Tesla's Software To-Do List

[iffatall]

... As far as Audio Off goes, it seems like there is no on/off feature for any of the main systems on this car, and I do not see TM doing this now. I will just accept the mute button on the steering wheel that I use often, or the one on the 17" screen that my passengers currently use.

In my opinion, an on/off option is not necessary if the car-enjoying-music-while-asleep bug is fixed. Radio-Mute/Music-Pause would effectively be same as Off then, as it was before this bug was introduced.

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Thanks, BertL for compiling the list.

It would be interesting to see which of the items listed are the most missed by owners. Someone had an idea of allowing owners to vote on the items, with everyone having three votes to allocate. I know compiling such a system is not as simple as just vote and needs time, but it would be interesting to know - regardless of whether it leads to any consequence for real.

And about that, from what I have observed so far (and could be completely wrong about) is that any bug fix or feature gets added only when it comes to Elon's notice, and he really deems the bug worth fixing or feature worth adding.

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Mercedes E-Class has a feature (for the station wagon, or T model) where you can open the trunk by kicking your foot sort of underneath the car (Keyless option required, and you have to have the key on you). Very handy when you have both hands full.

I believe it uses the camera to detect the gesture. I don't see why this shouldn't be equally useful on the Model S, seems easy to implement.

That needs a hardware upgrade - out of the scope of this thread. It is a useful feature though.

 

[trils0n]

AUDIO
-----

Gapless playback. It should be possible to go from one track to the next in a folder without "skipping". This is essential for playing everything from audio dramas to operas.

*Every* CD player provides this (it's part of the Red Book standard). Tesla needs to provide it too.

Reported in 2013. No action by Tesla.

Everytime I report an issue or send a recommendation to Tesla (perhaps 5-6 times a year for 3 years) I've included this as well. So annoying (even rock n roll albums like Pink Floyd have these huge abrupt gaps between songs that shouldn't be there -- ruins it). Continues to bug me ever since the first day I got my car nearly 3 years ago.

 

[cman8]

I have had BMW and AUDI and both of my cars (535 and A8) have had rear sun shade and side shades. Thats something that I think would be a great addition as an option.

 

[Mille Pun]

What about adding recording function to the cam, so that it acts like dash cam?

 

[4SUPER9]

I have had BMW and AUDI and both of my cars (535 and A8) have had rear sun shade and side shades. Thats something that I think would be a great addition as an option.

That would be a impressive feat of software engineering if they can pull that off.

 

[Beryl]

Great list! I have zero to add to it given my short time with the vehicle but several items have caused me to think, "Even my Lexus/Chevy/Volvo could do that".

Tesla's product feature goal is to be on the NEWS. A me too does not achieve that even if the the feature is what the current owners like to have. So many examples....

IMO, Tesla is very "Apple-like" in that they may take longer to implement a software feature but when they do, the implementation is more elegant than its competitors and becomes newsworthy. (Irritates the heck out of the anti-Apple folks.)

 

[Soolim]

IMO, Tesla is very "Apple-like" in that they may take longer to implement a software feature but when they do, the implementation is more elegant than its competitors and becomes newsworthy. (Irritates the heck out of the anti-Apple folks.)

Really, like the car navigation?

 

[4SUPER9]

Really, like the car navigation?

The navigation has a long way to go. At the same time, it is much better than several other vehicles I have owned. Also, there have been some notable improvements. At first, North was always up. In August 2013, they added a feature to have direction of travel going up. Then with that, the street names continued to follow North, causing them to be upside down when traveling south. Another update fixed that. Then, we got route overview.

I am not giving up hope that future updates will add more features. Waypoints are first on that list for me. A scale marker should be easy.

 

[bob_p]

The Tesla apps generally look much better than apps in other vehicles - plus with the 17" touchscreen, the interface can be much larger.

A big advantage of the navigation software is the Google satellite maps - much better than the typical navigation maps (which we see on the dashboard).

