Some more thoughts on the auto-industry’s inevitable EV discontinuity (earlier):
As a bottom-up EV company, Tesla also seems to be fundamentally software-driven. This isn’t necessary to build EVs, but it is probably going to be the model for successful auto manufacturers after the shift to EVs, regardless of whether Tesla itself wins or not.
A manufacturer having a continuing relationship with a specific vehicle after it has been sold to a customer is a novel concept. This is more like an iPhone that receives continual software updates over a certain lifetime that not only makes new features available but also makes existing hardware behave better.
This is a fundamental change. For example, to a Quora question about “Does Tesla update or change its cars with each model year?“, this answer:
Digit 10 of the VIN is the ‘model year’, but for Tesla this is the year the car was manufactured, not a ‘model year’ per se. From when it was introduced in June 2012 the car has been continually updated.
Part of this is by design – the majority of cabin controls are via the 17-inch touchscreen, with software updates pushed to the car via its onboard 3G connection every couple of months. Sometimes these are cosmetic tweaks, sometimes bug fixes to the software itself, and sometimes new feature introductions such as ‘creep mode’ and ‘hill hold’.
Physical changes to the car also happen continuously. Some are to introduce new features – such as parking sensors (park distance control) or electronic folding mirrors – and it may or may not be possible to retrofit changes to existing cars depending on the feature.
Some changes are under the covers, such as redesigned suspension arms, or more subtle, such as the recent change to the bezel around the instrument cluster.
Bottom line – Tesla continually tweaks the car to introduce new features, or to improve existing features. There is no such thing as a ‘Model Year 2014 Tesla Model S’.
In fact, Tesla’s global over the air software update system means that
Doug Field, a former Apple Inc. and Ford Motor Co. F -1.70% engineer who is now Tesla’s engineering chief, notes that, rather than “batch large changes all at once,” Tesla continues to make tweaks after a product launches, much as the software industry does.
This means it can seamlessly make major changes to basic elements of a car that would have required manufacturers to otherwise make a major recall [1]:
Tesla shipped an over-the-air update that, according to CR’s testing, improved the braking distance by 19 feet. It’s a wild idea: your car automatically downloads some code, and it’s instantly safer… CR’s director of auto testing (and the person who originally flagged the issue), said he’d “never seen a car that could improve its track performance with an over-the-air update.
And this, perhaps unimaginable just a few years ago:
… the automaker remotely unlocked the full battery pack capacity of Model S/X 60/60D vehicles with 75 kWh battery packs [for Florida customers in the mandatory evacuation zone looking to escape the path of Hurricane Irma in 2017]
This was because
Tesla used to offer the option to buy a Model S or Model X with a 75 kWh battery pack software-locked at a capacity of 60 kWh. The option would result in a less expensive vehicle with a shorter range, but the option to pay to remotely enable the longer range at a later stage… a representative confirmed that the company has put in place the emergency measure to temporarily extend the range of the vehicles of Tesla owners in the path of Hurricane Irma.
And while I can’t find coverage of this feature having been implemented, an idea of what is possible:
This means a car that’s actually gets better over time, as this writer states, describing improvised auto-pilot, an improvement in the range of its long-range models, a speed boost, automated wipers that used “the first production deep neural network trained with over 1 million images for the detection of water droplets in a windshield and additional weather cues” and the braking improvements above.
Finally, it also means the manufacturer has a relationship with the car and therefore the end customer unmediated by dealerships. This is transformational to the company’s organisation and to the economics of selling cars, but we won’t get into the details here.
That a major publicly-listed international car manufacturer, EV or not, has adopted this system of building and maintaining cars is a genie that can no longer be put inside a bottle. It has to become mainstream now.
[1] Update: Of course, not everything can be fixed via software: “NHTSA said there are no known crashes or injuries associated with the Model X recall. The recall covers 14,193 U.S. vehicles and 843 in Canada. Tesla will arrange for the replacement of the mounting bolts and will also replace the steering gear if needed, Transport Canada said.”