I finally got a chance to try 7.0 yesterday. I was traveling when the update was pushed, so while my car got it almost immediately, I couldn't apply it or try it until I got home yesterday afternoon. I have a plain 85 delivered in February with autopilot.
I was prepared to hate the new UI based on the posts here. I couldn't come up with an opinion of my own based on screenshots and videos, but I was prepared to dislike it. After using it myself, I think it's great. I would like a larger and more readable analog speedometer than the tiny little thing they give us, but aside from that I have no complaints. I was prepared to mourn the loss of the power meter, but after driving without it for a bit, I'm glad it's gone. I used to pay attention to it quite a lot, but now I see that it's completely unnecessary for me, and not having it there to distract me is better. I just push the pedal as I want to now, and don't worry about it. Note that I do NOT intend to disparage those who want it back, or try to invalidate that desire in any way, just saying that for ME personally this is a welcome change. I sympathize if you do want it, and I think it would be great if this were customizable.
The improved responsiveness of the whole UI system really impressed me. Slow UI was always the biggest problem in my eyes with Tesla's fancy iOS-like touchscreen. It looked good, but it felt mediocre because scrolling was jerky, touches took a while to do anything, and the whole thing was just a bit slow. I accepted it because I thought that was just how things had to be with the hardware, but it wasn't the best. Well, no more! Things are fast! OK, it doesn't achieve 60fps everywhere all the time, but scrolling is by and large smooth, and stuff happens more quickly. Clearly software optimization took them a long way here, and it's wonderful.
The autopilot graphics are really cool. I thought it would be kind of dumb based on the screenshots, because the whole business of displaying other lanes and the car front in a graphical fashion just seems gimmicky. Well, I'm wrong, because I completely misunderstood the nature of these graphics. I thought they were static graphics just meant to look cool. But no, they are fully dynamic graphics giving you a full picture of what the car sees at a glance. The graphic of the car in front moves around exactly as the actual car does, the lanes curve as the car thinks they curve, the adjacent lanes show or hide depending on whether the car thinks they're there, etc., and it's all completely fluid. Awesome! It makes it really obvious how the autopilot software is performing at any given moment, and if there's trouble it makes it clear as to why. Brief aside: I think it's hilarious how every car it detects is represented as another Model S.
And how about autopilot? Holy crap, it's scary and awesome and scary awesome. It takes me back to my first experience with TACC in heavy traffic (on my way home from delivery!), totally nervous, hovering over the brakes while the car stopped itself, etc. It will definitely take some practice with it before it becomes a net positive, but I can see that it definitely will be. I tried it out on lots of different kinds of roads (against the instructions in the manual, I know) and as others have said, it's pretty much perfect on big highways and fairly iffy on smaller roads, but this is to be expected and is not a complaint. Letting go of the steering wheel at 60+MPH is frightening, but that's just because I'm new to the system. All in all, Tesla did an amazing job on this and I can't wait to try it out more. I'm already thinking of excuses to drive to places farther away.
I tried auto-park a few times but couldn't get it to work. The curbs in my neighborhood are pretty low and slanted (when I parallel park here, I just go in forwards, drive the front wheel up onto the sidewalk to get the back end in, then straighten it out) and I'm guessing the ultrasonics can't pick it up well. Parallel parking is not a big part of my life so I probably won't use this much anyway, but it will be fun to try it once I encounter a situation where it's useful.
The new hold feature is a small thing but really nice. I used to engage TACC at stop lights just so I didn't have to hold the brake. Now it works without that, and works if I'm the first car in line too. Sweet!
There's been some discussion of the supposed performance improvements for RWD cars. Feels real to me! It could just be the contrast with the crappy cars I was riding in while on my trip for a few weeks, but my car feels even faster than before. I hit the accelerator pretty hard at 60+MPH this morning and it felt faster than flooring it with 6.2, even though I only pushed it halfway down. Probably just my imagination, but I'll go with it.
Oh, and three cheers for the new tire pressure display. It was pretty ridiculous that the car had this info but wouldn't show it to us. It's great to have it now. Quick question while I'm at it: is there any way to show this info on the touchscreen? I don't need to see it constantly on the instrument panel, and switching apps with the scroll wheel is a bit cumbersome.
That's everything I can think of. All in all I'm tremendously pleased and I think it was worth the wait. I would have preferred it if they had delivered it more along their original "few months" schedule, but better late than never!
I corrected and got back into my lane.
