Firmware 8.0

[disillusioned]

The interface has been redone a little bit.

Did they fix the vexing design "decision" to rotate fixed point labels stupidly instead of fixing them along the x-axis? (Street names always flow along the streets, but POI labels should stay horizontal no matter the rotation, like they do on Google Maps on your phone.)

Any changes or improvements to the phone app? (The in-car phone app. Favorites/speed dial? Text messaging? ANYthing?)

 

[tomas]

Any changes or improvements to the phone app? (The in-car phone app. Favorites/speed dial? Text messaging? ANYthing?)

IMO they should not spend any time on this. You can accomplish with "hey Siri" or android equivalent. Voice commands to make calls, dictate, send, and read texts. Not in favor of tesla programming stuff that's already well done elsewhere. That's why I'd like to see car play and Waze. Then tesla could amputate thousands of lines of code. Ride on other people's software development.

 

[thegruf]

My suspicion: Considering that 8.1 AP is said to use nav data to take exits automatically, I expect a bunch of nav-centric engineering to align around the 8.1 release. Those features may have been punted until then, and 8.0 is primarily an AP enhancement (and start fleet learning) + UI facelift release.

Actually I am thinking Tesla originally planned to release all of this as 8.0 plus the mooted enhanced phone integration, but with the development of the radar software well advanced, they have split into 8.0/8.1 to get the AP safety improvements out as soon as possible (which is no bad thing), and hopfully means there is much more to come soon.

 

[BertL]

IMO they should not spend any time on this. You can accomplish with "hey Siri" or android equivalent. Voice commands to make calls, dictate, send, and read texts. Not in favor of tesla programming stuff that's already well done elsewhere. That's why I'd like to see car play and Waze. Then tesla could amputate thousands of lines of code. Ride on other people's software development.

We're all entitled to our opinions, but I respectively and strongly disagree.

My MS is a $110K vehicle I purchased to not only help show my support moving the EV movement forward, but as my single vehicle I expect to provide similar (basic) amenities having replaced both a former Lexus and MBZ. Any owner of a vehicle of this class should not have to put up with clearly inferior functionality or band-aid Infotainment using other devices to improve their driving experience. If there were a formal Tesla announcement of guaranteed movement to both CarPlay and Android Auto within some reasonable timeframe for the existing and future fleet, I could perhaps agree with your POV. As it is, the last statement from Elon is we may have "mirroring" of smartphone displays on the CID at some undetermined time, and nothing more about complete CarPlay/Android Auto or if that is even possible for the existing fleet.

While others will disagree with me, I know there are also many that will agree. Given Tesla's lack of demonstrated commitment to CarPlay/Android Auto, they should at a bare minimum have a skeleton team (that could work almost independently of everyone else in Tesla until integration test phase), focused on improving basic Infotainment functionality and bring it up to not only what existing owners, but a growing number of future prospective owners require and have been provided for many years by other brands. Enough is enough. As has been said, lack of getting this done at this point-in-time is only because the leader does not view it as important, despite customer and owner input.

 

[tomas]

We're all entitled to our opinions, but I respectively and strongly disagree.

My MS is a $110K vehicle I purchased to not only help show my support moving the EV movement forward, but as my single vehicle I expect to provide similar (basic) amenities having replaced both a former Lexus and MBZ. Any owner of a vehicle of this class should not have to put up with clearly inferior functionality or band-aid Infotainment using other devices to improve their driving experience. If there were a formal Tesla announcement of guaranteed movement to both CarPlay and Android Auto within some reasonable timeframe for the existing and future fleet, I could perhaps agree with your POV. As it is, the last statement from Elon is we may have "mirroring" of smartphone displays on the CID at some undetermined time, and nothing more about complete CarPlay/Android Auto or if that is even possible for the existing fleet.

While others will disagree with me, I know there are also many that will agree. Given Tesla's lack of demonstrated commitment to CarPlay/Android Auto, they should at a bare minimum have a skeleton team (that could work almost independently of everyone else in Tesla until integration test phase), focused on improving basic Infotainment functionality and bring it up to not only what existing owners, but a growing number of future prospective owners require and have been provided for many years by other brands. Enough is enough. As has been said, lack of getting this done at this point-in-time is only because the leader does not view it as important, despite customer and owner input.

