How often do worthwhile OTA updates come (especially for pre AP cars)?

[Superloud]

2013 P85 second owner here - for about 2.5 months so far.

Before I bought, I was told by the salespeople and read on this forum regularly about how folks notice their cars getting "better than the day they bought it" due to OTA updates.

I'm not being impatient here, I promise I know it's only been a couple months. But I'm just trying to get a sense of what to expect.

How often should one expect to see real new functionality, especially when it comes to older, non AP models?

I know there's a thread full of suggestions to tesla. Anyone know if tesla actually chips away at that list? I'm mostly talking about nice to have things, but things that don't need to be mission critical. Things that a couple new hires could probably do fairly easily. Like, for example, giving the ability to set child locks individually on the rear doors, and interior rear facing seat hatch open switch.

A year from now, should I really expect to say my car has gotten better? Or is that unrealistic?

 

[Saghost]

Elon made some statements about how often they planned to make feature releases a couple months ago. I thought it was every two to three months...

Of course, whether a given feature release contains something useful to you is a challenging question...

 

[Alysashley79]

There already is an interior rear seat switch to open the hatch. It's ok the drivers side just under the lip. It feels like the window buttons but will allow the kids to open/close the hatch. (You do need a tech pkg on the pre AP cars to have this) if you have it and there isn't a switch you should ask the service center to install it. I have a 2013 p85 and have this switch.

 

[trils0n]

A year from now, should I really expect to say my car has gotten better? Or is that unrealistic?

I'd say the software will probably have some new features in a year. What exactly they are, and how useful they will be, who knows.

Some examples:
When I got my car in 2013, the Nav maps only faced north. Now it can face north, direction of travel, and has another whole route view. There were no favorites for home and work -- now there are. Many of the changes have been adding small features that should have been there, but Tesla didn't have time to finish before the Model S was originally released. Backup lines were added to the rear view camera, calender app added, etc. Others are more creative -- air suspension now remembers where it was raised, and will automatically raise when you return to the same place. Didn't do that when I got the car.

There is still a lot to do software wise, and I think they will keep adding new functionality.

 

[Superloud]

There already is an interior rear seat switch to open the hatch. It's ok the drivers side just under the lip. It feels like the window buttons but will allow the kids to open/close the hatch. (You do need a tech pkg on the pre AP cars to have this) if you have it and there isn't a switch you should ask the service center to install it. I have a 2013 p85 and have this switch.

Ah yes, I do have the physical switch. What I was trying to say was that the user interface has just one binary switch for child locks: on or off. When it's on, nobody can exit the rear doors, and the kids can't get out of the trunk. Each of the 3 doors should be individually child-lockable.

That was just one example. There are a few more that just seem so easy. They seem like high reward for little cost.

 

[mshuang]

I think there's a ton of stuff that could be done on non-AP vehicles -- they're limited by engineers working on the improvements, but if you think about all the things people have been asking for, such as Waze or Spotify integration -- these wouldn't be limited to AP-equipped Teslas. However, I think expecting an update every 3-6 months wouldn't be out of the question.

 

[LoL Rick]

Most of the updates these dates are related to the autopilot hardware. Those of us without it seem to get a little tidbit every 6-12 months. Not that we don't get updates - we do. They just don't contain anything useful.

 

[ecarfan]

I have an S built in December 2013 and my car now has many features that it did not have when I bought it, However, I think it is useful to keep in mind that while there will likely be some small improvements made in the firmware of the pre-Autopilot cars in the future, Tesla is understandably focused on making significant improvements to Autopilot as part of the process towards offering full autonomous driving (which will of course not be available with the currently produced AP sensor suite).

There is no way to accurately predict when the pre-AP cars will get updates and what those updates will contain. Everything you read about that is simply speculation. Of course Tesla has their own internal list of things to be improved upon. No one on TMC knows what is on that list. But that won't stop people from guessing.

You car will be "better" a year from now. That is about all that can be reasonably stated, in my opinion. I recommend that you do not set yourself up for disappoint by assuming that specific changes will be made within a specific timeframe.

2013 P85 second owner here - for about 2.5 months so far.
Before I bought, I was told by the salespeople and read on this forum regularly about how folks notice their cars getting "better than the day they bought it" due to OTA updates.

I'm not being impatient here, I promise I know it's only been a couple months. But I'm just trying to get a sense of what to expect.

How often should one expect to see real new functionality, especially when it comes to older, non AP models?

I know there's a thread full of suggestions to tesla. Anyone know if tesla actually chips away at that list? I'm mostly talking about nice to have things, but things that don't need to be mission critical. Things that a couple new hires could probably do fairly easily. Like, for example, giving the ability to set child locks individually on the rear doors, and interior rear facing seat hatch open switch.

A year from now, should I really expect to say my car has gotten better? Or is that unrealistic?

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

I'd say, worthwhile software updates have been quite spotty of late. Temper this disappointment with the fact that other cars have zero updates, but still,

1. Autopilot - was awesome (I know doesn't apply to preAP but..)
2. Summon - was limited usability, I've found it useful occasionally.
3. Self-parking, I've almost never used it. It just doesn't work well enough.
4. All updates since have been really no functionality changes, just undocumented bug fixes.
.....
Updates I would love to see,
1. Carplay or screen mirroring
2. Waze or just give us screen mirroring/carplay.
3. Better nav or just give us screen mirroring/carplay.
4. Better media app (or just give us car play)
5. SMS integration (or just give us carplay)
6. Better control on charging (charge to x% by y time)
7. Better voice control actions, Tesla open sunroof, Tesla set temperature to xxx. etc.
8. use autopilot cameras as dashcams (I think someone said this is not feasible?)
9. Warm seats remotely from app
10. Tesla go park yourself in the garage, and seriously when I pull into the garage, close the garage for me please! etc!

... in short .. I feel if Tesla gives us phone screen mirroring or carplay, that would be incredibly awesome.
Elon tweeted a while ago asking for the top requested features in the next UI update (this was a while ago), and overwhelmingly people asked for android auto/carplay support. So I am hopeful that Elon took note, and Tesla is working on making it happen.

I feel, given that $20K cars have better audio/video infotainment, this 100K car needs to catch up a bit .. at least in that field.

 

[murphyS85]

Here is the update list for my S85 (that I no longer have).

September 18, 2014 Car delivered with 5.14 (1.66.31)
October 15, 2014 Updated to 6.0 (1.67.43)
January 24, 2015 Updated to 6.1 (2.2.113)
January 29, 2015 Updated to 6.1 (2.2.115)
April 3, 2015 Updated to 6.2 (2.4.136)
April 30, 2015 Updated to 6.2 (2.4.188)
June 4, 2015 Updated to 6.2 (2.4.239)
July 9, 2015 Updated to 6.2 (2.4.250)
August 4, 2015 updated to 6.2 (2.5.21)
August 18, 2015 updated to 6.2 (2.5.36)
September 17, 2015 Updated to 6.2 (2.5.71)
September 22, 2015 Updated to 6.2 (2.5.85)
October 15, 2015 Updated to 7.0 (2.7.56)
December 16, 2015 Updated to 7.0 (2.9.40)
January 9, 2016 Updated to 7.1 (2.9.154)
February 4, 2016 Updated to 7.1 (2.10.71)
February 19, 2016 Updated to 7.1 (2.12.45)
February 25, 2016 Updated to 7.1 (2.12.126)