Sorry in advance for the massive post. I can't believe the level of disrespect that's being shown to the Original Poster of this thread. People are allowed to start a thread on anything they want… your time is not wasted if you accidentally click on a thread title, it is your choice to do so. The OP just wants to play CDs from time to time and cannot. Why are people calling him crazy? Why are people saying CDs are a thing of the past? Why are people advising him to rip his CDs first instead?
If I was taking someone on a road trip in the Model S and they stepped into my car with five CDs in hand… should I exclaim "Get outta my car with those things, dude! This is the car of the future, not the past!" Of course not. We should simply be able to play CDs if they are presented.
However on the $100,000 Tesla Model S (whose price is probably at the 99th percentile of car prices), you can't do anything with them. Every other car on the market has a CD player. The person stepping into your car just assumes it will too, it ain't their fault you spent your $100,000 on a Tesla Model S.
The Original Poster did not say "I hate the idea of playing digital files, I ONLY want to play CDs!" but some people here have reacted as if that's what he said. The Original Poster probably has a bunch of digital files, and knows how to get the car to play them. They just want to be able to put a CD into the slot as well, now and again.
Let's remind everyone that CDs contain, by default, the highest-quality music format that is currently sold. (putting SACD & DVD-A to one side) iTunes, Spotify, Sirius/XM, Pandora et. al all sell music files whose quality is BELOW this. Even if it
is indeed more convenient to find anything from Pink Floyd to Daft Punk, those services
don't sound as good as a CD does, and that matters to some people. Ya know, it might matter more than you think to buyers of the Tesla Model S, who are spending $70,000 or more on a car.
There is no doubt that the Model S is a fantastic car and we're all thankful that Tesla put it out on the market. However we know their profit margins are razor thin and the car is lean on frills - they are even trying to downgrade or
remove things from the car as long as it doesn't cause a revolt among customers! (fog lights are an example)
Some years ago there must have been a conversation like this -
Engineer: We've been looking at the cost of building the Model S for $49,900 and it simply won't make a profit.
Musk: It needs to be profitable, even if only by one dollar, otherwise our investors will crucify us on the stock market for producing a loss-making car. It's a deathbed we can't get out of… no matter how many cars we make, they're all making a loss!!!
Engineer: the only way we can do that is strip everything out of the car we don't need… and this also means reducing the number of parts required to put the car together, as it will take less time to make the car
Musk: well maybe we can forget to build in a lot of things like door pockets, cup holders, clothes hooks, lighted vanity mirrors, a CD player, extra 12V sockets and USB sockets, and analogue audio input
Engineer: some customers may not like all that, when it costs over $50K and maybe up to $100K but yes, maybe we can make $1 of profit on each car if we don't have all those extra parts
Musk: we all know they're interested in the car because it's electric… not because it has lots of dual 12V sockets and lighted vanity mirrors etc.
And so there we have it. The CD player is not present because it represents extra parts, pieces and labour time required to make the car. CD players aren't even expensive, they're dirt cheap. They were simply eliminated from the design by prioritisation.
This is a tragedy for audiophiles. The Tesla Model S is the quietest car available today, so the noise floor over which you would play your music is super-low, allowing for an amazing audio experience. The tragedy is twofold: Tesla does not provide a solution as an option (doesn't have to be packed up with other stuff, it can be separate like the $250 rear cargo cover); and there doesn't appear to be anything on the market that we can use to get the car to play a CD. I wish either one of those was not true. I do not mind that the Tesla Model S ships the way it does. And I am a regular user of digital files, my personal music collection which includes a lot of film scores is about 650GB of lossless files. But I do have CDs, I buy CDs even now, and the music I want to play is on either digital media or discs.
Why do I buy CDs? 1) they sound better than the music that us sold on iTunes and 2) it is cheaper. Better and cheaper! Pretty convincing argument. Here is an example of cheaper: (Not sure if this link will work)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-list...ft+punk+random+access+memories&condition=used
That is the latest album by Daft Punk, all 13 tracks for just $6.16. All you have to to is rip it lossless to your collection and you have the entire album, sounding better than any service you can buy it on, for the price of about 5 lossy tracks that are sold to you for $1.29 each. Yes there is postage fees, but you get my point. CDs are still a realistic solution even in 2013.
Some people want the best, and that is why they are driving the Tesla. They also want the best quality music they can find… and CDs provide that.
I've looked all over for ways to hook up a player (even a laptop with a drive) into the USB socket as if the player is a USB memory drive, and none appear to exist.
There are plenty of external optical disc readers (and I love my Sony BDX-S600U) but only computers with software drivers can use them. As an earlier poster pointed out, Tesla will have to write some software for their Android-based system to recognize an audio CD if it's in a player plugged into a USB socket. THAT WOULD BE FRIKKIN' AMAZING, TESLA, PLEASE DO IT. And it would put the CD discussion to rest, because if you want to do it, you can do it, and it isn't affecting the cost of the car.
