Air Suspension no longer lowers at highway speeds (FW update v5.8)

[NigelM]

Still doesn't explain the company email someone had seen that addressed this issue, but maybe I'm mis remembering or read it wrong.

That email showed that the speeds at which the air suspension reacted had changed; it didn't say anything about deleting auto-lowering.

 

[gaswalla]

I don't buy that this was an error..never have they deployed an update so quickly. At best, they are looking to save face after seeing the response of owners. Anyways, an official statement is long due

 

[Kraken]

That email showed that the speeds at which the air suspension reacted had changed; it didn't say anything about deleting auto-lowering.

No... Not what I was talking about... I swear I read somewhere earlier in this thread that one one had seen or been told about an email inside tesla that mentioned this change. I can't find it now

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Understood. Let me clarify. I had a brief chat with the service center and a (somewhat cryptic) line in e-mail was read to me about the automatic suspension being changed. (The text was very similar to the vague language in the release notes about the SOC estimation.)

My point is that it is definitely by design that they changed something here, not a glitch in 5.8 that "something moved in the matrix" with regard to the air suspension automatic behavior.

The exact intended behavior of that change -- and whether the cars are behaving as expected -- is still an open question and I look forward to hearing Tesla's official comments.

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Personal request:
In your email thread with ownership, please include a request that we be able to read the release notes for the pending update before applying the update.

I realize in this particular case the release notes don't speak to the suspension at all so it wouldn't help, but it would be a step in the right direction.

Thanks!

That was what I was referencing.

 

[agileone]

Tested and verified. It changed height at over 100 mph. No tickets please!!

You can always say : "Officer, I was just doing unit testing for Tesla. Please open a ticket directly with Tesla..."

 

[markb1]

I don't buy that this was an error..never have they deployed an update so quickly. At best, they are looking to save face after seeing the response of owners. Anyways, an official statement is long due

Agree that it's very strange that they deployed this so quickly, and starting on Friday. These are two things you just don't do when making a software update, unless the update fixes something that's very important.

 

[yobigd20]

No... Not what I was talking about... I swear I read somewhere earlier in this thread that one one had seen or been told about an email inside tesla that mentioned this change. I can't find it now

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That was what I was referencing.

I had a brief chat with the service center and a (somewhat cryptic) line in e-mail was read to me about the automatic suspension being changed. (The text was very similar to the vague language in the release notes about the SOC estimation.)

ok so the only "official" word we have was a cryptic email about something being changed. This seems to be aligned with the email detailing the suspension levels at all the different settings. No mention anywhere about the feature being disabled, even from Tesla. I think the obvious conclusion between those 2 correspondences and Lloyd's findings (or whoever else pointed it out) that this is indeed a software bug accidentally introduced by an engineer who didn't unit test his code very well and screwed up the EU/US unit conversion :/ apparently they don't have any good regression testing process before making a release...(that's not very surprising either...)

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

The developer obviously missed the break in the switch-case

switch (locale) {
case US:
lowerAtSpeed = 60;
// oops; no break
case EU:
lowerAtSpeed = 100;
break;
default:
lowerAtSpeed = MAXINT;
}

 

[vgrinshpun]

Wow! So it's a unit conversion bug on their end and we all got ourselves hyped up over this? HAHAHAHAHAHA

Still doesn't explain someone calling Tesla and being told that it was disabled...??

I was the one who posted the following:

Based on my conversation with Ownership, the lowering feature of the air suspension was "disabled" in v5.8. I was told that it can't be overridden by the owner "at least not right now"...

The representative, however, was not sure if the lowering was just pushed to a higher speed. I am expecting a call back once he can check this with engineering. I will post an update after the call back.

Unfortunately, I did not get call back from them. I called again today (the original call was on Saturday), but spoke with a person who seemed to be completely unaware of this issue - go another promise of call back on Monday. The interesting part is that the guy i spoke to on Saturday, did mentioned that perhaps lowering was pushed up to a higher speed, but was not sure about it. He said that he will call back after clarifying this with engineering...

 

[Doug_G]

No change if you change units on the display. It's a software SNAFU! I;m surprised that support reported this as normal and intended behavior which threw me.

Wait, could you clarify please? It lowers at 100 mph or 160 kph? Or does it change behavior when you switch to metric units?

