Hi Everyone!
(I'm going to link to this post later on in a mass update to folks still waiting on BMDs, so, apologies for any redundancy there.)
I know it's been a while since I've posted an update, and a lot of folks have been, understandably, sending in inquiries about their BMD shipments.
It's been a bit of a roller coaster trying to get all caught up on the BMD shipments with all of the hardware shortages. I'm not super happy with how everything has gone, but we've definitely been doing our best. Admittedly, we really didn't expect the demand for this service to be significantly beyond our initial BMD batch within as short of a time as it was.
The TL;DR version:
We eventually decided we just had to do a pretty major hardware redesign based on actually-available hardware components, and validating that design has taken a lot longer than anticipated. With a hardware redesign also comes software changes, which also take time. We've devoted our efforts and resources to completing all of that instead of some other things like finishing the previously noted website changes (which why some things are still broken on the website and why we never actually updated the pricing or removed the promo pricing as of yet).
New units are being built while we finalize testing and should go out pretty soon.
Longer version:
We were on track to get all caught up on BMD shipments when the initial component shortage caught us. As noted before, we had some inventory of the chips needed to complete that batch, but turns out that wasn't all that was missing. In their turn-key efforts to complete our production batch, a couple of other components were replaced with pin-compatible alternative parts. These worked fine on the bench for programming and testing, but turns out in our haste to get these completed we did not realize these were
not automotive rated replacement components. (Getting a bit more technical here, as a performance vs cost measure, there
are in fact some components on the unit that are not specifically automotive rated, so this isn't completely unusual. But, the components that aren't rated as such are also not required to be 100% reliable across the automotive temperature and vibration ranges, and the other components take this potential instability into account. This is all fine, since this isn't a mission critical device required for operating the vehicle. In an absolute worst case scenario.... we just ship another one. It can't damage anything or cause other problems. However, the components in question that
were substituted by our fabricator
are components that
do need to operate reliably in an automotive environment and thus need to be automotive rated.)
While these units would probably work for some time in the wild without issue, we definitely don't want our customers to routinely have to physically tinker with this device. Kind of defeats the purpose if you have to mess with it all the time to ensure it's functioning. While there is a small chance a normal unit
can get into an unrecoverable state and require a physical unplug/re-plug to correct it, these are generally super rare due to the design (with our existing fleet we've had a total of 2 such events to-date). In our testing of the units from the last batch, we found that such instances were quite common and therefore these units would not be super useful for our customers.
We're going to use them for some in-house prototype and testing projects so they don't complete go to waste, but... still kind of a waste unfortunately.
We did get units from a previously commissioned smaller batch, which did all ship out to customers who were signed up and already out of OEM warranty. We also hand-built some of the units in-house using the remaining hardware we had on-hand from in-house development and testing (admittedly, not many). Not enough for everyone, unfortunately, and we prioritized those shipments based on a handful of factors (order date, time out of warranty, etc).
That said, the hardware redesign is completed, software changes are tentatively completed (still tweaking some things, but it's functional) and we're running everything through full validation. Since everything looks promising, we've already got a production batch to complete our entire shipping queue twice over already in progress. This should put us in a good spot moving forward. Our original design went through over a year of testing and validation in our closed beta program, so dialing in that level of reliability with the new design in a short period has been a pretty good challenge.
At the risk of ending up in continued Elon-time type situation, I'm reluctant to give an estimated time frame on this... but I specifically waited until there weren't any major potential speedbumps left on the process before posting an update at all.
My apologies to everyone who's signed up and hasn't yet received their BMD. I know it's been
way longer than it should be. As noted before, as a consolation to everyone who's signed up and doesn't receive their BMD within our timeframe quoted on the website, we're extending their plans by a month at no cost. Also, anyone who hasn't received their BMD yet also hasn't even started the countdown on their service plan, so no worries there.
While we technically don't cover problems while the BMD isn't connected, we realize it's also not your fault if you haven't received one after the estimated ship time. So, unofficially, we're still going to work with people who paid, are still waiting, and have some sort of battery issue. We've so far not had many cases of this, and we've handled it such that did our best to diagnose the issue with the customers, got the car, used Tesla logs to pinpoint the timing and validity of the issue, and resolved it for them. Even though no BMD was active, in fairness we started the clock on their plan as if it were activated by a BMD at the end of the BMD shipping-estimate time. Both us and the customers found this to be more than fair. Again, while our terms are pretty specific... we're going to make a best effort attempt to take care of folks who have any issues regardless.
