Why Model S lacks typical voice commands, and has no voice-to-text

[Lex]

I am astounded that Model S refuses to take dictation, even for a search, but welcomes QWERTY touch typing instead.

My guess is the standard vendors are asking too much for Tesla and that Elon is instead planning a Universal Translator.

 

[CHG-ON]

Annoying as all get out. I basically do not use it except to call somebody. But even then, it's easier to simply bring the name up on the center screen.

 

[travwill]

Love my MS since getting it but coming from other nice cars it is missing a LOT of basic things you would expect it to have. Even though its a first model it seems that they would have made certain it had more advanced voice commands, but the one it does have around searching/navigation work well enough. Its missing more obvious physical nice to haves like adjustable seat belts, lights in areas, and much of the stuff promised in V7/Autopilot as well.

It may have that fancy screen and dash but at a point it just looks fancy and doesn't always mean it can do anything extra ;-). But the battery & drive system, that is what you mainly get the car for!

 

[Lex]

It may have that fancy screen and dash but at a point it just looks fancy and doesn't always mean it can do anything extra ;-). But the battery & drive system, that is what you mainly get the car for!

Totally, that's why I don't call my MS a luxury car but a premium car.

But ultimately, it's one big computer platform and speech to text isn't something new. We're not asking for Siri or Cortana here.

 

[Gizmotoy]

What's baffling to me is that the speech-to-text engine, least for this American English speaker, is fantastic. I can say "Navigate to" and spit out a complicated address, the car converts it to text, automatically searches for it, and begins navigation. That's really impressive.

But I can't use it to turn on the dome lights... or enable range mode... or any of 100 other commands that are far easier to recognize.

A lot of much-needed software work fell by the side of the road in order to get autopilot up and running.