And, so long as we're funning around here..
Say that you or your spouse has a cell phone. And, for the purposes of this argument, you two have a cell phone plan that is (a) unlimited and (b) includes the capability of making the cell phones into a wi-fi hot-spot.
It so happens that a Tesla will happily connect to a cell phone hot-spot. And, once it does so, all the Internet Connectivity one might want will show up. In particular, real-time maps with traffic will work whilst one is driving around in this mode. One can also update the car in this mode, although my experience in trying this results in a dead-slow update rate. And all that business about being to unlock the car remotely (as in the example, above, where the spouse has lost her key card/wallet) would nominally work, although if the spouse is there with her cell phone anyway, an additional wi-fi connection isn't going to make matters worse or better
.
As far as I know, about the only thing one won't get via the hot-spot method of connectivity are the various streaming channels. But, if one has a cell phone present, one can stream anyway, through audio bluetooth from the phone.
Yes, more awkward than Tesla's offering, since one will be toggling the wi-fi hotspot on and off (which isn't hard on both iOS and Android phones I've messed with; it's a swipe from the top corner or top edge and a button push). But cheaper than paying $9.95/month for the enhanced connectivity.
There's a couple of minor points with this approach. If one's phone is on something other than 4G/5G then internet connectivity might be slow enough to make map updates and such problematical. But that would be true with the car, too, if the AT&T LTE connectivity isn't available.
If one's plan
isn't unlimited, there's either a cost per bit through the phone or some amount of "free" traffic, above which one gets charged for additional chunks of data. On this last point, cell phones I've worked with can (a) let one see how much traffic they've been using, (b) can warn one when one is approaching a user-set limit, and (c) can stop the traffic just below or at some user-set limit. Rather than, say, finding out the hard way that one has exceeded the limit by getting charged $50 or something on the spot. And.. even those with Unlimited plans can discover that at some GB-level, the internet connectivity will either cease, slow way down, or $$ will occur. But map updates don't use
that much data. (Streaming video may, though.)
Second, there exist dedicated wi-fi hot-spot hardware, available from cellular providers, that are vaguely designed to give somebody with a laptop connectivity, no matter where they are. That, too, would work with a Tesla. The per-month connectivity cost of such hardware is cheaper than that of a phone, but I don't know if it competes with that $9.95/month from Tesla.
Your call.
