Introduction

In this section I write about the phenomenon that is Tesla and the experience of acquiring and driving a Model S.

Updates: your car, kept modern

Tesla came at the car market from the perspective of technology; this, in contrast to long-time carmakers who seem to regard general technology as an afterthought, and almost a distraction from tweaking internal combustion engines and making chrome exhaust pipe outlets. Tesla delivers update to your car over the air, either through 4G/LTE (as available in the latest cars) or WiFi when the car is in your garage. The way it works is tht you will get a notification than an update is available, both on the car's 17" display and in your smartphone's Tesla app. You can then opt to install the update. The process advises you that you will not be able to drive the car for the hour or so that it takes to download and apply the update. Naturally, it is best to do this over WiFi, to minimize the download time. (Remember not to absentmindedly turn your WiFi off for the night when in the house, to avoid any possible disruption.) During the updating process, the car will make various noises, and charging will be turned off, if you were in the process of charging the car. Upon completion, the 17" display will tell you of the status of the update, which should be success.

Some updates deliver major new capabilities while some are just improvements to existing capabilities. All in all, you end up with a car possessed of the latest technology, within the capabiities of you car's current hardware.

At this point I believe that Tesla is the only vehicle company performing spontaneous over-the-air updating — rather like the Apple model of directly providing updates directly from Apple to your Apple device. In contrast, other car companies are still in the dark ages. In July 2015 it was deomonstrated that a Chrysler Jeep vehicle could be hacked — through the entertainment system(!) — and taken over from a laptop any number of miles away from the vehicle. Frighteningly, this extended to having its engine turned off as it's going down a crowded freeway with no breakdown lane. In response, Fiat-Chrysler put out a recall for 1.5 million affected vehicles. And get this: owners of the recalled vehicles will get a USB drive that they can use to update the car's software. Yes, you should be able to get a Jeep update and protect your family in just a matter of months. To Fiat-Chrysler, this seems to be 2005, not 2015. This is precisely the dimwittedness that Elon Musk is dedicated to countering.

There is no "model year", per se, with Tesla cars. They are constantly being improved, with minor and major changes whenever the changes are ready. When parking sensors were ready, they were added to the car, as were the radar and vision systems to support Autopilot.

I do sincerely wish that a lot more people would get into the electric propulsion movement. It's the 21st century, and there are still far too many tailpipes still out there, at the same time that there is a growing environmental crisis.

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