the last thing I want is a car with a built in 10" touchscreen running some ancient version of Android... Do you really want that same un-updated OS and software for ten years?
One of the nice things about Tesla is their regular, free software updates. Even the earliest Tesla Model S models can be updated to the latest software. You get all the features that the 2016 Teslas have, except of course where the required hardware is not present (like Autopilot).
In things like smart TVs, smart fridges with LCDs on them, and infotainment systems in cars, this is sadly the exception and not the norm. Hardware-oriented manufacturers push a product out the door and things frequently get little or no updated after that. I'm willing to bet money that in ten years from now, a lot of 2016/2017 model year Toyotas that ship today with some sort of infotainment touchscreen system in them will be still running the exact same software. In fifteen years from now such cars will look as quaint as the cars from the 1980s with full LED dashes:
> In fifteen years from now such cars will look as quaint as the cars from the 1980s with full LED dashes:
Those are vacuum fluorescent displays and not LEDs, and were used in new vehicles (at least by Ford) until the early 2000s. They are still a great choice for vehicle instrument panels and are commonly used for aftermarket retrofit units (see for example http://www.parrautomotive.com/index.cfm/page/ptype=product/p...)
No, I agree with you. I think a touchscreen has no place in a vehicle, as working one will always be a distraction while driving. I don't need to look at physical buttons to be able to feel when my hand is on the "next station" button, but I have to look at a touchscreen to perform the same task reliably.
I've been really enjoying my Mazda 3's setup though; it's got the touchscreen thing, but it actually turns the touchscreen off while you're driving, and has a little dial near the console that you can move around like a joystick to manipulate the controls. This sounds weird, but is highly intuitive, and once I knew my way around the controls I could easily work the display blind, with my eyes still firmly on the road in front of me. I'm OK with a compromise like this. The system isn't perfect, but the input method seems like it achieves the best of both worlds.
Having had two touch screens in two different cars, and having my first car plow into a tree because I was trying to use one, I can agree. They are highly distracting.
My 2002 Nissan has physical buttons and also little feeler dots to enable completely blind operation, and the information is displayed high on the dash so you don't have to look far.
But by far the best experience I have had with in car entertainment was a simple bluetooth link to my phone and a physical volume knob on the head unit.
Hop in, start driving and the music is automatically playing what I was listening to wherever I was before. Volume up or down as appropriate, eyes never leaving the road.
It is rather messed up that a broken infotainment system can kill the climate control.
If your infotainment system is down but there is nothing physically wrong with the AC compressor or fan system it should not prevent you from using the AC in 43C weather. That's as close as I've seen yet to a touchscreen-system software problem breaking the mechanical driving functionality of a car.
One of the nice things about Tesla is their regular, free software updates.
Regular, free software updates are nice as long as the regular, free software updates are nice.
As soon as whoever controls the software updates decides to do something not nice, however, those updates become a huge liability. It's annoying enough with things like evergreen browsers or Windows 10, all of which apparently break basic functionality all the time. But with cars, where an enforced OTA software downgrade can reduce what you bought to something less than you thought you were paying for, and you can have the original back for a few thousand bucks? That's just a legalised extortion mechanism IMNSHO, and I don't want anything to do with it.
Totally agree. However if you look at the trend Tesla has set from the start(as opposed to other mfgrs) it's been very positive.
In the same vein if you're buying a relatively new car you're going to have an unknown amount of reliability based on new changes to that model year. How the company deals with that down the road is a similar issue. I remember looking into a Hyundai a long time ago only to find out that they were denying warranty repairs on clutches with ~4k miles that hadn't been abused but were failing.
However if you look at the trend Tesla has set from the start(as opposed to other mfgrs) it's been very positive.
Interesting. I'm curious about how Tesla will do given their very different commercial and technological models. However, I've never driven one, and the anecdotal comments about them that I've noticed have given me an overwhelmingly negative impression of their brand. Maybe what I've seen so far was just unfortunate and not a fair representation?
Or in cases as directly described in the post: like when Tesla uses software-limits to prevent the car from using the whole battery... and charges you $9000 for the rights to use the whole battery as it was designed.
Do they need to do the updates to get the telemetry?
I imagine the updates will stop for older models about the time they decide that supporting that version of whatever hardware costs more than they get out of doing it.
One of the nice things about Tesla is their regular, free software updates. Even the earliest Tesla Model S models can be updated to the latest software. You get all the features that the 2016 Teslas have, except of course where the required hardware is not present (like Autopilot).