How much data does a Model S or X generate?

The more relevant question I think (or at least it will be in a couple years once we run out of free cellular data) will be how much data does the car use in a month, not just sensor stuff, but updates, everything. It will be quite relevant for anyone who wants the option to provide their own hotspot in lieu of the built-in sim. Data plans can get pricey pretty quick if too much data is flowing.

I am interested in a Model S and just going through the various issues to make sure I understand all the advantages and disadvantages before ordering. The free data thing is worrying me a bit. We live in the UK and with UK having voted to leave the EU, the protections on data roaming costs due to be effective 2017 I believe will be at best short lived. We would intend to take the car regularly to continental Europe. If, in 4 years time this has to be done on a 'roaming' basis, this could get mighty expensive. We have all heard the horror stories of people down loading a film abroad and getting a bill for several hundred pounds. I am not involved in IT and some of it is a bit of a mystery to me. The Tesla people have been very helpful on other issues but when I ask what the average data useage amongst all Model s owners is per annum, I get a different question answered, which is that nobody can say for sure what will happen in 4 years but Tesla won't be exploitative in any pricing if they continue to offer the service but need to charge for it. What I am after is a figure for data useage so that I can get an order of magnitude figure for what that would cost if I was data roaming on a UK sim at least then I have some idea of the worst case scenario. Can anybody shed any light ? Many thanks

I think that the always-connected feature of the car is a thing that will be kept and not discarded after the 4 years or similar.. It's too usefull for tesla, for auto-update, for everything and it opens too many things.
it's like the supercharger for life.. you know a car can be kept for about 10 years on average? then you embed the cost, and since they are buyng lot of sims/contracts per years and they know a car doesn't use more than Xmb/month ( they know of course how many ) i think the cost for an annual contract for tesla could be something like 50€/year, no more than (actually i think it's cheaper.. for them) it's 500€/car, not cheap but afterall having an allways connected car it's a plus that no-one has

Thanks for the replies. I have been very clear with Tesla that without some order of magnitude figure for data use, I won't be ordering. They would prefer to lose an order than reveal this information it would seem. Has got me wondering what they know that perhaps the rest of us haven't worked out yet ? ....for example does the auto pilot feature continually monitor and send back large bundles of data to help refine the product which they know would cost a fortune outside of USA and if individuals had to get their own dedicated SIM card for the car on an individual contract....does anybody know why they want to keep data useage out of the public realm ?

It's probably more like that it will surely vary on too many levels ( like how much you use the online radio, how many kw are you going to go, if the road is well known, the size of the update you are going to download, how many time you zoom in google maps, how big would be the next navigon map-updates, etc ) and it could vary in the next releases of course, and even without they consensum ( google maps can change the maps definitions ) so every answer they will send to you it's a too-big aproximation to be usefull and could impact negatively if you one day say "no! it's not ok! you said to me it was 5mb/day but it's not 8mb/day!"
In a world where consumers are reasonable this won't be a problem, but since you put youself up in the position "i would complain" calculating the data usage and spread the info down from the programmer to the service center is too much a hassle for just one customer.

Said that, who care how many mb they use? you are thinking of a future where you have to pay for the data transfered then just consider that in 4 years the mobile contract could be radical different and what now is 'a huge amount of data' could be just a water drop in the sea, and of course you don't know if this data will be free forever or how much this could cost you if they create a plan for the 'over 4 years'

If you really, really, need to know, you can ask a model S driver to connect the car via hotspot and check the data usage, but as said, it will vary a lot based on how you use the car, but refuse an order since you don't know the data usage of the car.. well, i don't know your priority of course, but there are a tons of thing that weight so much more of that.. how can you compare 2 car to this level? it's hard to compare 2 phone with the same OS..