>Their whole car is a computer that can receive OTA updates
No, the car has a computer that controls the systems in the car like all the modern cars. Receiving software updates to a computer is not a huge tech challenge. And no, you don't receive performance over the internet, you receive a driving configuration that may better utilize the hardware. Can be easily done by any manufacturer.
>Their autonomous is better than everyone
Factually wrong, they are a category down from actual self-driving tech developers. But if you decide to skip the self-driving part and call it driving assistant or something, then yes it's a pretty good driving assistant that can follow lines etc. Some people think that calling the driving assistance software an autopilot is borderline false advertisement.
>Factually wrong, they are a category down from actual self-driving tech developers.
Well they're the only people offering anything this quality unless your one of the hundreds of people in Phoenix that can order a Waymo (that still has a person driving).
>some people think that calling the driving assistance software an autopilot is borderline false advertisement.
Well my 'driving assistance' drove me 95% of the way to work this morning hands free feet free, seems pretty appropriate to call it autonomous to me.
Tesla also happens to have a fanbase who would defend them with passion, making claims and arguing for hours that you can indeed download car performance from the internet, that driving assist is an autonomous driving even though Tesla says that it isn't and you should always stay alert and if you get slammed into a wall(like that poor Apple engineer) you should have known better.
It's really not about tech but about the brand. Since Stave Job is no longer with us, Musk happens to own the tech visionary title.
It can be annoying but I'm glad that Tesla exists an it's brand is pushing the big players into electric cars.
->making claims and arguing for hours that you can indeed download car performance from the internet,
I don't understand. People went to sleep, their car updated via internet, and they woke up with more performant cars. This really happened. Obviously the car didn't changed the hardware, it changed the software, and the car drove better.
Obviously you don't "upload performance" from the internet. But Tesla (and many other companies) often figure out how to squeeze more from existing hardware with tweaks to how the device operates. It's the same reason software patches can make a program or device feel faster. The device didn't get any faster, but the developers figured out how to do more with the same hardware.
> Receiving software updates to a computer is not a huge tech challenge.
And yet almost all car companies are—with rare exceptions—entirely averse to the modification of car software updates for anything more substantial than bugfixes, device compatibility and trivial tweaks.
It might not be a tech challenge, but it is a corporate one. It seems like no car companies want their cars to ever change in any way, lest a single word of their owner's manuals might need to be rewritten.
BMW for example will provide software updates to their iDrive head units: either as a trivial patch for device compatibility, or as a more substantial update applied by the dealer. And the latter sounds great... EXCEPT that their system configuration is guided by the car's build date, and if a useful feature was released after your car was built, you probably won't get it.
By way of example, my May 2013 build date BMW F20 shipped with no screen overlay for volume changes. In order to get that overlay, I first had to get the software flashed by the dealer (there was an actual crashing bug which was another story) and then I had to "code" the car myself to make iDrive think its build date was a year later. Once I did that, I got a screen overlay for volume changes.
I agree completely, what's holding back the established manufacturers is their culture. Their understanding of car experience is getting dated quickly.
I think at one point they will have to shake up and change. If they are smart, their executives will drive Tesla's as their personal vehicles until they understand what's all about.
These are not hard tech problems but for example, with the iPhone, it took quite some time for Google and Samsung to grasp the new expectation but Nokia and Microsoft never cracked it.
No, the car has a computer that controls the systems in the car like all the modern cars. Receiving software updates to a computer is not a huge tech challenge. And no, you don't receive performance over the internet, you receive a driving configuration that may better utilize the hardware. Can be easily done by any manufacturer.
>Their autonomous is better than everyone
Factually wrong, they are a category down from actual self-driving tech developers. But if you decide to skip the self-driving part and call it driving assistant or something, then yes it's a pretty good driving assistant that can follow lines etc. Some people think that calling the driving assistance software an autopilot is borderline false advertisement.