I was thinking that the software update cycle might actually speed up quite a bit once all this sleep mode functionality is fleshed out. Sleep mode was probably a major undertaking for the developers, and extreme care needed to be taken to avoid causing hardware issues and stranding people. Once the sleep mode issues are fleshed out and everything's working properly--and now that wifi is enabled--that limits future updates to mostly software functionality, which is less critical than firmware. I wonder if this will lead to more rapid software update cycles in the future. Any thoughts?
It depends on what they needed to do to get it to sleep. Sometimes deep changes afford a chance to clean up the code and you're left with something beautiful that makes you happy, sometimes you end up with an unstable equilibrium. Which approach you take can depend on the environment...
Very plausible. 5.8 is already out on the heels of 5.6, and Elon was talking in Munich about a December release with advanced trip-planning.