it's ready, I'll call the dealership to add homelink. Thanks!

Thats the fastest bit of programming I ever saw! Brillant! Ben you should be employed by the customer service kick arse department!!

IFTTT would be another option, using phone location. Although there may be an unwanted delay in the door opening.

Apple has HomeKit you can use your voice to open your garage. Only problem Siri is not the best when talking to him compared to google. Have to say to two or three times. I’m really considering getting the home link installed for the convenience

Just because you paint a door on the wall of your house, it doesn’t magically turn into a functional door. Backend, scheduling, production part is the hard part. And with the Tesla motto - the best part is no part, it would make more sense to go the WiFi way, and offer an extension to your garage door motor to upgrade it to IoT instead of upgrading the car hardware to an old standard.

You can actually use that third party garage opener and (if it is supported) make a Siri shortcut to open your garage door when you arrive home. In iOS 13 you have to give consent every time but in iOS 14 (which is in beta rn) if your phone is unlocked that would just happen ... like magic

The benefit, if you need it, of Homelink is that it works with Summon, so it will open your garage door. I had this same discussion about why it couldn't be selected at time of purchase. The argument that was made was that customers can return the car within X time and if we provide Homelink, it can't be uninstalled. Very weak argument because it holds true for every upgrade that you do on the car, like: paint, wheels, Long Range AWD, Performance, FSD... whatever. That $300 includes the cost to install... so if you allow it at time of purchase, I am sure they could likely drop it to $200-250 as it should be more readily performed at that point. Bad move.

I believe it is not just software but added hardware.

Problem solved, I don't have a garage. 😂

I’m sure they don’t have it as a configurable option is to reduce build complexity. Honda and Subaru are similar but your dealer can handle it as part of the sales process. Still annoying for sure.

I think it's dumbest flaw is no emergency door handles in the back seat. Potentially deadly.

super easy, barely an inconvenience

Thanks for sacrificing that $300 for us, and hopefully Tesla see this and thank you and add the checkbox on their site.

2:01 neat app! but ... "mayor" of a charging station? aren't we supposed to avoid supercharging for longer healthier battery life? I've only used a super charger twice in the last year. Shouldn't the badge or achievement be "least visited"?

Ben, in your Tesla Hacks playlist, there is a video made by someone else on how they quiet caffeine for 30 days. Not sure why that was in there, but I skipped it.

Add that trailer hitch option in the ordering process too!

LOLOL your sons reaction was better. 😂