Geez I think you violently agree with me. Didn't I say clearly they should use CarPlay and waze instead of rolling their own? I also extend that to phone and message apps. Use what's on the phone, it is better and standardized.

 

[MickC]

It's not, unfortunately. Tesla's updates are currently still push only, where Tesla decides who gets what.

But since we're leaking 8.0 info, I'll express my dislike for it with one image:

interessant. Zou dit de melding zijn na het negeren van de "hands on steering wheel" berichten of zou AP enkel nog maar werken op snelwegen.
... we zullen het snel weten!

 

[BertL]

Geez I think you violently agree with me. Didn't I say clearly they should use CarPlay and waze instead of rolling their own? I also extend that to phone and message apps. Use what's on the phone, it is better and standardized.

I agree only if Tesla were to really implement CarPlay/Android Auto. The point of my initial reply was trying to be that Tesla has made no such commitment. If anything, Elon publicly gave more of an indication Tesla was going to continue to roll their own Infotainment with statements about possible future smartphone display mirroring instead of using the CarPlay/Android Auto words. It's Tesla's choice, but one or the other needs to be done now sooner than later and provided as an OTA update -- as I don't want to always use workarounds in my pretty-much otherwise GREAT vehicle.

 

[3s-a-charm]

The interface has been redone a little bit.

You can set a "favorite" by pressing anywhere on the map. It will allow you to name it whatever you like, but it pre-fills with the closest street address.

To locate a charger, you click the lightning bolt icon on the lower right and it brings up all the charger pins on the map. The dialog on the left shows a list starting with Tesla then destination chargers you can pick from, or you can click the pin on the map.

You can do a quick press and swipe down on the menu button to navigate home.

I don't see any real-time supercharger data, nor any files being downloaded that would indicate this is possible.

Correct me if I'm wrong... but a lot of those can be done in 7.1 I think?

I can set a favorite by long-pressing on the map and clicking on the "heart" icon associated with that pop-up address to add it to favorites (it can also be renamed).

Chargers can be brought up with a lightning bolt icon now I think? Any difference?

Regarding the press/swipe for home - that is obviously new. I've found I like the simple voice command "take me home" which works very well.

 

[mikeash]

Did they fix the vexing design "decision" to rotate fixed point labels stupidly instead of fixing them along the x-axis? (Street names always flow along the streets, but POI labels should stay horizontal no matter the rotation, like they do on Google Maps on your phone.)

I think this might ultimately be a hardware limitation. They appear to be using the raster version of Google Maps, where everything is pre-rendered as tiles on the server, and then the car just receives images. Images are cheap to render, but don't have a lot of flexibility in how you render them. Maps on your phone these days use vector maps, where the phone renders them locally, so it can do things like render labels upright regardless of rotation. This takes more computing power, but phones have plenty of it these days. Unfortunately the Tesla MCU seems to already be overtaxed, so I suspect it wouldn't be able to do this with acceptable performance. Of course, I would love to be wrong!

 

[SeminoleFSU]

From what I've seen/read/heard, if you ignore the place your hands on the wheel warnings, three times, then AP will not be available again until the car is stopped and put in park, then AP (steering lane keep) is available again only after that. Penalty for those to help deter not listening to warnings and keeping hands available on wheel...

Cool. I hadn't seen this info anywhere, but then again I've only read bits and pieces about the update. Thanks for the kind reply.

 

[CO2CLEAN]

interessant. Zou dit de melding zijn na het negeren van de "hands on steering wheel" berichten of zou AP enkel nog maar werken op snelwegen.
... we zullen het snel weten!

Volgens mij is het enkel bij het meermaals niet reageren op de waarschuwingen. Overigens wel geinig dat er in de onderste regel staat dat je het stuur moet vasthouden om te sturen als Autopilot niet actief is. Ben wel benieuwd hoe het anders kan.

 

[gelden]

interessant. Zou dit de melding zijn na het negeren van de "hands on steering wheel" berichten of zou AP enkel nog maar werken op snelwegen.
... we zullen het snel weten!

