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As someone with a non Tesla car with some smart cruise control features, I think you’re being too harsh on Tesla. I have a 2020 Hyundai, and there has been no
by cactus2093 5y ago
As someone with a non Tesla car with some smart cruise control features, I think you’re being too harsh on Tesla.
I have a 2020 Hyundai, and there has been no major refresh in the 2021 or 2022 models of the same car. But the software features have each gotten slightly better. The cruise control will only slow down and stop you on my model, but on the newer model, it will stop and then start going again. My model will sometimes correct the steering at the last minute if I start veering outside the lane, the newer model will more gradually keep you centered in the lane so you don’t even start to veer out. Pretty minor stuff like that.
There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor, but I will never get any of these improvements. Tesla is still the only car maker to decide that car software can be treated like almost any other software people use, and actually updated independently of the hardware.
Even if the 10k self driving charge is a little too ambitious, in my opinion Tesla are still miles ahead of all the other major brands in user-friendly practices.
It’s always interesting that people get so used to the status quo even if it’s actually inefficient or wasteful or arbitrarily worse than it easily could be. But if a company does something ambitious and new, but it has some downsides like a higher cost in the beginning, those downsides get judged so much more harshly than the downsides of the status quo.
- jaywalk 5y ago> There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor I'm not sure why you'd make that assumption. The newer models that can do more may very well have more/better sensors, faster processor(s), more RAM, etc. Just because the interior and exterior look the same doesn't mean that everything else is the same too.
- kbos87 5y agoI think the point stands that there is probably a ton most manufacturers could do in terms of over the air updates with existing hardware that they just don’t.
- jaywalk 5y agoI see that as a separate and larger point, but it is true. The reasons for it are also more complex than "they just don't" though they aren't technological reasons.
- DSingularity 5y agoThey will get sued for this one day.
- jaywalk 5y agoFor what? Putting better stuff in newer models? That's how basically every product works.
- DSingularity 5y agoFor not being transparent with consumers. What will happen when one day you turn on your Tesla and it relays a message to you that FSD is disabled because you are missing hardware required by the new version?
- jaywalk 5y agoWell a lawsuit would be 100% justified in that case. I think the far more likely scenario is that Tesla would release an update that simply wouldn't apply to vehicles with the missing hardware, which would stay back on the older version.
- DSingularity 5y agoYou are exactly right. And then they will eventually depreciate old cars because if google can’t maintain android development for old phones why do you think Tesla will be able to do it for old cars?
- cactus2093 5y agoI guess I can't know for sure about any one particular feature. But as far as I can tell, the company doesn't ever backport any smart/autonomous features to older models. Whereas Tesla manages to do this continuously, and years earlier than other brands. I doubt that every single incremental improvement to one of these features relies on brand new hardware or sensors that was not available the year before. Some of them are clearly just software improvements.
- jaywalk 5y agoTesla builds their cars with this in mind, and pretty much nobody else does. Even for updates that are purely software, that software may not even be updatable without physical access to the module(s) that run it. The idea of a car you bought being updated new features from the manufacturer down the road didn't even exist until Tesla. The legacy car manufacturers can't just turn on a dime and start doing the same thing for many reasons, ranging from accounting and contractual issues to actual technological ones. None of it is as simple as it may seem.
- cactus2093 5y agoI'm sure these are the same kinds of excuses the execs within the company give as to why they can't do what Tesla is doing. And that's part of why Hyundai stock is up ~30% over the past 5 years and Tesla is up over 1000%.
- kube-system 5y ago> There’s no way the hardware on my car is the limiting factor, but I will never get any of these improvements. Tesla is still the only car maker to decide that car software can be treated like almost any other software people use, and actually updated independently of the hardware. You also won't have any features removed, like Tesla has also pioneered.
- jsight 5y agoI have no idea what you are talking about here. Cars sometimes lose features between model years, or even during mid year refreshes. Tesla is no pioneer there.
- p_j_w 5y agoTesla has gimped range on cars that were already sold with an OTA update. This is far different from a mid-year refresh.
- jsight 5y agoThat's fair, and the limited charging speeds have been even more significant at times. This is one of the big downsides of the warranty being so weak, IMO.
- kube-system 5y agoI'm talking about OTAs being pushed to cars that have already been purchased. Not all of them add features. Some have removed or modified features in ways that owners did not want. OTAs are great when they add features. They suck when they remove/alter ones you previously liked.
- jsight 5y agoYeah, that's fair. Not being able to opt out of them can be a problem. Though its tough as there are some safety related ones mixed in with the others.
- hunter2_ 5y ago> My model will sometimes correct the steering at the last minute if I start veering outside the lane, the newer model will more gradually keep you centered in the lane so you don’t even start to veer out. On my 2017 VW, this enhancement was merely a feature flag waiting for the customer to enable using VCDS/OBDeleven. It's an amazing difference! Another good one I found and enabled is lane change assist, which makes it so that when you're on cruise control but slower than your set point (due to tailing a slow lead car) putting your turn signal on will immediate begin the acceleration that otherwise would only occur once you have completed the lane change and are no longer impeded by a slow lead car, so you're better matched with the flow of the new lane as you start entering it. VCDS and OBDeleven are essentially emulators of the factory scan tools that only VW dealerships normally have. Way, way beyond OBDII code reading.