7 weeks and counting since last substantial software update

[MelaniainLA]

So we are entering the 4th week of January 2019 and not only is there no 2019.4.x update, but there haven’t been ANY 2019
updates hasn’t been a substantive firmware release since 2018.49 — making it 7 weeks.

The updates used to come in every week or two for some time. Wondering what’s up — did the 7% of Tesla employees laid off include the entire firmware and AP development team? Did they take a long holiday break? Or should we be expecting a major release (maybe Nav on AP without requiring driver confirmation, or even some Smart Summon features, or perhaps additional fart noises??) sometime soon?

Any speculation? Any firm leads on this?

 

[iTech]

Project management triangle - Wikipedia

pick 2

 

[DanCar]

Elon finally let the autopilot team off for the holidays.

 

[busaman]

well to be honest the last 10 upgades dont seem to have made anything better for me. they still have not made the screen able to be switched off at night so have to go for a bodge with the black webpage its about time they asked 1000 tesla drivers what they want rather than what they think we want.

 

[OPRCE]

We could have bacon and eggs for breakfast, if we had eggs, and bacon.

 

[Hbrink]

Also, focus currently on M3 (FW versions) and USA/Canada (e.g. NoA). S/X owners in Europe are not a high priority, so it seems.

 

[NewTMSMan]

Project management triangle - Wikipedia

pick 2

Well we know Elon loves Agile, so you know which two

 

[OPRCE]

Well we know Elon loves Agile, so you know which two

No, triangle is deprecated model:

 

[bob_p]

Tesla's "quick time to market" software strategy typically has a lull before they introduce some significant changes - either as a major (x.0) or minor (x.1, x.2, …) intermediate release. During this period, almost all of their software development has shifted to the source code for the next large release, with only minor bug fixes sent out on the current release (at decreasing frequency).

Then when Tesla does start distributing the new software, we'll see deployment go through a start-stop-resume release process as Tesla identifies and then fixes obvious bugs or design flaws that weren't caught by their internal testing or testing by a small handpicked group of beta testers. For the 9.0 release, they expanded their testing to a larger group of early access testers, which may have helped reduce the number of obvious bugs when that release went out.

And we'll often see frequent (weekly or biweekly) bug fix releases immediately after new features are rolled out.

Based on Tesla's history of releasing S/X software, wouldn't be surprised for Tesla to roll out a V9.1 release soon - and wait until just before that release goes out to announce what owners will be seeing.

 

[iTech]

This might help those that aren't very technically inclined understand.

 

[chitownman]

It's possible that the engineering team is working on tech debt or some refactoring. I'm sure they created a bunch of new issues in the code with v9 that they really need to go back and fix. I'm hoping they take more time testing in 2019 and release a little less frequently. Quality over quantity is always good in my book.

They have so many variations of cars to develop and test software for that I would be surprised if get an announcement that pre-AP2.0+ would be getting fewer updates (maybe quarterly or something like that).

 

[OPRCE]

This might help those that aren't very technically inclined understand.

Is it just me or does each sw update bring a spike in failures, which accumulate to a higher plane?

 

[Lasttoy]

I pray they are fixing the stuff v9 screwed up. If any updates fix the stuff they messed with great, otherwise please dont update their junk sw. Can you tell im mad as hell?
Us folks with antique cars (4536) have not been able to charge at Gen 1, 2 3 superchargers.
And NO ONE CARES, period . Im stuck at home cause all the chargers on 95 are years old except Florence.
Service Center says tesla is writing new sw to load in all old super chargers . They dont care, they blame it on HQ.
HQ sends me email saying they are investigating issue.

 

[Akikiki]

Not everything that someone brings to the front burner requires or deserves an explanation.

 

[iTech]

Is it just me or does each sw update bring a spike in failures, which accumulate to a higher plane?

For non-AP related software updates yes. I'm guessing (and it's purely speculation) that Tesla doesn't have unit and/or integration testing setups. I wonder if they even keep a version of each major hardware component for bench testing.

 

[jorobsand]

well to be honest the last 10 upgades dont seem to have made anything better for me. they still have not made the screen able to be switched off at night so have to go for a bodge with the black webpage its about time they asked 1000 tesla drivers what they want rather than what they think we want.