With the exception of the "beta" trip planner that tries to help in managing charging during trips, the rest of the functionality in the navigation software is pretty bare bones.

When I bought my previous car - a Lexus - 10 years ago - it was the first to have real-time navigation. The real-time data was limited, because it was based on XM radio sending data for a limited number of highways (compared to Tesla, which uses Google real-time data on all regularly travelled streets). However, if there was a traffic issue on the route, it would pop up a warning about the upcoming traffic problem and then offer to re-route. Other than the colored lines on the map, we still don't have any information on traffic incidents, along with standard features like waypoints and route customization (toll roads, preference of distance over time, ...).

Apple apps not only look great - they also generally have a complete set of functionality.

 

[brooklynrab]

Great job, BertL, in both putting this together and trying to maintain discipline to this thread.
OK, here is one my old Infiniti had, and I'm sure half a dozen others have: A "favorite" caller list. Right now when you click on the steering wheel to make a call, you get the choice of either pulling up your contact list (ughhhh, 2000 names) or your "recent" calls. Other cars allow you to program in your five (or whatever) "favorites" for faster selection, like my iPhone does. These could either appear directly in the menu with "Contacts" and "Recent" or, second best, you would see "Favorites" in that menu and have to click down a menu to get to your list. Better yet, voice command, "Call Favorites Joanna", so I don't see and have to pick from every joanna in my phone book -- it just calls my one favorite joanna immediately.

 

[Festerfeet]

Really, like the car navigation?

Well Apple did have a few problems with their Maps app at the start and they significantly larger resources on the software side.

 

[Andyw2100]

First, let me say you've done an excellent job starting this thread, Bert. It's unfortunate so many posters are unable to abide by the requests you made in the opening post. I will attempt to honor your requests.

A missing feature that is available in many other cars that could easily be added via a software update would be standard, speed-only cruise control in Traffic Aware Cruise Control enabled cars when TACC is, for whatever reason, unavailable.

Every (or practically every) auto manufacturer offers cruise control. (Acura, BMW, Mercedes, Ford, Chevrolet and Hyundai, to list a few specifically.) When TACC is unavailable, as it often is for those of us who drive in the Northeast or other cold and snowy climates where our radar units may become obstructed, we currently don't have any way to set a constant speed. We should.

In addition to the convenience of being able to set a constant speed, it is also an efficiency issue. The model S setting and maintaining a set speed is certainly more efficient than the driver attempting to maintain a set speed.

Many suggest that the reason Tesla has not provided this functionality is that Tesla fears people will confuse basic, speed-only cruise with TACC. I'd argue that with all the complexity currently built into the Model S' controls, we can handle this.

I have written to servicehelpna@teslamotors about this issue.

My most recent post about the issue on TMC is here:
http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...-too)/page12?p=1376509&viewfull=1#post1376509


The issue has been discussed in many threads. Below are a couple of the others:

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...bad-weather?highlight=standard+cruise+control

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/show...-Unavailable?p=1299133&viewfull=1#post1299133


This is an important issue for those of us who often find our radar units obstructed. It should be important to all Model S owners who have a vehicle that is TACC enabled, as the "Driver Assistance Features Unavailable" message could pop up unexpectedly at any time, and you very well may want to be able to drive at a constant speed and maintain peak efficiency when that happens. Until Tesla provides a simple, speed-only cruise option, you won't be able to.

 

[BertL]

First, let me say you've done an excellent job starting this thread, Bert. It's unfortunate so many posters are unable to abide by the requests you made in the opening post. I will attempt to honor your requests.

A missing feature that is available in many other cars that could easily be added via a software update would be standard, speed-only cruise control in Traffic Aware Cruise Control enabled cars when TACC is, for whatever reason, unavailable. ...

Thanks.

Yes, but hey, what can one do? No way on a public forum to slap someone's hands, and say "did you read even the title of this thread before responding?". AHAHAHA

Never thought about that one... I'm so in love with TACC and it's equivalent in my former Lexus/MBZ, it's always my defacto standard here in the generally sunny and dry Southwest. ...but I've picked up on the challenges folks are encountering with snow/ice build-up on the low Autopilot radar, so agree, having basic cruise control kick in that situation with an appropriate new idiot light may be a lot better default. A fine future enhancement, I'd say.