 

[EdA]

The effect of lowering the car by 1 inch on range is neglectable. Tesla claims it encreases range, but nobody knows by how much. I'm sure they are overstating the impact. It probably has the same impact as a temperature change of a few degrees. I read claims of 10 kW less per mile. That's absolutely impossible.

What we need are 3 of the same type (85, P85) of cars:

1.) no air suspension
2.) air w/5.6
3.) air w/5.8

They each take the same trip...simultaneously so guarantee weather conditions...takers?

 

[yobigd20]

The developer obviously missed the break in the switch-case

switch (locale) {
case US:
lowerAtSpeed = 60;
// oops; no break
case EU:
lowerAtSpeed = 100;
break;
default:
lowerAtSpeed = MAXINT;
}

lets just hope they didn't do the same with cruise control or something like this:

void setCruiseSpeed(float value) 
{
    float tmp = value * getUnitConversionForLocale();
   
    if (locale == US)  {
        _setCruiseSpeedMph(tmp);
    }
    else if (locale == US) {
        _setCruiseSpeedKph(tmp);
    }
}


float getUnitConversionForLocale() 
{
    float conversionRatio;   
    switch (locale) {
        case US:
            conversionRatio= 1.0; // default mph
            // oops; no break
        case EU:
            conversionRatio= 1.60934; // mph to kph
            break;
        default:
            conversionRatio= 1.0;
    }
    return conversionRatio;
}

 

[rlang59]

My guess is that it's not an error but it was easier for them to just push the threshold up to something much higher than anyone would legally drive. Doing that was probably much less invasive in the code then removing the feature all together.

 

[Lloyd]

No change if you change units on the display. Lowers at 100 mph or 160 kph

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So if you have 5.8 now, you can get on the freeway and accelerate to 100 mph +, stay there for 15 seconds or so, the car will lower, then decelerate to 75 mph and drive there until you need to recharge. It will stay in the lowered position until you get under 60 mph.

 

[yobigd20]

Just got confirmation from another owner that I forwarded this info to that his also lowered at 100mph to the low height setting, and that it stayed at the low height until he went below 70mph at which is changed to standard height. So it seems if you need/want low-suspension for highway driving, just go above 100mph for it to lower, then maintain 70+mph to keep it low.

 

[NigelM]

My guess is that it's not an error but it was easier for them to just push the threshold up to something much higher than anyone would legally drive. Doing that was probably much less invasive in the code then removing the feature all together.

In that case they would have pushed it just above the speed limiter. I.e. 140mph

 

[yobigd20]

ok so now I'm going to flip the conversation and say if this change (>100mph to trigger low suspension) was intentional and not the result of some unit conversion bug, couldn't it be argued that Tesla is encouraging people to break the law and speed to get the features that they paid for?

 

[Kaivball]

Just got confirmation from another owner that I forwarded this info to that his also lowered at 100mph to the low height setting, and that it stayed at the low height until he went below 70mph at which is changed to standard height. So it seems if you need/want low-suspension for highway driving, just go above 100mph for it to lower, then maintain 70+mph to keep it low.

I wonder if this explanation will work with CHP: "officer, I was merely attempting to maximize range by enabling the aerodynamic feature..."

 

[rlang59]

In that case they would have pushed it just above the speed limiter. I.e. 140mph

Not necessarily, and I think people are getting their hopes up that this is just a bug. And frankly if it is a bug then the entire QA team should be looking for new jobs as of Monday. I don't believe that they are that incompetent so I am leaning toward this being intentional and them just pushing the lowering rate to 100mph.

 

[brianman]

That email showed that the speeds at which the air suspension reacted had changed; it didn't say anything about deleting auto-lowering.

I think Kraken's talking about the email that I was read portions of on the phone, that I referenced in a previous post. Too bad I didn't write it down at the time.

Update:
Ah, the joys of in-car recording.

What I was read was this (regarding 5.8):

Revisions to automatic ride height adjustments.

 

[towman26]

This is just BS. We paid for the air ride & lowering for great handling. If I had know that this could happen I would have saved the money and got spring suspension. But our salesman was like " with the air lowering feature the car will handle better than you Mercedes S550 and will look cool too" which it did. But now it handles like ****. I wrote to ownership that I want my money or my ride back!!!