I’m probably biased. I like the buttons on the X 
I’m not saying the buttons on the X aren’t cool :). Just that a bunch of extra motors probably aren’t the right place to spend precious margin here. I don’t expect the Model Y to have Falcon Wing Doors, either.
Consumer Reports had a little video update here. Apparently they talked with Musk for an hour or so and had a productive conversation. Not a huge amount of extra detail, but there were a few interesting points:
- Tesla might have an update for the brake issue as early as this weekend.
- CR will change their rating to “recommended” if the update fixes the brake inconsistency.
- Tesla plans to have a better solution for non-primary-driver access than the RFID cards (though I personally haven’t had a problem with it, at least with car washes). A physical dongle I imagine.
- Tesla also has plans for UI tweaks relating to climate control, etc. Though again I find the complaint weird. One of the reviewers mentions that some things you do every day are a pain, like adjusting the mirrors. Who does that? I adjusted the mirrors once when I first stepped into the car and haven’t touched them since. If there were multiple drivers, the profile function would handle that.
Everything I read about the Model Y suggests the falcon wing doors.
Personally I’m not a huge fan of the falcon doors and was the original reason I didn’t get one when they first came out. I was an early reservation holders but when I finally saw them I was meh. It’s neat yeah, but if there was an option for normal doors or even a slider I would take that instead.
Musk has basically said that despite the obvious simplifications on the 3, it’s still too complex a car. So I have a hard time believing they’ll be porting the FW doors. Something else, maybe–suicide doors, or some kind of door that opens really wide (I know one of the motivations for the FW doors was to easily place child seats). I guess we’ll see. I’m almost certain it won’t be a sliding door :).
I also expect to be more on the crossover spectrum as opposed to a mini-SUV. That suggests more a normal door style.
kind of hard to do with a Tesla as the first model year is an open-ended endeavor.
Not really; the continuous changes mean that you can pull the trigger as soon as you feel comfortable about the current state of the car. You could wait a whole year if you wanted, and have decent confidence that the big bugs have been worked out by then, but that might be overkill (and indeed seems to be overkill in the case of the 3). People who bought in the past few months are getting a decent car.
So I notice that getting problems fixed with Tesla seems to be based on tweeting something to @elonmusk, or maybe posting a video, or a bit of media (or blog, or social media, or forum) coverage. I just want to contrast that to how flaws were fixed in my current car when it was new. I have a 2002 VW. It took class action law suits, consumer complaints, denials, not-recall recalls, and real recalls to get known defective coil packs and window regulators replaced.
Anyway, just throwing that out there. Feel free to explain to me how it’s not a fair comparison.
Luxury! I never even got a not-recall-recall, despite a 60+% failure rate for the window regulators on '03-era BMWs. I dreamed of a class-action lawsuit, dealership denials, and a beating with a broken glass bottle. Instead I had to roll up my windows with my teeth, and ripped my tongue clean off when it stuck to the window in a minus 100 degree ice storm. But try to tell the young people today and they won’t believe you.
are you going to respond with as much smugness?
After a lawsuit, VW bought back my 2009 diesel at a premium of about $5,000 above market value. Has Tesla bought back any lemons above market value as the result of a tweet?
The analogy still holds, just replacing out first year of production, and I’d even throw in “in volume” … the pertinent difference is that the fix previously was recalls or waiting until the next year’s model refined some issues while the over the air updates and continual process improvements allow speed up that improvement cycle.
For a while Tesla was offering to buy back up to three year old vehicles for 50% value. That would be a bad offer to take them up on, as Teslas hold their value better than that. Tesla is subject to state lemon laws, and has bought back cars under those requirements.
If Tesla had to buy back half a million cars made between 2008-2015 because the batteries released dangerous levels of NOx, then we’d have heard about, as it would be a company ending event for Tesla.
That’s all handled by tweets directly to Elon, right?
You’re undermining your own argument (such as it is). Tesla is subject to the same laws as anyone else. Nothing is stopping anyone from using the lemon laws or class action lawsuits against Tesla using the normal channels. Tweets and other forms of public escalation are a bonus on top of doing the absolute bare legally-mandated minimum (which is what we expect from other manufacturers).
Kinda sad, really, to see such cynicism against an executive that actually cares about their product. For whatever faults you can lay at Musk’s feet (and there are many), his response and attitude toward genuine customer feedback is not one of them.
Will other companies follow Tesla’s lead on OAUs?
It’s a very attractive feature in a time when the software may be rapidly changing.
The company I’m about to go work for next week, that I worked for last summer, is doing just that for at least one of their clients. (in the automotive embedded systems space) It’s a trickier feature than it sounds - updates can potentially brick a system, and if that happens you have to pay the dealership their labor rate to fix it. (worse, at least at this company, technical limitations means a reflash from raw image takes about 30 minutes)
Another issue is no modern car has just one computer, it’s several at a minimum, sometimes dozens. And sometimes updates to one require you update others. To do an update at all you need a piece of software called a boot loader, or sometimes you can do it via a hyperviser.
Another big huge issue is security, allowing remote updates is a clear and obvious path for hackers. And it’s very expensive to pay the team of coders you need to properly secure it, and sometimes requires rearchitecting the main system.
Braking fix starting to roll out:
Good to see him give credit to CR for their feedback. Obviously Tesla wants to earn the recommended rating… but I don’t see a problem here. This was an undeniably positive interaction between consumer advocacy and a dedicated corporation. This how it’s supposed to work. OTA really pays off here since it massively reduces the cost of a recall.
Using consumers as beta testers may be part of Musk’s genius knowing he was behind the curve on mass production. There may be some Bill Gates influence here.
It is rather bizarre that you should criticize Tesla for releasing a car with an engineering defect and then fixing it when it is discovered, or at least imply that this means they are taking shortcuts. All automobile manufacturers release cars with engineering defects, and they sometimes fix them when they are discovered. Sometimes they resist fixing them, or do their very best to deny that the problems exist. GM killed 124 people “beta testing” their ignition switches.