I'm never buying a car that can update over the air
I've seem people replace the antennas with resistors so the device thinks it's still working, since Toyota routes part of the speakers through it, so disabling entirely would render some of the sound in your vehicle disabled too.
Literally hundreds of things made better about the car over the last 5 years, truly useful features that didn’t even exist when I bought it like Dashcam and Spotify, and even safety features, improved performance, and just countless little convenience features added over the years.
Updates for better maps, navigation, routing, faster charging, better AutoPilot, Summon, better hard braking performance, improved pedal feel for regen, better driver profile settings and memory, better SMS integration with iPhone, vastly expanded entertainment options, better iPhone app controls, and truly could go on and on. [1]
So here I have a 5 year old car with 50k miles with absolutely zero reason to consider trading it in for a new model, because it basically IS the new model.
IMO it’s a major advantage of owning a Tesla is getting to enjoy truly meaningful and useful software upgrades that consistently make the car better in basically every possibly way.
It’s just a different level of commitment to their customers than I think any other automaker delivers, versus the legacy “if you want new features you’ll have to buy a whole new car to get them” approach.
[1] - https://www.notateslaapp.com/software-updates/history/
From my perspective, everything that you are describing is software enabled and software has no place in my car. The idea behind eschewing over the air updates for your car isn’t that we like old software; it’s that we hate software and don’t want anything to do with it.
Put another way, if you look at all the features that I want in a car (robust safety cell, powerful propulsion, quiet, smooth ride, rare) none of them can be upgraded without physical modifications. And in fact, once those things are achieved, there is really very little reason to change anything.
In general the trend appears to be in favor of your style of consumption which is cool for you, but I for one am a little concerned that when I get a hundred or so thousand more miles on this 98 SL500 there’s going to be nothing out there I want to buy.
Auto makers have gotten away with basically walking away from their software once they “ship” a given model year, and then leaving their owners to deal with whatever issues are present. And the issues are certainly plentiful, and I don’t just mean in the infotainment system.
Cars are also now required in the US and EU to have a myriad of advanced safety systems which require complex software which often performs poorly. Emergency braking, lane departure warning, emergency lane keeping, drowsiness/attention monitoring, intelligent speed assist, etc. All this software will be constantly evolving as technology improves to better avoid false positives and false negatives, but most brands will only provide the best software for their newest model years and leave the existing fleet with whatever they were able to achieve at the time it shipped.
Then there are features like intelligent speed assist which alerts drivers when they are speeding, which requires up-to-date maps and speed limit recognition in order to maintain accuracy.
This is all before we get into further developments of more advanced driver assistance and drive automation that will eventually be achieved.
The reality is that driving kills hundreds of thousands of people and causes trillions of dollars in economic damages every year due to human error or human callousness, and software is the only way out of this bloodbath.
So despite a niche desire by some drivers to own “legacy hardware” the market through strict regulation will continue to incorporate highly advanced and complex software features into automobiles, and ultimately human driving will be a relic, along with the massive toll of lost human life that went along with it.
In the meantime, given that complex software stacks are a regulatory requirement for every new car today, it’s a massive advantage to have that software maintained and upgraded across the whole fleet instead of only releasing upgrades with each successive model year and leaving the existing fleet with sub-standard safety systems.
What could possibly be horrifying about the idea of technological advancement saving millions of lives and vastly improving quality of life all across the world?
And how else would you propose to stop the carnage? Or is the carnage somehow worth it to cater to Nostalgia for antiquated and dangerous modes of manually-operated high speed personal transport?
Yesterday I got a message from a bank that my account was inactive and might be considered abandoned by the bank. If that happened they would turn it over to the state and I would have to jump through hoops to get it back.
So I called them up and inquired: I’ve been using this account and it’s not inactive. What’s up?
A person in a faraway land, presumably working in the middle of the night authenticated me and then started clicking in their computer. They agreed that there was activity sufficient that the account was not abandoned. But then they found a “strange message” associated with some “strange activity” on the account.
I asked if we could freeze the account while we sorted it out. I am flabbergasted to report that they said no.
I went down to the branch to close my account. They were able to zero the account out and give me a cashiers check, but because necessary systems were down, they could not close my account. I had to return today, and now after two visits and a handful of phone calls, I am no longer concerned that my money will disappear.
Having worked in technology integration for some time, I could see echoes of bad software in every single one of the obstacles that I faced.
I was alive in 1985 and I had a bank account then. If I contacted my bank then for similar help, I would have received prompt, courteous service.
The difference between these two scenarios is that the one that happened yesterday and today was infested with software.
Now if you want to look forward to a future enabled by good software, you go ahead. Maybe that will help you create that future. I wish you luck. But right now, we live in an unending hell of bad (and badly integrated) software.
I reject your false dichotomy. Drive slower, build more robust crash cells, and invest in roads that don’t suck and public transport.
NHTSA says that improved safety technologies have saved over 600,000 lives between 1960 and 2012. Updates make the car safer for the driver, and safer for everyone they share the road with.
Updating the whole fleet’s safety software as the algorithms improve would save thousands of lives and that’s enough reason to make automakers keep updates flowing after the point of sale.
Of course it can and should be done without tracking or spying.
ADAS software is already required in all new cars sold in the US and EU.
And just this week for example Tesla released an update to its AEB (Automatic Emergency Braking) software to improve its performance.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/newer-cars-are-safer-cars
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-automatic-emergency-braking-...
Second, your claim it's a time bomb waiting to kill someone is unsubstantiated. They are not perfect technologies, but the data show they are safer than the average driver and therefore accurate to call them life-saving technology, even if they don't save every single life when they are active.
The data show: the more cars that have and use this technology, the less carnage and death we see on the roads.
disclaimer: I own a 2019 M3.
IIRC Tesla's acceleration boost (powerful propulsion) upgrade essentially keeps the front engine correctly-aligned at all times to make the most out of the usually-unused torque. AEB and TACC were upgraded multiple times over the years, becoming better and better and solving issues (smooth ride). As for quietness, MS and MX got active noise reduction through software upgrades. All of this was done using existing hardware, and I didn't even mention the constant data-driven tweaking of battery pre-conditioning to allow faster charges while still extending battery life (powerful propulsion/smooth ride), or the camera features (dashcam recording, blind-spot camera pop-up, ...). Some are amazing tweaks you didn't even know you wanted, but are a constant time-saver (blinkers auto-off). I'm pretty sure that also the other high-voltage components handling also got the data-driven treatment (better regulation of currents to extend component's lifetime, for instance).
These kind of software modifications were also seldom done when I brought my old ICE cars to the dealer for the regular checks - "remapping the engine parameters to better handle some cases" - but in reality I recall this happening at most once in the lifetime of the car.
I believe that new features can be developed using existing hardware in new, unforeseen ways. What I agree on is that this needs to be done in a secure and non-intrusive manner. Some UI reworks were definitely controversial at first, but Tesla has a good track record of listening and adapting to user requests at least. I cannot say the same for any other brand I've had a car from.
Many automakers already push OTA updates, and the holdouts who had been trying to preserve a dealership and service network by saying you had to take the car in are I believe mostly moving to OTA.