Was told that the Model S would have regular firmware updates every eight weeks. Sometimes six. Tesla wants to make sure what they release is solid. Then they will be adding new features over time building excitement about the car. I mentioned how great it was that the Roadster has actually gotten to be a better car because of firmware upgrades. So that's the idea. Your Model S actually gets better after you bought it.
Great to hear. Thats more often than Apple (though on par with browsers these days). Wonder how long they'll keep it up? I bet user feedback (given and taken from automatic stats) will help them improve already present functionality as well. I just hope it ships mostly feature complete at launch. Adding new things is one matter, shipping half baked and adding in basic functionality later is another (looking @ you Blackberry Playbook).
Agreed. Do you remember when the iPhone couldn't send MMS? How ridiculous what that?! I put up with it for several years if I recall correctly but I know that there were others who refused to buy the phone because it lacked such a basic feature.
Apple is notorious for holding back features and only adding them in new hardware revisions. Works well for $200 consumer electronics, not so much for $50k automobiles. So it's good to know that Tesla won't be imitating Apple in this case!
Oh phew. I read this thread title and thought that the first Model S firmware update was already out! :biggrin:
Skipped dinner too?! Yeah, updates with a regular cadence - with little or no pain for owners (mainly non-tech-geeks) to absorb the updates - is a great idea! Keeps each update limited in scope thereby ensuring good quality. Would also be easier to incrementally rollback if something goes wrong in the wild.
This goof was actually intentional . It will be nice to have new functionality over time. Kinda like opening Christmas presents slowly over several years...
If you have lots of testing, good automated test coverage, code review everything, constantly build and run, and have multiple release tracks, it can be done reliably.
Do you think they will do slow rollouts similar to what TiVo seems to do? That way they can pull the release if something crops up. Very exciting though that they plan work work to improve it. Your car this year should have most of the functionality in the 17" screen that one 5 years from now does which is pretty cool.
These are two main reasons why I will never buy an Apple product. I never really got the iPhone hype anyway.
As long as I get my release notes with the firmware's I don't care how often it happens. I just want to know what they are changing so a feature doesn't show up without me finding it for months.
This. I just need to know what has been changed so that I can know what it is and if it negatively affects my driving experience.
Are there any promised features that won't actually be available at launch? I was just following the Fisker "town hall" meeting today. They're still trying to fix a lot of software bugs, but a couple promised features were never completed. The command center screen that was supposed to track the energy production of the solar roof is still just a static screen "placeholder" and won't be fixed till the 2013 model year. And they weren't able to say when the promised cabin pre-conditioning feature would ever be available. I agree that a missing feature is better than a broken feature.
I never used to, but after SGI stopped supporting the desktop, there wasn't much choice. As far as the iPhone goes, it's the best cellphone experience I've ever had. You can actually use the advanced features without memorizing a 75 page manual and going through ten layers of menus.
while we're on this topic, does anyone know how exactly firmware updates are to be done? ota/wifi? usb stick? (the dreaded) service location visit? thanks.