Holiday Update (2021.44.25.2)- A Big Disappointment

[MikeyB]

Today I drove 1,000km (Oslo to Sandnessjøen) mainly on winding, icy, mountainous roads with an average temp of about -15C (5F) and the update very nearly led me to crash.
Surprisingly it wasn't the seat warmers, defrost, or consumption card changes. It was the removal of the button on the map to see the supercharger locations. They no longer even show up on the map with the new "points of interest" button. Does Tesla not want us to use their chargers anymore?
I do a lot of long drives and 80% of the time I will change the location of at least one charging stop (either I don't like the suggested charger station, I want to push on to the next charger, or have to stop for a toilet break). Before it was one button on the edge of the screen to pull up all supercharger locations. Now it is 3 precision button pushes in the middle of the screen. Trying to do this, i drifted a little too far to one side (no autopilot when the road is covered in snow/ice). If i crashed it would 100% be my own fault for fiddling with with screen while driving, however, it just would not have happened before the update. I feel like the interface designers have never actually tried using the screen while driving.
But at least they added a quick access button for the music equaliser. That is something I use all the time

 

[MikeyB]

More (smaller) gripes!
1. On a recent update they added the feature that, when you open up a window covering the map, showed the next direction instruction nicely integrated above the vehicle visualisation on the left part of the screen. Now it is pops up in a big ugly band on the bottom of the screen coving part of the vehicle visualisation. Previously I could see the directions with a quick glance at the same time I checked my speed. Now I have to move my head to look around my arm/hand to be able to see the direction. WTF?
2. How hard is it to set the charging level now! It was so large with easy level snaps before. Now I have to fiddle for 30 seconds to get the exact level I want.

 

[bodosom]

One should not have to sit in the driveway and practice - the software and display should be intuitive.

Well as much as this update is a fail I think you absolutely need to familiarize yourself with the controls you use regularly. We used to own a MINI and a Subaru (not our first Subaru). Most of the stalk directions were reversed -- up, down, in, out, rotate etc.. Not only did we have to practice when the MINI was new but every spring when we started driving it again we had to relearn. Ideally not while driving.

With cars I've used over the years since the 80's there's been some consistency. Steering wheel, two stalks (ignoring column shifters), shifter, accelerator and brake (maybe a clutch pedal). All of those controls were similar (lights on the left, wipers on the right) but all the secondary controls were whimsical. Big knobs, little knobs, sliders, rocker switches etc. etc. They all had to learned while parked and possibly while reading the manual. All those secondary controls are soft in a Tesla and I don't find any of them intuitive. But that's okay because I practice in the driveway.

 

[CaseyL]

They do different things.

Touching the temperature number brings up the full-size climate control menu, including the defrost controls. It's easier than swiping up.

 

[bodosom]

... It's easier than swiping up.

I find it much easier to swipe up. I can do it by feel without looking.

You can:

• Touch any of the temperature adjusting arrows. That pops up the old HVAC buttons, mirrored, per driver/passenger and changes the temperature set point
• Touch the GEAR in the pop-up to bring up the full controls.
• Swipe up from anywhere on the bottom to bring up the full controls
• Touch either temperature setting (the digits) to bring up the full controls

Like I said they do different things.

 

[Trip McNealy]

Cross-posting from another thread…. Here’s my quirks and annoyances I have in my MY running the new 2021.44.25.2:

• On the driving screen with the visualizations I now notice a very faint and persistent oval shape on the bottom where notifications usually appear and in front of my vehicle on the screen a faint circle. It’s almost like screen burn in. I never had this prior to the holiday update. I attached a picture if you can make the 2 spots out.
• While Streaming music I am noticing speed compensation volume on the sound system. When I travel at slow speed or decelerating the volume slightly dips and accelerating and going over like 50 mph the volume increases. I see no where in the settings about disabling this and again, I definitely didn’t have this prior to the update.
• When hitting the Streaming app icon, it always opens full screen and I have to drag it down to MiniPlayer mode every time. Also, there used to be 3 sizes of the music browser - mini/minimal, halfway, and full screen. With the update the halfway view is gone.

 

[Sideman7]

Cross-posting from another thread…. Here’s my quirks and annoyances I have in my MY running the new 2021.44.25.2:

• On the driving screen with the visualizations I now notice a very faint and persistent oval shape on the bottom where notifications usually appear and in front of my vehicle on the screen a faint circle. It’s almost like screen burn in. I never had this prior to the holiday update. I attached a picture if you can make the 2 spots out.
• While Streaming music I am noticing speed compensation volume on the sound system. When I travel at slow speed or decelerating the volume slightly dips and accelerating and going over like 50 mph the volume increases. I see no where in the settings about disabling this and again, I definitely didn’t have this prior to the update.
• When hitting the Streaming app icon, it always opens full screen and I have to drag it down to MiniPlayer mode every time. Also, there used to be 3 sizes of the music browser - mini/minimal, halfway, and full screen. With the update the halfway view is gone.

