Car Colorizer Allows You to Customize The Looks of Your Tesla

@Tesla has just released the Car Colorizer to the newest software update, 2022.4.5.3, finally allowing you to customize your car’s color on-screen.

As seen below in the video, the custom color also translates to the Tesla app!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1494396497433141255

 

[Teleezen]

Entertaining feature, But I'd much rather see something that really drives the technology forward from a functional standpoint. not really interested in rainbow roads and mars surfaces

 

[SomeJoe7777]

Hey Joe. I don't think you understand how engineering teams work. Engineers are assigned to product teams with a specific focus and tract. Moreover, engineers have specialties and experience that go along with that. They are not interchangeable manufacturing parts -- e.g. you're thinking of software as a factory that can shift priorities and all engineers are effectively the same. This is not the case at all.

I am well aware of that and the other points in your post. Those things are well-known and obvious.

Perhaps you misunderstood my post? Nowhere did I say that any engineer should be reassigned to a different task, team, or project. It is the makeup and organization of the teams themselves that are the problem.

As an example, there is some engineering team that the auto wipers fall under their responsibility. But they're not fixing the issues. Partly that can be explained that this is the same team that initially developed them and failed, so right away we see that the entire team lacks the expertise to make them work. To fix that problem, higher level management has to take apart that team and recreate it with new engineers who can tackle the problem fresh. But apparently, higher level management does not consider that a priority.

They are probably trying to hire any one and everyone they can at the tune of probably 150% of the capacity they actually need to deal with turnover given the current demand for engineers.

Sounds very disorganized and rudderless to me. Oh wait ... I already said that.

 

[PianoAl]

The polka dot option is a step too far!

 

[gotoma8]

Nice, but how about a tire configuration so that the speedometer and odometer is right based on our wheels/tires selection???

 

[gotoma8]

You know some other things that might be fun? Hmmm ... how about:

• Auto wipers that actually work and that I can switch on without diving into 3 layers of menus.
• A climate control system that doesn't require filter changes and evaporator cleaning every 6 months to prevent the car from smelling like a trash dump.
• Auto high beams that actually function.
• Waypoints on the navigation that won't leave you stranded. (Seriously, try it. Put in a long trip that would require 2 supercharger stops, then add a waypoint that's in between the chargers. The car's new calculated scheduled charging stops are completely inaccurate and would leave you stranded if you tried to follow them.)
• Navigation that has correct street names, correct highway names, and correct exit numbers. (I find multiple errors in the map on every trip).
• Staying out of the recall headlines for more than say, a week or two? Rear-end collisions with emergency vehicles, video game access while driving, pedestrian warning speaker sound override that disables the warning, rolling through stop signs, phantom braking. All of those are current, active, NHTSA recalls and investigations.
• The ability to deliver a new vehicle in a timely fashion. (I am now on the 15th month of waiting on a Model X. Ordered 1/28/2021. Estimated delivery date has been pushed back 6 separate times.)
• Customer service where I can talk with a human instead of being forced into an app that doesn't function. (Try to schedule service where the service address has a suite number -- you can't do it. If the suite is the location of the vehicle, mobile service will never find you).
• Tell the truth about Full Self Driving. i.e. that it doesn't actually work, and will NEVER work with the current hardware. No current model of Tesla out in the field right now will EVER be able to avoid debris on a highway. EAP would have happily run over a large piece of tire debris on a trip I took last week and it would have destroyed the underside of the car if I hadn't manually maneuvered around it. And that's just ONE item that disqualifies the system from anything above Level 2. There's dozens more.

The above posters are spot-on when they say that this kind of useless, frivolous software addition while ignoring the glaring errors and problems is symptomatic of a rudderless, disorganized, and unrealistic company who is operating in a fantasy land with their head in the clouds.

adding to this list, how about wheel and tire size configuration so we have correct speedometer and odometer reading! SAFETY first!

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

I suspect they have more than one developer . . .

That is not true. If Tesla had a second person on their UI team then at least some of the most obvious and glaring errors would have been spotted by now.

It's just one intern. They spend the whole summer making/playing video games and then on their last day they haphazardly scramble up the UI to make it seem like they did something. That's simply the only possible explanation.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

That is not true. If Tesla had a second person on their UI team then at least some of the most obvious and glaring errors would have been spotted by now.

It's just one intern. They spend the whole summer making/playing video games and then on their last day they haphazardly scramble up the UI to make it seem like they did something. That's simply the only possible explanation.

LOL, as much as I'd like to agree (because it makes total sense) it's probably just an undirected team. Although, if I was told that it's actually true, I'd probably be astonished only for a short few seconds until the not-at-all-shocked feelings set in.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

adding to this list, how about wheel and tire size configuration so we have correct speedometer and odometer reading! SAFETY first!

Yes, there are many tire sizes available that will fit the vehicle but will cause some speedometer error. Although, to be fair, other non-Tesla vehicles have this same problem.

A fairly straightforward solution would be to slowly recalibrate the speedometer based on GPS readings, allowing it to adapt over time to any tire size, and even compensate for wear. The system already does some of this to adjust the traction control (e.g. winter tires with the soft rubber compounds), and locating each tire sensor (based on total rotations and vehicle turns).