(Honestly, if I could turn back the clock many years, I think it would be a cool job if I could still program to be on a relatively small team within Tesla software engineering, who's task was to find, develop, and continually deploy non-AutoPilot enhancements across the Tesla line... They could be the "maintenance team", no different than my first full-time job out of college. Assuming they were a small group of folks, progress would only be slow-but-sure, but for owners, it would show constant progress allowing Tesla to first catch-up across many areas they are lagging, then sustain being the most refined vehicle on the road by delivering improvements OTA with everything else. THAT would be a differentiator no other mfgr can provide, and be something Tesla could occasionally Tweet and remind the world about -- and not take away from Elon's personal mission of autonomous vehicles where likely more complex and dedicated engineering is required.)

 

[BertL]

I today formally documented to [email protected] these additional firmware bugs when using a USB Flash Drive as part of Media Player. I've had these issues since I took delivery with firmware 6.2. There is no difference through my present 7.1 2.9.154.

1) The Albums Tab incorrectly uses the standard ID3 (Track) Artist field, in combination with the Title field to determine unique albums. This causes albums with different artists to show in the Media Player Albums Tab as multiple albums, whereas, if Tesla used the Album Artist field, the Media Player would correctly keep the same albums together. As an example, a single artist vocal album containing a single track with another artists in a duet, will show as 2 different albums in the Albums Tab today, or a Broadway album where there are different vocalists on most tracks will be displayed as separate albums for each track — rendering playback of the complete album nearly impossible.

2) Album Art is never displayed when a track is played via the Folder Tab, but it is if the same track is played using the Songs/Genres/Artists/Albums Tabs

3) Artist and Album Name are never displayed when a track is played via the Folder Tab, but they are if the same track is played using the Songs/Genres/Artists/Albums Tabs

4) Multivolume Disc # tag does not appear to be used by Media Player, therefore albums with multiple “discs” will have multiple tracks 1, 2, 3, etc preventing front-to-back playing via the Albums Tab. The only workarounds are for an owner to break apart a multi-disc album using separate album titles for each disc, or to change the track numbers on the 2nd and subsequent discs to retain the proper album sequence across all discs. These workarounds are not acceptable, especially for those owners with large music libraries.

5) MS inappropriately remembers USB contents after a USB device is removed and reinserted if changes have been made to tag data. e.g. If you place tracks onto a Flash Drive, insert into MS and allow it to be scanned, then remove it and replace tag data such as artist (to circumvent #1 above) on some tracks, when you put that same Flash Drive back into MS, it will be scanned, but erroneously showing the tracks with the old tag data. The owner must do a reboot of the 17” display (hold and wait for the Tesla T) to flush the cache, then reinsert the Flash Drive each time changes like this are made so they will be picked up by MS.

6) USB1 & USB2 designations are sometimes incorrectly displayed on the My Music & Devices Tab as only USB1 (missing USB2 until a device is inserted), showing USB1 & USB1, and my registered iPhone disappearing. A reboot of the 17” display corrects the designations and provides access to all devices once again.
​

For those that care about workarounds, and if you own a Mac running OSX, the current version of Tesla Tunes can make living with #1 & #4 more tolerable -- Thank you tattwamasai SOOOO much!

 

[Andyw2100]

I today formally documented to [email protected] these additional firmware bugs when using a USB Flash Drive as part of Media Player. I've had these issues since I took delivery with firmware 6.2. There is no difference through my present 7.1 2.9.154.

Thanks for taking the time to submit all those!