Halfway is there, but you have to hit one of the buttons to the right to see the favorites (because this makes sense /s). I miss having the music button (or whatever source you are using now) just toggle the mini player, now you need to hit it twice because it goes full screen first...

The more I use this, the more ridiculous it seems.

Has anyone received a text since this update? That is comically small as well. It seems like anything that can pop up to interact with now does so in a tiny rectangle at the bottom of the screen and they fight for control of this space. They are literally colliding. One the phone and want to hang up and pull up to your garage? You can't because home link is now there and you can't hang up with the steering wheel buttons either...

Fortunately it will change, it has to. Whoever came up with this, did so without any regard for operating the car. It is a safety issue in the long run.

 

[laservet]

Today I drove 1,000km (Oslo to Sandnessjøen) mainly on winding, icy, mountainous roads with an average temp of about -15C (5F) and the update very nearly led me to crash.
Surprisingly it wasn't the seat warmers, defrost, or consumption card changes. It was the removal of the button on the map to see the supercharger locations. They no longer even show up on the map with the new "points of interest" button. Does Tesla not want us to use their chargers anymore?
I do a lot of long drives and 80% of the time I will change the location of at least one charging stop (either I don't like the suggested charger station, I want to push on to the next charger, or have to stop for a toilet break). Before it was one button on the edge of the screen to pull up all supercharger locations. Now it is 3 precision button pushes in the middle of the screen. Trying to do this, i drifted a little too far to one side (no autopilot when the road is covered in snow/ice). If i crashed it would 100% be my own fault for fiddling with with screen while driving, however, it just would not have happened before the update. I feel like the interface designers have never actually tried using the screen while driving.
But at least they added a quick access button for the music equaliser. That is something I use all the time

Show charger locations voice command does it.

 

[Trip McNealy]

Halfway is there, but you have to hit one of the buttons to the right to see the favorites (because this makes sense /s). I miss having the music button (or whatever source you are using now) just toggle the mini player, now you need to hit it twice because it goes full screen first...

The more I use this, the more ridiculous it seems.

Ohhhhh you know, I didn't try all those buttons to the right.. just the audio settings one (which I thought was cool). Makes sense indeed, I'll check it out in the car next time!

 

[gx9901]

I haven't been able to check out the V11 UI because my car has been and will be at a body shop for a rear-end collision damage for a while. I did read a lot about it in this and other threads here and watched a few Youtube videos covering it. I get the complaints people have, but after seeing it in action and running through how I might be using it in my mind, I think it'll be fine for me. Of course, I won't really know until I get my car back, but I think I will end up in the camp that's either neutral or positive toward V11. More importantly, I miss my MYP and just want it back regardless of UI.

 

[Ezmendriz]

I also found this update awkward. There are certain things that should be accessible all the time: wipers, defrosters, climate, and profiles. they failed when they bury these settings somewhere else. I believe that no matter where they put the auto rear view camera in the screen will be strange because we did not have it before. I also miss the cell signal strength on the top, let me know when the car has connectivity.

This is a complete redesign of how the car operates, sometimes I think nobodies test the sw usability before release it.

 

[SMR514]

Not really digging the small charging info on the left side of the top screen now.

 

[Mrbrock]

Any one know where the WI-FI is located

Click the car icon bottom left, WiFi, cell signal and bluetooth icons will be at top right of initial config screen.

 

[frodebh]

My demands are as follows, in order of importance:

1. Bring back seat heat, wiper controls and the defroster
2. Give me my cards back, too
3. And the Wifi, LTE information
4. Finally go back to the good looking icons the new ones are bad

Other than that I like the general new look and the blind-spot camera.

 

[TMYB-C1]

Blind spot camera is something I hated on for not having and hate even more now that I do have it... The red icon gives me a quicker way to identify danger at a glance

The only card I miss is the one telling me which passanger doesn't have their seatbelt on

Defrosters is something I hadn't thought of, but completely agree that it can pose a danger for those of us with a winter... Altho I've never had the issue in this car and years of driving a beater have taught me how to drive safely in unsafe situations

It's a change, but I can deal. Hope you're reading this Elon.

