Future in-car services and music caching through Wi-Fi?

[AnxietyRanger]

This was originally being discussed over on the Model X forum, but I was wondering if the Model S crowd might have some information on this as well.

What might Tesla be referring to in their current "Set Up Wi-Fi" encouragement dialog? I remember from my old car's days that this dialog was different. Are they just implying a lot to get you to connect to Wi-Fi or do we know of any specific, useful plans this might be referring t?

"Add a Wi-Fi Connection

Please provide a home or work Wi-Fi connection to enable compelling future functionality. By downloading and caching content over Wi-Fi, we will make music and other features more engaging and more robust.

Wi-Fi also enables more timely delivery of future software updates. Navigation map updates are available only over Wi-Fi."

The picture is from a Model X (UHFS), but I would expect it to apply to Model S as well.

Feel free to point me to an existing thread if such exists, I was unable to find it through search.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Tesla pays for the cellular data. You pay for WiFi.
(My cellphone service has the same approach, prioritizing WiFi to lower cost.)

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Tesla pays for the cellular data. You pay for WiFi.
(My cellphone service has the same approach, prioritizing WiFi to lower cost.)

Good summary, I get Tesla's motivation for prompting the use of Wi-Fi (and mostly I would if I also didn't have some bad experiences where 3G served my car better for some reason), so that is not really my point. I also get it that they say map updates require it, though in my experience I seem to recall receiving them through 3G as well (have been mostly going without Wi-Fi), as I do remember the map update dialog, but that may be a mistaken recollection potentially.

Anyway, my main question is the promise of "to enable compelling future functionality... downloading and caching content over Wi-Fi... will make music and other features more engaging and more robust". Has there been any info/speculation on that?

I am not really asking for recommendations on whether or not to use Wi-Fi, simply gathering information on the potential uses of the Wi-Fi feature for general informational purposes.

 

[bob_p]

When Tesla introduced the Model S, the premium audio system upgrade was supposed to include the use of onboard storage for music.

This feature was removed, supposedly so that the onboard storage could be used for other purposes, such as caching maps.

And, at least so far, it doesn't appear that either music or maps are being stored on board.

The benefit of having WiFi is having a potentially higher speed connection than 3G/LTE, which generally don't work as well inside structures.

Tesla could clearly do much more with the media player - including caching music, though it's not clear if/when Tesla plans to add more features to the media player (we're still waiting for bug fixes from the 8.0 media player "improvements").

 

[wayner]

Interesting find. I don't know what they are planning but in my 2.4 years as a Model S owner they really haven't done much, if anything, in this area and in some ways music playback has gotten worse. The browser continues to be f*^%$n embarrassing and Elon tweeted a few months ago that this would be redone but so far nothing.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

It is a big hard to see what the big benefit would be for music service bandwith to cache over Wi-Fi. The stuff that would be easier to understand like playlists and/or music metadata does not seem large enough to warrant such treatment, bandwith-wise.

What could they possible cache for a music service?

 

[wayner]

They could cache the next 10 songs in the Slacker station that you are listening to. Assuming that you didn't change the station that would mean that you would save about 40MB of data through LTE/3G.