 

[gotoma8]

Yes, there are many tire sizes available that will fit the vehicle but will cause some speedometer error. Although, to be fair, other non-Tesla vehicles have this same problem.

A fairly straightforward solution would be to slowly recalibrate the speedometer based on GPS readings, allowing it to adapt over time to any tire size, and even compensate for wear. The system already does some of this to adjust the traction control (e.g. winter tires with the soft rubber compounds), and locating each tire sensor (based on total rotations and vehicle turns).

Although you are correct that other non-Tesla vehicles have this issue as well, but Tesla is a "tech" company, right? This is pretty easy fix, give us the option in wheel configure section just add tires. That's all. I am not an engineer, but seems like a 2 minute fix.

 

[stopcrazypp]

If you have money to pay an engineer a salary, then you have the ability to decide what that engineer will work on, and what qualifications he should have upon hiring him. If you know your auto wipers need additional work, why have you hired an engineer to develop a color picker? The only reason you do that is because you believe the color picker is a higher priority than fixing the auto wipers.

It absolutely is a prioritization issue. And this is why I specifically chose the word "rudderless". Where is the management and direction coming from? Where is the focus on these goals? Who is driving the overall development? The answer to all of those things is: nobody and nowhere. If there were competent people directing this, then you would have many of these things fixed already.

You are talking as if it's an employers market right now in the engineering field, when it's not (and hasn't been for a long while). I don't know of any large company that does not hire some junior engineers, and projects like this is a perfect use for them. As they have more experience they can work on some more advanced projects.

This is ignoring the fact that with engineering, throwing more people at a problem does not necessarily make the solution come sooner (many times it's the opposite). As others mentioned, suffice to say, the work on this feature is unlikely to have any significant impact on the other features (especially given it was developed for Chinese market first, where it makes complete sense given people can use it to preview a wrap, which presumably Tesla earns a profit on, something a lot of people seemed to have ignored).

 

[SomeJoe7777]

You are talking as if it's an employers market right now in the engineering field, when it's not (and hasn't been for a long while). I don't know of any large company that does not hire some junior engineers, and projects like this is a perfect use for them. As they have more experience they can work on some more advanced projects.

This is ignoring the fact that with engineering, throwing more people at a problem does not necessarily make the solution come sooner (many times it's the opposite). As others mentioned, suffice to say, the work on this feature is unlikely to have any significant impact on the other features (especially given it was developed for Chinese market first, where it makes complete sense given people can use it to preview a wrap, which presumably Tesla earns a profit on, something a lot of people seemed to have ignored).

You're right and I agree. I'm just so disillusioned that these obvious errors I pointed out seemingly have no importance and are not being worked on. The auto wipers issues in particular are highly egregious, as it has been going on for years now.

 

[Plood]

The geniuses who think this is a waste of resources probably don’t realize that they already use this to set the colors of cars in their images (you really think they take a picture of each color car?). They just opened existing software to all of us.

 

[Cutch26]

This couldn’t have come at a better time! I’m picking my car up from being wrapped tomorrow

 

[SomeJoe7777]

The geniuses who think this is a waste of resources probably don’t realize that they already use this to set the colors of cars in their images (you really think they take a picture of each color car?). They just opened existing software to all of us.

Yes, you're correct that this was not hard to implement and that the car already has the colorizing algorithm embedded in order to render the cars on the screen in the first place. But I'm not sure everyone literally thinks of this software addition as a wasted resource, though. It just seems incongruous given that there appear to be a lot more important things to work on. The same argument has been applied to the video games and the toy box, etc.

From a safety and stability standpoint, many of these software issues that I raised should never have made it into production software, especially for a vehicle. It's not only emblematic of the failed development process, but a failed QA and QC process as well.

 

[thesmokingman]

Gdamn... they do something small and nice and this is how you respond?

 

[Plood]

It’s a darn shame the elite engineers of the automotive industry didn’t seek your insightful advice before making their blunders. I wish they realized how their time wasted on fun little projects that some customers enjoy was infringing your entitlement to their labor.

 

[SomeJoe7777]

It’s a darn shame the elite engineers of the automotive industry didn’t seek your insightful advice before making their blunders. I wish they realized how their time wasted on fun little projects that some customers enjoy was infringing your entitlement to their labor.

LOL, if there were elite engineers working at Tesla we wouldn't have these problems in the first place. And yes, if someone had sought my advice I would have instantly told them how they're screwing it up. It doesn't take an expert to see the flaws here.

And yes, I am entitled to $60,000 worth of their labor, that's what I paid for. If you want to give Tesla a pass on everything they're doing wrong, that's your call. I won't do that. I'm calling it like I see it. And I will post that here for everyone to see, because I can and want to. I won't allow your distaste of my interpretation to deter me or sway my opinion.

 

[Cobalt3]

I strongly agree with Jclboston. Something no one really needs.

I strongly agree with Jclboston. Something no one really needs.

Except wrap stars.

 

[Joetnr1]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz give me my fan speed arrows back.

 

[Tee Why]

Wow people are even hijacking unrelated threads to continue whining about v11.

I miss when I could come on the forums and read interesting ideas and news about Tesla. But now every third post is from Karen who can't wrap her mind around tapping the screen twice for a few things instead of just once.