Not sure exactly what you are looking for in being able to switch the screen off at night or for what purpose, but have tried just putting it into screen cleaning mode? Screen is almost all black (granted, not off) minus the dialog box in the middle to be able to exit out.

 

[TJPDX]

I would love an option to have separate display brightness for the center display and the instrument cluster display (for MX / MS)

 

[diplomat33]

So we are entering the 4th week of January 2019 and not only is there no 2019.4.x update, but there haven’t been ANY 2019
updates hasn’t been a substantive firmware release since 2018.49 — making it 7 weeks.

The updates used to come in every week or two for some time. Wondering what’s up — did the 7% of Tesla employees laid off include the entire firmware and AP development team? Did they take a long holiday break? Or should we be expecting a major release (maybe Nav on AP without requiring driver confirmation, or even some Smart Summon features, or perhaps additional fart noises??) sometime soon?

Any speculation? Any firm leads on this?

Well, Musk mentioned that the advanced summon is going to beta testers in a few weeks. So it is possible this is just the pause before the next Big Update.

 

[P100D_Me]

Then when Tesla does start distributing the new software, we'll see deployment go through a start-stop-resume release process as Tesla identifies and then fixes obvious bugs or design flaws that weren't caught by their internal testing or testing by a small handpicked group of beta testers. For the 9.0 release, they expanded their testing to a larger group of early access testers, which may have helped reduce the number of obvious bugs when that release went out.

Nice in theory but 2018.48.12.1 is full of bugs, it causes the MCU to lock up and reboot itself daily for many users, currently on TeslaFi that software release has now been rolled out to over 60% of cars and still continues to be rolled out to this day. Mid December I spoke to my local service centre about this release (this is what my car is on too) and they said they had a lot of complaints already about it and the factory is aware of the issues. So that being said why are they still rolling out that same dodgy update 6 weeks after knowing it is bad? Maybe 2018.49 and 2018.50 releases have even more issues in testing than 2018.48.

 

[bob_p]

We have 48.12.1 installed on our 2017 S 100D/MCU1 and 2018 X 100D/MCU2, and aren't seeing any major issues, so it could be the issues may not be affecting the majority of owners, otherwise the forums would likely be inundated with complaints (like we saw after some of the major releases were first distributed, such as the complaint after V9.0 first came out and there were quite a few complaints about the UI change).

For those of us who have been responsible for major software projects, products or systems, it continues to be frustrating that Tesla could do more to reduce the frequency of obvious bugs and design flaws getting distributed to vehicles. There are ways to do that without significantly slowing down the frequency of updates or in greatly lengthening the time required for new releases. And, other than adding an "early access" program, there hasn't been any indication Tesla has done much to increase testing of their software before release.

One of the changes Tesla could and should implement is to provide owners more control over the version of software running in their vehicles:

• Provide the software version number and release notes, prior to installation - so owners can make an educated decision about approving installation of the software
• Provide significantly more information in the release notes. For example, nVidia provides detailed information on even the minor changes included in each driver release, a summary of which bugs have been fixed, and a list of the outstanding issues that were NOT fixed.
• Allow owners to rollback to a previously stable release, if the owner encounters unacceptable issues with the new release. Since supporting rollback to the previously installed release or an arbitrary previous release would be almost impossible to test, what Tesla could do is support rollback to a specific previous release (which should be a proven, stable release). By restricting to a specific release, it should be possible to add testing of that rollback to both their internal and limited beta testing.
• Allow owners to specify their willingness to accept new releases. Some owners are willing to take more risks, and want to get more frequent releases, even if there's a stronger possibility of obvious problems. Some owners would prefer fewer releases, that are proven to be more stable.
• Allow owners to enroll (or withdraw) from the beta program. Tesla would especially benefit from having more of their owners with prior beta experience participate in the testing, and able to provide higher quality reporting of problems found.
• And provide feedback on bugs that are reported through the voice command interface, via e-mail or through an online bug reporting system (which they should add). Today anyone can submit a bug report - but there's no mechanism to confirm Tesla ever does anything with those reports.

As the number of Tesla owners increases and Tesla moves beyond "early adopters", they may find customers less willing to accept software with obvious issues.

Even though Tesla's software process could be improved, at least so far, the issues that are encountered in new software releases are usually inconvenient but not present in "mission critical" functions. Otherwise forums would be seeing many more complaints about software quality - and Tesla's customer loyalty would suffer.