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Roadster - new options

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bonnie

I play a nice person on twitter.
Feb 6, 2011
16,429
9,943
Columbia River Gorge
I had a good talk with the new VP of Worldwide Service, Joost de Vries. Joost has has over 20 years of experience in automotive service & joined Tesla about 3 months ago. He will be based in Fremont, at the factory, and is busy staffing up to provide 'the same level of customer service to new Tesla customers that Roadster owners have come to expect'. Good guy, I liked him.

A few things that should be of interest to current Roadster owners:

  • The Model S iPhone app for monitoring car information will be available to Roadster owners sometime this summer. I saw it running on Joost's phone, they're testing now. If you will have more than one Tesla vehicle in your garage, you should be able to monitor all with one app.
  • Brakes. There will be a brake system upgrade available.
  • Stockpiling of parts. Joost has been buying up many of the salvage Roadsters & also has new parts 'enough for 15 years or so'.
  • Extended Warranty to be offered to current owners who didn't purchase.
  • Certified Used Roadster program -this will allow new buyers of Roadsters to also get a warranty for their used Roadster.
  • There should be some news on battery replacement options soon.

He told me several times that he is committed to making sure Roadster owners continue to have exciting choices going forward. I, for one, was really glad to hear we weren't becoming 'old news'.
 
That's great news and a smart move. It's only a few thousand customers and for a billion dollar company, the cost of doing something like this has to be small and is also good PR.

On the iPhone app, does this mean they're natively supporting 2.0 Roadsters and above via the GSM or are they going to add something to the 1.5s to support everyone?
 
That's great news and a smart move. It's only a few thousand customers and for a billion dollar company, the cost of doing something like this has to be small and is also good PR.

On the iPhone app, does this mean they're natively supporting 2.0 Roadsters and above via the GSM or are they going to add something to the 1.5s to support everyone?

I believe the plan is to support everyone.
 
Sounds like they are building their own Tattler / OVMS?

Sure sounds like it. I and I know many other owners had asked for this for a long time. As soon as I got my car and saw what the Leaf would do with it's iPhone app, I was hoping they'd do this which is why I was so glad to see the Tattler and OVMS come along. Both are great projects but it will be interesting to see what Tesla comes up with. Since they know exactly how the car works and sends messages without having to reverse engineer anything, I wonder what other features they'll be able to offer.
 
Yeah, unless it was ridiculously expensive I would also be interested in extended coverage.

Do you know anything about more about the brake upgrade? That sounds very interesting.

No details on the brake upgrade, other than Joost expressing (and I strongly concur) that Roadster brakes need improvement. If there are better brakes offered as an upgrade, I'm in.
 
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I use the brakes so sparingly that when I do brake, they make noise. It's embarrassing. This is on a daily driver, too.

Yes, I do sometimes do a few braking spots when starting a trip just to get it over with.

People in North America expect brakes to be quiet, so we get crappy pads that don't bite well and wear out faster.

If you want your brakes to be a bit quieter, take your car out and do a bunch of hard stops in a row. It won't eliminate the noise but it will help. But you'll probably still get some initial noisy braking first thing in the morning, especially if the brakes were wet when you put it to bed.

But noise wasn't the issue here... it's braking performance, not sound, that they're talking about.
 
I'm excited to hear about the extended warranty. I asked several times if I could buy one, only to be told no, it was only available when the car was new. When I first bought the car, I decided not on the warranty because I wasn't all that sure that Tesla would make it. Now, it seems clear that they're going to be around for at least a few more years.

I hope that I can still get it even though my original warranty recently expired.
 
Sounds like they are building their own Tattler / OVMS?

I doubt it. Speaking for OVMS, and as a v2.5 Roadster owner and Model S reservation holder, I would really love to have Tesla extend their Model S iPhone app to roadster owners. However, the v1.5 vs v2.x vs Model S are worlds apart in terms of functionality.

  • The v1.5 roadsters have no GSM hardware built in. To support these cars they would need to add on a hardware module, and that would be a lot of work (I know, I've done it). A huge investment for Tesla, considering it is < 500 cars.
  • The v2.x roadsters have the GSM hardware built in as well as a link back to Tesla HQ. To support these cars, Tesla would presumably need changes to the roadster firmware, plus extensions to their server infrastructure, plus extensions to the App they have built. Not too difficult.
  • The Model S cars have it all, and the Tesla App has already been built for it. It was designed that way from the start, rather than a retro-fit.

The v2.x roadsters are certainly close to the Model S in terms of the hardware needed for this, but the questions of who pays for the data plan and getting the firmware, server and app changes made are not trivial. The big question is whether Tesla will invest the engineering time into doing this - I hope they will, but realise that Model S is what will make/break Tesla not supporting Roadsters with new features. My biggest hope would have seen them doing this with the justification that it would be a test bed for the Model S App and Server rollout. Something they could do to work out the kinks before the Model S is launched. But, that would have meant we would have seen it by now, and we haven't.

To put this in perspective - anyone over 5'9" tall has been crying out for Tesla to replace the readout in the speedometer with a digital speedo (rather than amps/trip/whatever). The inability to simply see the speed you are travelling has been a problem affecting roadster owners for years. I've seen the bus messages, I've prototyped the fix, and I know it is literally a few lines of code to be changed in the VMS and instrument panel code. It is really that easy. But, Tesla haven't invested the engineering to get that simple feature added. The reason? Even for a couple of lines of code, they would have to (a) test it, (b) validate it, (c) certify it, (d) update the documentation, (e) update/educate the owners, (f) deal with the fallout if there were any regression issues introduced.

In the past 18 months, the firmware updates we've seen include a new memorial screen, cabin temperature tweaks, and support for new headlights. Tiny tweaks.

The last major change was the new drive information screen in 4.2.30/4.2.34 and that was a long time ago.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about Tesla not doing this. Given a choice between this and work on the Model S, if I was Tesla it would be an easy decision. The Roadster owners are important to the future of Tesla, just not so sure about the Roadster itself.
 
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I'm excited to hear about the extended warranty. I asked several times if I could buy one, only to be told no, it was only available when the car was new. When I first bought the car, I decided not on the warranty because I wasn't all that sure that Tesla would make it. Now, it seems clear that they're going to be around for at least a few more years.

Ditto!
 
Whoo Hoo Great news Bonnie thank you for sharing.

Of the things you mentioned.
  • *Brakes I ran the Hawks (courtesy of Sector 111) for 3 years. Great but I guess I'm not that picky cause now I'm back to stock pads and still happy.
  • *Extended warranty. Yes if not too expensive. I have a few thousand miles and months left.
  • *Salvaged parts. Can I call and ask for a specific part? I miss my old part.
  • *App yes! I sure hope my 1.5 can do the upgrade. I saw it at Freemont and it's sweet.

Even more than all of the above though is I want the new Model S 2.0 socket in my Roadster. Not something that I can trust many to do and would love to take it into a store and have the sexy plug installed and show off at EVents to everyone.
 
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I've said this before many times, but Roadster battery replacement is a critical issue for Tesla.

#1 Show that the battery replacement cost ( to the customer ) is coming down over time.
#2 Offer an improved battery that the upgrades range, performance or both. Personally I want performance first, range second.

I think that what Tesla does with Roadster battery replacement is a critical demonstration to potential Model S/X buyers.
Showing that the price really does come down significantly over time will reassure them about their future battery replacement costs.
Showing the improved battery for the Roadster extends its range will let people know that eventually their 300 mile Model S could be a 400 or 500 mile Model S.