All of that said, thanks again to everyone who's signed up and rode this out with us. It's much appreciated. I will point out that if for whatever reason you want to cancel your plan, you can do so and we'll refund you. I fully understand that these shipments are taking forever, and fully understand if that's what anyone decides to do. No hard feelings whatsoever.
Once everyone who signed up has a BMD in hand, we're going to move forward with our website updates/improvements.
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Semi-related: Our LTE carrier is working with us on some international data rates. We're going to launch a monitoring-only BMD rental service for customers outside of North America once we're all caught up on BMD shipments. We won't be offering this in North America, however,
except for folks with vehicles we can't or won't cover under our program for whatever reason (failed initial battery qualification, unsupported model such as the original 60s, etc). The BMDs are VIN-paired, so only work with the vehicle they're assigned to. (In fact, on the technical side, the VIN as seen on the vehicle's CAN bus is part of the data used to unlock encrypted connectivity to our backend services.) The pricing model for that is going to be a deposit for the full replacement price of the BMD, plus a periodic subscription fee, with the deposit refundable once the BMD is returned.
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More notes as we move along:
One addition to the site is going to be a beta of closed referral program. Initially, I'm going to personally reach out to a few folks that I think would be a good fit for that program and see how it goes and get some feedback. If you feel like you have a platform or something that might be a fit for it, drop me a line. I don't think we'll ever do an open referral program, since we don't want to invite people to spam others, but we'll see how that goes.
While we haven't been working on our major site updates, we do have some improvements in the works for the BMD dashboard. We have a customer-facing API in testing, for those who want that, with access to pretty much everything the BMD uses both in semi-real-time and historic data. The dashboard is also going to have the option to track vehicle alerts that are available to the BMD (generally most relevant ones are) so you can alerts that may normally be hidden outside of Service Mode and the like.
More technical:
Also, we've done some brainstorming on opening up some official software access to the BMD for those who want that. We're doing a server-side customer accessible API for sure, but actual customer code running on the BMD itself is doable.
LTE bandwidth being the key concern with this, we're going to
try this on a bit of an honor system at first. Further, as part of the process, we're going to ask that, again on the honor system, that you share anything cool you do with the BMD so that other's might benefit from it. If it works out, we might do a thing on the dashboard to install custom modules and such to your BMD.
To be clear, things proprietary to 057 still won't be accessible, but we'll make it so your code can have access to CAN messages and network connectivity. We haven't decided if we're going to allow
transmitting of any CAN messages to the car... but if there's a legit use case proposed we might consider it on a case-by-case, with us still in control of the exact messages to be sent since this would have to be done by the trusted side of the module. The hardware design has both a trusted and untrusted portion. The trusted portion runs
only 057-signed and encrypted code (encrypted per-BMD, even), the untrusted portion is where a third party could put some custom things, but still not have any access to mess with the vehicle or anything. Admittedly, a savvy person wouldn't have much issue messing with the untrusted portion of the unit, which handles LTE connectivity, even without any help from us, but the trusted portion is the only part that has any actual access to any vehicle CAN data. The untrusted portion is mainly just to handle relaying encrypted data appropriately, so you'd still need some official support from us to access any data at all.
The first BMD software module we expect to have available like this will be the Bluetooth OBD emulator, specifically to make the BMD work with apps like ScanMyTesla, since the hardware on the BMD does have Bluetooth capabilities. It's going to be read only, so any app that relies on sending CAN won't work (I don't believe SMT does this, so all good). (Technical side: On the backend, the data won't be raw CAN at full-rate since this really isn't needed for these apps... instead the BMD is going to just snapshot relevant messages wanted by the apps and relay them periodically (1Hz or so), and leave room for some of the more real-time messages (like power/current/pack voltage) at around 10Hz. Works well in testing, and SMT doesn't know the difference.)
Way more stuff in the works than I have time to write about here, but will get more out as things progress.
Thanks again!
