I agree pretty much 100% with
@mvotb (Post #41).
2015 P90DL here. When I got it, it was great. No nags on autopilot -- none! Just set it and go. Then with later firmwares they started nagging, about once per minute (yeah I timed it). Later 2018 builds ("nag gate") increased that to once every 12-15 seconds in some cases, or every 30 seconds if the car is feeling generous. What used to be a fun road trip, especially out here in the sticks, is now just me babysitting the car like it's some sort of tamagotchi, jiggling the wheel every 15 seconds so it doesn't punish me just because it can't detect my hands. Elon promised the car would drive itself, and it mostly did, back in 2015. Everything since then has been a downgrade in the autopilot sense.
How about a car where the cruise control works, even when the forward-facing sensors are confused? If you're going to disable "advanced autopilot functionality", that shouldn't mean I cannot use dumb cruise control! Every car I've owned since the 1980's has had dumb cruise control. But not this one -- it's so smart it downgrades itself to complete manual control if you park it with the AP camera facing the sun for too long. Yeesh.
Chargegate. Yep, got me. I can't SC faster than 109kW, when I used to hit 116-121kW. Downgraded.
Batterygate. Not sure if this one's got me yet or not. I know my practical range is ~180miles on level-ish roads, even though the Tesla Configurator showed something much higher -- 245 or something, for my car when it was built. But over the past 38k miles, the real world range on interstates has proven itself to be "180 miles safely, anything beyond that is pushing your luck".
Let me set my AP cruise control faster than 5mph over the posted speed. Out here in the sticks, people drive 65-70 in a 55 (state 2-lane hwy) all the time. My frickin Tesla is too smart for that and apparently thinks it's supposed to nanny me, so to keep with the traffic flow, I have to disable AP. At least I used to be able to hold the gas down with AP on, and it'd punish me by requiring the wheel be jiggled right away, but then I'd have a full minute before it did that again. Now with the OTA downgrades, I'm back to every 15 seconds, which is annoying enough that I'll just disable AP instead.
The list goes on and on, but basically:
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Don't reduce and remove functionality over time
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Let me service my own vehicle instead of fighting tooth and nail to make it difficult
If an EV manufacturer were to come out with a vehicle equivalent to the 2015 P90D (range, AP1, drivetrain), make it accessible to backyard mechanics at a level similar to contemporary ICE vehicles, and I knew they could never downgrade me from that functionality or accessibility, I'd switch to that manufacturer in a heartbeat. For that matter, if I had a time machine, I'd go back to 2015-2016 me, and tell that guy to pull the SIM card out of the stupid thing before the v8 firmware came out. That seemed to be peak
functionality, everything since then has been downhill and adding stupid games instead of fixing bugs. Right now, Tesla's OTA is actively making the cars worth
less, the longer one owns them.
Ah, sorry. Hit a nerve and now I've vented my spleen.