Tesla Boombox custom sounds: make your car talk
Teslas with an external Pedestrian Warning System speaker can play sounds outside the car: Boombox sounds when you press the horn in Park, and a custom lock sound. Many owners want a voice line instead of a noise: a movie character, a robot, or a polite “Please step back from the vehicle”.
This guide sums up the owner’s manual instructions and shows how to make spoken sounds in any voice with SuperClonica.
What Boombox can play
According to the Model Y owner’s manual, Boombox is available only on vehicles with the Pedestrian Warning System and plays sound through its external speaker while the car is in Park. Among other things, pressing the horn plays the first five seconds of a sound from a compatible USB drive. The manual also asks you to check local laws before using Boombox in public places.
Prepare the USB drive
The manual says you can add up to five custom sounds. Format the drive as exFAT, MS-DOS FAT on a Mac, ext3 or ext4; NTFS is not supported. Create one folder named Boombox, which must be the only folder on the drive, so it cannot be shared with Dashcam. Add .wav or .mp3 files; you can choose from the first five in alphabetical order, and file names may use only letters, digits, periods, dashes and underscores. Plug the drive into a front USB port, or the glove box port on vehicles where the console ports only charge, then pick the sound from the Boombox menu.
The lock sound
The manual points to Toybox, Boombox, Lock Sound to change the sound played when the car is locked from the outside, again with the Pedestrian Warning System required. Community guides describe using your own lock sound by putting a file named LockChime.wav at the top level of a USB drive; this is not described in the owner’s manual, so test it on your car and software version.
Make spoken sounds in any voice
Hear voices free on their pages with a line of 30 to 100 characters, no account needed, from movie and game characters to calm announcers. Then install the free engine with python -m pip install superclonica-cpu and run, for example, superclonica --text "Please step back from the vehicle." --voice voice.json --lang en --normalize --output step_back.wav. Keep horn sounds under five seconds, since only the first five play, and keep lock sounds very short. --normalize gives every file the same loudness.
Use it considerately
Outside speakers reach people who did not choose to listen, so keep lines friendly and short, and follow local rules. Character voices in the catalog are fan-made; use them for fun, not to imitate a real person. You can also train your own voice in the studio from a 5 to 10 second recording. The engine speaks 31 languages; Chinese is not supported yet.