 

[linux-works]

I agree with the need for familiarizing but for real safety Tesla is requiring that you either stop driving or have an Olympic degree of fine motor control and eye-hand coordination.

if a 60 or 70 yr old with shakey hands (or too much coffee) can't operate the gui safely in a moving car, then the UI team failed.

not only are your fingers shakey (age, coffee, stress) but the road is bumpy and so you have 2 shakes going against you, possibly.

fine finger control on a touch screen is NOT what anyone considers a good thing for controlling thousands of pounds of moving metal and glass on wheels.

touch screens suck and its still in a proving period, before the masses have all been converted over to the knob-less style of UIs these days. but really guys, we're going in entirely the wrong direction here. if we're having trouble using this effectively, and we're the NERDS (so to speak), then what hope is there that joe average is gonna really like this?

fail. tesla, go back to school. and hire professionals. NOW, before you ruin another thing.

 

[ccudmore]

My major beef is the removal of the driver profile selection from the main screen. Anyone with another driver in the family who is shorter than them (my wife in my case) will feel this pain. When it picks up their profile instead of mine (which it often does when we both get into the car) I have only seconds to select my profile before my knees get crushed. Every second is precious in selecting my profile.

 

[Tman317]

first of all, much less than half of what they do in their updates are forward progress or real improvements.

second, they are not on the track AT ALL of doing the right thing for customers. they hate customers. everything they do shows it. strange business to be in when you hate your own customer base.

thirdly, show me where they have ever listened to customers and backtracked on a bone-head decision they made. they are like some political leaders - never admit you were wrong.

finally, everyone is going to be doing the OTA thing; but lets see if they abuse it like tesla does, as they start to implement it across the brands. forced ui changes that dont really benefit the user should be optional. the first vendor that gets that right will be worthy of REAL praise, not the fanboyism that we see, daily, here.

for the manpower that tesla has today, they are doing quite a bad job, in fact. set your bar to a reasonable level and you'll see that.

The one thing other brands have going for them is having buttons for functions - they can't move the buttons on you. Although I guess they could change button function.

 

[Tman317]

You dont think this is perhaps an over-reaction? I agree that the profiles move is probably a more questionable choice by Tesla, but giving up all the new features and Ui just because an extra tap is involved when you get in the car? Really?

What he giving up? There are no helpful new features. I'm wishing I had not up graded.

 

[Tman317]

Joined to add my voice to this - I agree with all the negative reviews of this update. I'm a software developer and UX professional, and model 3 owner for 2+ years. I loved the original tesla UI (prior to this update) exactly for it's usability and design. It had things that could be improved, such as the swipe cards for tire pressure and odometer not working reliably. And I understand the desire to declutter the screen, but in UX, one-click is FAR FAR more usable than two-click, so frequently used things, like bluetooth, cell, wifi, air temp, seat heaters, defrost buttons, should never be changed from one to two click, if screen real-estate is sufficient. And screen real-estate is more than sufficient in these cars! So it does show very inexperienced UX/UI designers are calling the shots in the Tesla software UI team. I personally don't blame them as everyone has to learn, but it is the responsibility of the leaders of the company to ensure they have sufficiently experienced people in place to coach and help those more junior people learn.

I do agree there is a reduced level of safety in this update. Operating a moving vehicle is very different from using a smartphone or tablet, this really shouldn't have to be pointed out. All it takes is to get someone from Tesla who *didn't* design these screen changes to go for a test drive prior to releasing the update, it's immediately clear that these changes do have an impact how how many seconds you need to take your attention off the road.

- The seatbelt diagram is horizontal, making is almost impossible to figure out which person doesn't have a belt on.
- The side mirror view is blocked by the drivers hand, it should be larger and placed at the top of the screen.
- The recent apps is a terrible idea - I don't want a set of random icons displayed permanently on screen, where I may never use them again for months.
- The monochrome icons were far easier to distinguish than the colorized versions, and they looked better, and more professional.
- The split of music sources to separate apps, and the implementation of the whole music feature is a bungle.
- The app to stream audio from a phone is called 'Bluetooth' with a bluetooth icon, which I associate with bluetooth settings.
- Removal of the driver profile name from the main screen, and not being able to switch and update profiles from the main screen is a mistake.
- The bold font size is less readable and looks amature.
- The ridiculously small font size and mini-icons for defrost on the air-con buttons in the tray are misleading and cluttered.
- The split air-con is a huge waste of space. Air-con in the most important button on the screen. Put it back in the middle, and put split settings in the larger popup area with all the other settings.
- Wipers, since auto does *not* function properly, must be accessible by one-click at all times.


Wow, seriously let down by this update. Makes me sad every time I get in the car now. I used to love this car, but now not as much. I hope Tesla addresses this in the next update very soon.

I agree with all your comments. I wonder if they ever drive these cars in cold climates and rainy areas.