What Happened To Tesla Updates Every Month Or So?
After writing “13 Potential Tesla Demand Factors (Good & Bad) In Coming Years,” I was still brainstorming demand drivers and thinking about what makes Tesla vehicles special. And then I remembered something Elon Musk tweeted years ago. Not long after I bought my Tesla Model 3 in 2019, we got a big software upgrade that added YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and several cool video games to the Tesla touchscreen. It was exciting, fun, and made Tesla ownership something very special. I think it was at that time that Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would push out significant updates to Tesla vehicles about once a month. These days, I rarely get significant Tesla system updates, especially if you remove “Full Self Driving” updates (which most owners don’t get) from the equation.
Actually, going back further, pre-2019, Tesla used to be king of Easter eggs. Tesla had incorporated tons of fun, playful, sometimes even shocking Easter eggs in its cars. It seemed that it was often one or two of these that really hooked a new buyer. They used to be hidden more, where you had to know or guess a certain keyword and type it in in to reveal the Easter egg. The Tesla rounded up the big ones and put them into a clear are of the touchscreen. Since then, it seems that not a lot have been added.
Whether we’re talking efficiency and range improvements, great new features, or simply fun and hilarious Easter eggs, Tesla software updates have been limited and disappointing for a while. We certainly aren’t getting notable improvements on a monthly basis — not even close.
Now, I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about this, I’m only one person, and I’m just going to spend a few minutes here brainstorming some updates it would be nice to have. So, Tesla should be able to do a lot better if it cares and tries, but it seems the company doesn’t care and doesn’t try to add a lot of fun and useful new features on a regular basis like it used to. Here are some improvements I’d love to enjoy:
- Make it possible to cast something I’m watching on my phone onto the Tesla touchscreen.
- Add ESPN+ to the Theater options. (There’s already Disney+ and Hulu — how much harder could it be to add ESPN+, which is in the same corporate family and comes as part of a package with Disney+ and Hulu?)
- Add a Mandalorian Easter egg in which the touchscreen turns into a Razor Crest control panel and Grogu shows up in the front passenger seat on the screen. Also throw in some random missions or “jobs” on offer from the Guild. (Ah, well, considering Elon Musk’s fights with Disney, perhaps this wouldn’t be a legal option for Tesla.)
- Give Tesla owners the option to organize the touchscreen how they want a little more, or at least revert to previous versions that were much better and easier to use!
- Provide an option to drag part of a navigation route to a different street of your choosing.
- Provide the option of locking a navigation route so that it doesn’t change on you while driving for no clear reason.
- Add a warning (a yellow flash on the screen or something, for example) for when you are entering a school zone.
- Make other Teslas on the road look like Teslas on the traffic visualization and show them in their paint color.
- Add Tennis Channel+, Peacock, and Paramount+ to the Theater options.
- Add apps like Google Suite apps, a weather app, Starbucks, Target, WhatsApp, etc.
- Give owners the option to have automatic windshield wipers that work like a normal car’s (i.e., that work well).
Those are just a few quick ideas that came to mind this evening for me. Any others?
I can’t recall the last time we got any updates in the vein of any of the ones above.
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