A Cable to Convert the 2008 Roadster Radio Connector to a Standard Toyota Connection.

The preferred way to install a head unit is to buy a cable that matches the standard connector in your car and solder that cable to the connector that comes with the head unit. We followed the JVC-specific cable back into the dash and unplugged it from the hidden connector Tesla uses, but weren't able to identify a source for that cable end. So, we decided to convert the Roadster connection to one of the standard auto manufacturer cables. You can buy the car side of most manufacturers' cables; we chose to buy the Toyota connectors, which conveniently match our RAV4-EV.

To create the Roadster-to-Toyota cable, we used the Roadster end of the original cable. NOTE: before you cut the Roadster-to-JVC cable, be sure to label all of the wires, as several wires have identical coloring but different purposes. You can figure out what all of the wires are by reading the JVC manual and comparing the Tesla-to-JVC cable with the JVC cable that should be in the box you got from Tesla. Once we created the Roadster-to-Toyota cable, we were able to wire the matching Toyota cable to our Alpine unit and plug everything together. In the future, we can change head units by just buying and wiring the standard Toyota connector to another head unit.

Metra part #71-1761 is normally present in a Toyota vehicle, part #70-1761 is the part normally wired to the head unit.

We have included photos of the stereo side of the Tesla connector in case other owners want to try to identify what connector Tesla is using.