I have to agree. As a "car guy" I always look at cars and guess the year. It just makes sense. I will look at a 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle and know it's a '72 due to the round taillghts or a 1970 with rectangular taillights. I like the small changes made sometimes to a new look in a model change
Except that in North America it typically means either you only do improvements once a year, or you have a model year that's two years ahead, or you have 1/2 or 1/4 model years which doesn't fit with any registration system. Tesla does continual improvements so there's only minimal relation to the year of manufacture. As far as I know, in the rest of the world the model year is the year of manufacture, regardless of any changes that may occur.
A manufacturer wouldn’t have to rush anything. Many of the Tesla's regular updates don’t significantly impact the car's value and can still be released any time during a model year or sometimes even after the car is delivered to the customer. On top of that, things like significant style changes don’t have to be rushed either as model years aren’t required to be tied to a particular release month. A manufacturer can choose to delay if they want or need to.
I am not familiar with how the E-project does its version identifications but I did already also suggest doing something like Model S 2.0, Model S 3.0, etc.as a possible alternative to Tesla using model years.
The marketplace, consumers, etc. usually focus on model years not just with cars but motorcycles, motorhomes, boats, etc. Even Tesla’s own website lists the new and CPO inventory vehicles as 2014, 2015, etc. instead of 3/2014 or 6/2015, etc.
People often shop for cars by model year(s). This is why auto classified-type site have model years as one of the primary search options. Even Tesla lists their new inventory and CPO cars with 2014, 2015, etc.
Obviously options, prices, miles, etc. are factors along with identifying by specific years. In addition to model name, options, miles, etc. even Tesla lists their inventories with years. Perhaps you think Tesla needs to 'get with it' and drop all that 2014, 2015 stuff? Why should they bother with years if the "EV consumer/marketplace" only cares about options and price/affordability as you say?No, the consumer/marketplace used to focus on model years for their ICE vehicle purchases. The EV consumer/marketplace buys cars based on what options they want and can afford.
Don't worry, you're never too old to change. I have faith in you.
Year vs.year style changes are a very big factor too e.g. a car was redesigned in 2014 so I only want to look at cars 2014 or newer or I like the 2011-213 style of a particular model so only want to consider cars of those years, etc.
In what way does using model years prevent Tesla from doing the type of changes they want to make and when they want to make them? Other manufacturers make changes during the model year, why couldn’t Tesla continue to do the same?
It creates problems, yes, and I don't see why Tesla would want to create problems unnecessarily as changes, flexibility, etc. are still possible when using model years. If they want to do a major redesign (which are rare), they can still release it anytime they're ready and I think distinguishing an all-new design from the old design with a different model year would be a benefit at that time (new) and in the future (used/resale/etc).
I guess I think there are much better things to like Tesla for than being different and don't see the benefit of "not adhering" to the industry norms (which in this case also includes the motorcycle, snowmobile, motorhome, etc. industries) just to be different especially when it can create "problems" (as you stated).
In many parts of the world, there are factory holidays in August and that time is used to configure the production line for the new models. As the model year equals the year the car was manufactured in those countries (not one or two years before) you can't tell by the year which style it is. No one living in those countries seems to have a problem figuring out which style is which. There's really no reason to be limited to model years--especially when there are something like 35 changes made each month (that's the number I recall Elon tweeting--I could be misremembering).