5) MS inappropriately remembers USB contents after a USB device is removed and reinserted if changes have been made to tag data. e.g. If you place tracks onto a Flash Drive, insert into MS and allow it to be scanned, then remove it and replace tag data such as artist (to circumvent #1 above) on some tracks, when you put that same Flash Drive back into MS, it will be scanned, but erroneously showing the tracks with the old tag data. The owner must do a reboot of the 17” display (hold and wait for the Tesla T) to flush the cache, then reinsert the Flash Drive each time changes like this are made so they will be picked up by MS.

​

I have not found that rebooting in the manner you describe works, though I have not tried that in several months / firmware versions. What definitely does work, without having to reboot, is changing the folder name that the changed file resides in.

 

[BertL]

...I have not found that rebooting in the manner you describe works, though I have not tried that in several months / firmware versions. What definitely does work, without having to reboot, is changing the folder name that the changed file resides in.

You are correct. I've had the reboot work only a couple of times -- it was likely coincidence because I wasn't playing close-enough attention earlier-on trying to figure out what was screwed-up and why.

I sent all my input in and documented here earlier yesterday while the USB stick was being scanned again (takes a VERY long time with 16K tracks). I found after the reboot/rescan process was complete, the cache wasn't cleared with tracks all in my root folder (no folder to rename), so I called Tech Support and their response was the reboot (holding and waiting for the Tesla T before letting up on the scroll wheels) should clear the Media Player/USB Cache and if not I would have to go to my SC, which I was prepared to do. Went back and quadruple-checked tags on multiple tracks to make sure they were correct to force single albums to show in Media Player Albums, then set my Mac rebuilding my stick of 16K+ tracks overnight to a folder structure (remembered reading the trick you mention about renaming) -- it's now done, but have not gone out in the early morning chill to start that going yet. It really does not need to be this hard, and takes my frustration to more of a level of anger as it's not clear these sort of bugs will ever be resolved. Oh well, I need to take a deep breath, and chill out. It's only 5:11AM here and a full day ahead! Thx.

 

[AWDtsla]

I today formally documented to [email protected] these additional firmware bugs when using a USB Flash Drive as part of Media Player. I've had these issues since I took delivery with firmware 6.2. There is no difference through my present 7.1 2.9.154.

And what was Tesla's response? I have quite a list of items, certainly more severe than something about the media player doesn't work. I mean like basic driving. I don't intend to send Tesla a list of stuff that immediately goes in the trash and puts me on the "problem customer" list.

 

[BertL]

And what was Tesla's response? I have quite a list of items, certainly more severe than something about the media player doesn't work. I mean like basic driving. I don't intend to send Tesla a list of stuff that immediately goes in the trash and puts me on the "problem customer" list.

The response I received in less than 12 hours was the boiler plate I thought I'd receive, and honestly similar to what my old tech support teams used to provide to customers with non-critical problems or suggestions like these were (we used to call those Severity 3 & 4, vs Sev 1 being "system down or business critical impairment" - where a Tesla SC would be engaged I suspect in this context, or Sev 2 being "not working as designed, but circumvention in place"). The net was:

Hello Bert,

Thank you for contacting Tesla Motors Technical Support,

We really appreciate you taking the time to document your feedback regarding your concerns. We are always striving to improve our products and feedback such as yours is greatly valued. On your behalf, I have submitted your suggestions to the correct department and can assure you that the right people will get the information.

Don’t hesitate to email or call us if you have any further feedback, question or concerns.

Thanks for being a Tesla Owner!

There will be those that are not happy with that response. I could probably list a handful of users I expect sarcastic replies from. So be it. I'm personally OK with the response I received and it's timeliness, but as discussed elsewhere, I won't be SATISFIED until I see steady progress fixing known firmware flaws unrelated to AutoPilot.