Dat is het inderdaad, is door Elon al genoemd in deze blog:
"Car will not allow reengagement of Autosteer until parked if user ignores repeated warnings"

 

[jkliu47]

That's good to know. I am 5'3" and am doing a test drive Friday. One of the things I am going to pay close attention to is the seatbelt shoulder location. My Volt doesn't have a shoulder belt height adjustment either and I have to raise my seat position quite a bit to avoid seatbelt neck chafe.

FYI to all who are commenting on seat belt positioning issues, I think its related to the new generation seats.

Refer to my post:
Difference between Multi-Pattern & Next Generation Seats?

PS The seatbelt adjuster I got from Amazon worked fine
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0091OE6K6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[MickC]

Benieuwd of je die melding kan overschrijven door een reset te doen ;-)

 

[Hans Noordsij]

Benieuwd of je die melding kan overschrijven door een reset te doen ;-)

Ga er maar van uit van niet. Reset betreft alleen wat oppervlakkige zaken en niet de AP. Die gaat overigens ook nu gewoon door tijdens een reset.

 

[AnalysiZ]

Ik heb op de terugrit vanuit Italië dit meegemaakt... Terwijl ik nog fris in Zwitserland aan het rijden was. Geen waarschuwing gezien, maar ik kijk meestal meer op de weg dan in het scherm als AP aanstaat, maar ook geen waarschuwing met akoestisch signaal gehoord... (wat ik eerder wel al meegemaakt had en dat kun je eigenlijk niet missen) was ook een beetje vervelend moment, want reed kort daarna in een file (zou het daardoor getriggerd kunnen zijn?) en dan is zonder AP inmiddels best irritant (ben verwend...). Reset scherm werkte niet. Auto in Park zetten (kort ivm file) ook niet. Pas na de laadstop in Egerkingen pas weer kunnen activeren. Ook vervelend: ook de standaard cruise control werkte niet en in Zwitserland wil je eigenlijk niet op je eigen rechtervoet rijden. Voor je het weet volg je je voorganger en komt er een flits uit een "vuilnisbak" bij het uitrijden van een tunnel. Volgende keer dus niet meer op de weg letten, maar het scherm in de gaten houden... dus....

Overigens... ik heb nog geen V8... maar er is net wel een update gestart, dus ben benieuwd.

 

[disillusioned]

I think this might ultimately be a hardware limitation. They appear to be using the raster version of Google Maps, where everything is pre-rendered as tiles on the server, and then the car just receives images. Images are cheap to render, but don't have a lot of flexibility in how you render them. Maps on your phone these days use vector maps, where the phone renders them locally, so it can do things like render labels upright regardless of rotation. This takes more computing power, but phones have plenty of it these days. Unfortunately the Tesla MCU seems to already be overtaxed, so I suspect it wouldn't be able to do this with acceptable performance. Of course, I would love to be wrong!

*sugar*, that's definitely a possibility. In fact, you're almost certainly correct, since we know for a fact that the car is downloading map tiles, since you can observe that occurring. I guess I hadn't thought about how that means they can't abstract the labeling away, which means you can't control label rotation. Damn.

The real question is if the existing hardware can support SVG/vector map storage and rendering, which, maybe? It might not be a hardware limitation, versus it being an artifact of the times: in 2012, I don't know if GMaps was allowing 3rd parties to use the more advanced vector mapping. But realistically, the whole mapping product is a unique hybrid and who knows how the hell it's implemented.

 

[chillaban]

FWIW vectorized maps can often be faster than rasterized/prerendered maps, as pre-rendered tiles take up a lot of space, and do not generically rotate with text labels, and result in a lot of graphics downloading/decoding.

Mapping providers tend to be very very reluctant to give out their vectorized data to third parties though, and that might be what Tesla is running into.

 

[Fred85D]

Na in P zetten gaat "de blokkade" van AP er gelijk af, binnen een seconde.

 

[KristofL]

Vraag me af of ze het risico durven nemen om morgen iedereen te updaten.

Door de aankondiging in de pers kijken we natuurlijk morgen allemaal uit naar een update. Het zal morgen in Aartselaar wel bijzonder druk worden als de updates uitblijven behalve bij een SEC