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Firmware 6.? - Musk spills the beans on next update

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For those of you that may have missed it, Elon did an interview with Der Spiegel (German magazine). It was summarized by one of our German members here. This is what Musk had to say about upcoming firmware (my translation):

Next month we'll release new firmware so that the car can automatically recognize if it has insufficient range to get to your next charging opportunity. The car will warn you and offer directions to the nearest supercharger.

How it will do that, what it means in detail and what "next month" means you're free to speculate..... :)

The complete article is available here but is behind a paywall so I have refrained from posting the full piece. Please respect copyright if you buy the article yourself.
 
For those of you that may have missed it, Elon did an interview with Der Spiegel (German magazine). It was summarized by one of our German members here. This is what Musk had to say about upcoming firmware (my translation):



How it will do that, what it means in detail and what "next month" means you're free to speculate..... :)

The complete article is available here but is behind a paywall so I have refrained from posting the full piece. Please respect copyright if you buy the article yourself.

The car knows past charging locations and where home/work is. So it can at least use those as references. Then, add superchargers and nav destination and you've got a pretty small list of calculations to alert you whether or not you're in range of something. They could interface with a 3rd party database (chargepoint, recargo), but I think that would lead to too many false alarms. If anything, the nav can do actual distance calculations to these spots instead of how it does it now ("as the crows fly").
 
Hopefully it will include a "estimated range needed" feature to a destination...not just if you won't make it to a destination. After I enter a destination, I want to know the estimated range needed, very helpful on longer Supercharger trips (or any trip) to know how high to charge to (plus a small buffer).
 
In Canada being diverted to the "closest" supercharger would be a rather long detour (currently I would have to change provinces)...

For now it could use home / work and any locations the car has been charged at in the past.

Some type of integration with Plugshare would be nice, not sure how they could do it though.
 
Great to hear. This is the key functionality that I was expecting to be in 6.0! I think this has to mean that they will be reading elevation profile data from GIS, at least, to project energy usage toward the next destination. Hopefully they are doing some integration with web resources for weather as well, especially wind.

Some type of integration with Plugshare would be nice, not sure how they could do it though.

I recall some months ago PlugShare asked members for input about whether integration directly with the Tesla system would be helpful. In this day and age, such web-based integration should not be that difficult. PlugShare just has to create a portal/API that the car can query in real time to populate a distance-sorted list of charging options.
 
My bet is "next month" means June 2015...

Indeed, Elon's track record with prediction software releases, in particular, is not good. But perhaps he is learning, and his software validation team is improving.

If it is really coming in December, it might be blended in with a release necessary for the "D" platform. That would mean it HAS to ship when those cars are ready. We shall see.
 
My bet is "next month" means June 2015...

Hehe, could be. In fairness it's worth noting that Elon almost certainly did the interview in English which was then translated by a German writer and I translated it back to English. His statement could have gained or lost nuances along the way.

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I think this has to mean that they will be reading elevation profile data from GIS, at least, to project energy usage toward the next destination. Hopefully they are doing some integration with web resources for weather as well, especially wind.

IIRC, that is what the LA->NY road-trip crew were using.
 
For those of you that may have missed it, Elon did an interview with Der Spiegel (German magazine). It was summarized by one of our German members here. This is what Musk had to say about upcoming firmware (my translation):
Next month we'll release new firmware so that the car can automatically recognize if it has insufficient range to get to your next charging opportunity. The car will warn you and offer directions to the nearest supercharger.
How it will do that, what it means in detail and what "next month" means you're free to speculate..... :)
The complete article is available here but is behind a paywall so I have refrained from posting the full piece. Please respect copyright if you buy the article yourself.
Some gas cars do something similar. I own one. When it gets low on fuel it ask if you want to see the closest 5 gas stations. You can turn that feature off. I rarely get that low or for that matter hardly use any gas in that car. ;)
 
Some gas cars do something similar. I own one. When it gets low on fuel it ask if you want to see the closest 5 gas stations. You can turn that feature off. I rarely get that low or for that matter hardly use any gas in that car. ;)

Or, I'm 50 miles away from the nearest supercharger, have 40 miles of range, and am 5 miles from my house. Is it going to bother me with superfluous messages about directions to the nearest supercharger? Or is it going to recognize that I am almost home?

I would turn it off, too.
 
Or, I'm 50 miles away from the nearest supercharger, have 40 miles of range, and am 5 miles from my house. Is it going to bother me with superfluous messages about directions to the nearest supercharger? Or is it going to recognize that I am almost home?.

Basic info is right there; the car knows you have charge capability at home and if that's your Nav destination it's not likely to bug you.
 
Basic info is right there; the car knows you have charge capability at home and if that's your Nav destination it's not likely to bug you.


Right, the car knows all the needed info. I'm sure it'll be based on the energy consumption graphs and estimated averages, not recorded / projected energy usage for the selected nav route.

if A > B = warn driver. So impressive....

While I admit, this was one of the things on my list of "would like to haves", it's as mediocre as the rest of the "new features" released over the past year.
 
Well..... My MS is spending the night at the SC, getting that Brake component notice addressed. Still not sure what it is all about. But anyway, I received a notice on my phone this evening that an update to the 6.0 software is available for download. Could it be the upgrade Elon spoke about? Anyone with 6.0, can you go out in the garage and check out the version notes to 6.??
Thanks