IMHO, it's each Owner's choice if they want to remain internally disgruntled and hold-in problems they encounter, or perhaps go on continual tirades here to help their soul, or what I prefer is to take the time when I have it to formally document my problems to Tesla in a business-like and unemotional manner. Having run tech support organizations for years, my view has always been, if it has not been officially reported, my team and I could not be expected to EVER consider working on it -- I personally told my Customers face-to-face more than once that my support team and the development organizations were great, but we were not mind readers, nor were each of us every-day users of every option and combination of hardware and software our company produced. We could debate elsewhere if Elon and Tesla have a similar mindset. Be that as it may, while it takes me a little time to occassionally assimilate down what I consider to be true failures (vs desired functionality or improvements) I try to treat Tesla in a manner as I desired my Customers help me help them -- documenting my concerns IN HOPE it does not go into a black hole, and that a growing number of examples from well-intentioned Owners will one day be used to improve Tesla's product and therefore enjoyment of my own MS. At least in my old business, my teams dealt with Sev 1 & 2 problems and associated escalations extremely well, but we were also a more mature business than Tesla is. Depending on how the marketing forecast and annual budget went, we always got to some number of Sev 3s and even simpler Sev 4s -- with me at times bringing some of those to the top of the list because of increasing volumes of similar problems or requests from different Customers -- or just a general noise level on certain subjects that made it to me... We've seen noise level (and Press comments) push change to the top with Tesla, so maybe if enough Owners do take the time to communicate directly with Tesla, our views will also make a difference. As I said, I can at least hope while trying to remain optimistic.

BTW, I'll take the risk of being on a bad-guy list. Fortunately I don't have a new MX or MS on-order, nor do I plan to put in a reservation for a M3, and I have 4-years of extended warranty and 8-years of pre-paid service contractually locked-down. ...but that's why I always try to cleanse my interaction with any business of emotion and go back into a factual and business-like manner (vs the quicker replies off the top of my head that sometimes make their way to social media like TMC or on my personal website).

 

[OddB]

Remember this display ? Missing being able to check the speed and battery in one glance ?
How about being able to switch between this "classic" display and the "modern" 7.1 display on pre AP cars in the config screen?
Shouldnt be TOO much work for the SW-team should it ?

 

[brooklynrab]

The response I received in less than 12 hours was the boiler plate I thought I'd receive, and honestly similar to what my old tech support teams used to provide to customers with non-critical problems or suggestions like these were (we used to call those Severity 3 & 4, vs Sev 1 being "system down or business critical impairment" - where a Tesla SC would be engaged I suspect in this context, or Sev 2 being "not working as designed, but circumvention in place").
There will be those that are not happy with that response. I could probably list a handful of users I expect sarcastic replies from. So be it. I'm personally OK with the response I received and it's timeliness, but as discussed elsewhere, I won't be SATISFIED until I see steady progress fixing known firmware flaws unrelated to AutoPilot.

OK, BertL, I'll try to contain my sarcasm in the interests of making the Tesla better, which si what we all care about the most. it's just its so frustrating sending emails to Tesla once a month or so noting such glaring imperfections or errors that seem so easily remedied, and yet nothing gets done. These cars were created and sold to so easily be made better, and yet the company seems ore interested in headlines. I have been shopping for a new car for my wife lately (it will NOT be a Tesla, for several reasons), and I have been finding that, except for the internal combustion engine part, competitors are catching up in important ways and providing a superior product. Most everyone is working towards an interface that provides superior features to those that we now have (check out the Volvo XC90 UI, which is OTA updatable, or for that matter, a loaded Chevy with Apple Play), and everyone is working on more sophisticated implementations of their own autopilot (again, Volvo is pretty impressive) and are probably maybe just a year or two behind tesla on this front.
Accordingly, NOW is the time to fix both (i) all the glaring little things in the Tesla that people don't notice until they own the car (like your great USB and media control comments, readability of the speedometer, high beams indicator, moving the green range bar back to the center of the screen, a "favorites" calling list in addition to "Recent", etc), and (ii) the larger ones that easily show up in a feature comparison chart or test drive -- like a meaningful menu of voice commands and apps.
The problem is that for a company with such a clear voice from the top, Tesla doesn't seem to be particularly mindful or caring of dealing with any of these issues. Hence the source of profound frustration and sarcasm.
Now that I think of it, I may copy and paste this comment and thread to tech support for the hell of it.