Tesla is changing how its Dashcam works after years of feedback from owners. For a long time, the system kept only about 60 minutes of driving footage before older clips were removed, no matter how big the USB drive was.
That one-hour limit often felt tight for drivers. Many wanted to keep video of long trips, Full Self-Driving drives, or road incidents, yet they risked losing key clips as soon as the Dashcam looped. Some owners said they had plenty of storage plugged in, but the software still cut them off at the same point.
New feature uses dynamic recording duration
Now Tesla is introducing a feature called “Dashcam Dynamic Recording Duration” in an upcoming software update. Instead of a fixed cap, the system adjusts how much video it keeps based on free space on the connected USB drive.
The company’s release notes in China state: “Dashcam Dynamic Recording Duration – The dashcam dynamically adjusts the recording duration based on the available storage capacity of the connected USB drive. For example, with a 128 GB USB drive, the maximum recording duration is approximately 3 hours; with a 1 TB or larger USB drive, it can reach up to 24 hours. This ensures that as much video as possible is retained for review before it gets overwritten.”
So the Dashcam will still overwrite the oldest clips, but it can now keep several hours instead of one. A 128 GB drive supports about three hours of rolling footage, and a 1 TB or larger drive can hold roughly a full day of recording before the cycle repeats.
Storage capacity now shapes how much video you keep
In this new setup, storage management on the USB drive matters more. If the drive is partly used for other files, such as media or older saved Dashcam clips, the free space drops and the available recording window shrinks.
Owners who want the longest possible loop will likely dedicate most of the drive to Dashcam. And for drivers who often record long trips or want detailed logs of their routes, a higher-capacity drive, such as 1 TB, can make a clear difference in how far back they can go in the footage.
At the same time, when the drive fills up, new recordings replace the oldest ones. So if a driver wants to keep a certain incident, they still need to save or export that clip before it cycles out.
The feature appears first in software release notes for Tesla vehicles in China and is initially reaching employees there. Owners in the United States and other regions should see the same Dashcam upgrade in the coming weeks or months, once broader deployment begins.
Owners have asked for this kind of change for years. Now they are closer to a Dashcam that better matches the storage they plug into their cars, rather than one that stops at the same time limit for everyone.
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