Model S Delivery / Strategy Change / Connecting to WiFi

[Mycroft]

What I heard yesterday is that there is a change in delivery strategy. Tesla is going to attempt to deliver as close to 100% of the cars to the owner's home as possible.

For several reasons:

1. They want to professionally coordinate the communications of the car with the owner's Internet connection. Especially in the first year or two, there are going to be frequent, large updates to the car's software and firmware. Many owners aren't savvy enough to set up a wi-fi point and link it to the car without help. They'll most likely show up with a new wi-fi AP for cases where the owner only has a wired router.

2. With the car connected via wi-fi, they'll be able to set up the owner's PC to manage the music in the car.

3. The white-glove service will provide an outstanding customer experience with the company.

4. The owners may have lots of friends/relatives who will want to participate in the delivery. Fantastic word-of-mouth opportunity! Party!!

[crzyskl]

I am definitely planing on having people over to hang out (grilling anyone?) and be a part of the Tesla experience. Hopefully it will be on the weekend, but if not, its totally worth a day off of work. i am hoping that other people will also have people over to spread the word and get people not just excited about Tesla, but actually engaged in the Tesla driving experience. I also live just a few miles for an interstate, looking forward to taking it out and seeing what it can do!

[MitchL]

Interesting - since I live close to the factory, I'm still hoping for a factory delivery, even if it's not a big party there.

The reason? Depending on when my car (S#945) is produced, I might not have a habitable house to deliver to. (I'm doing a major renovation, including electrical upgrades might mean no electricity, no networking, or even a place to park. Delivering to the tiny apartment I'll be staying in while this is going on seems anticlimactic.).

Many of Tesla's early customers will be technically savvy, I would imagine, with complicated home networks (I've got about 50 live IPs on mine). I hope the people they send to do the setup can deal with people like us.

I totally agree that it'd help with customer experience, and it's a great way to handle deliveries when you don't have a network of dealerships with big parking lots.

It'd take an extra trip, but one nice thing Tesla could do would be to make sure that the charger outlet (or HPC installation) is suitable before delivery. I'm likely to get the HPC now that I'm certain I'll be upgrading my electric service, but it'd be great to know it's installed properly and working before the car arrives.

/Mitch.

[AnOutsider]

This is cool to hear, particularly the bit about managing the car's music over the network

[tdelta1000]

What I heard yesterday is that there is a change in delivery strategy. Tesla is going to attempt to deliver as close to 100% of the cars to the owner's home as possible.

For several reasons:

1. They want to professionally coordinate the communications of the car with the owner's Internet connection. Especially in the first year or two, there are going to be frequent, large updates to the car's software and firmware. Many owners aren't savvy enough to set up a wi-fi point and link it to the car without help. They'll most likely show up with a new wi-fi AP for cases where the owner only has a wired router.

2. With the car connected via wi-fi, they'll be able to set up the owner's PC to manage the music in the car.

3. The white-glove service will provide an outstanding customer experience with the company.

4. The owners may have lots of friends/relatives who will want to participate in the delivery. Fantastic word-of-mouth opportunity! Party!!

Sounds cool.... I think that would put the Model S ahead of class competitors.

[ElSupreme]

they'll be able to set up the owner's PC to manage the music in the car.

They can try. But my Dvorak layout, on a QWERTY key caps will keep them from messing with my computer.

But really NO ONE but me installs stuff on my computer! Maybe I will build a dummy box for them to install their stuff on.

[Iz]

I avoid setting up wi-fi at home because the jury is still out on wi-fi's long term effects and have 2 little ones at home. Hope the Model S has an RJ-45 port

[Mycroft]

This is cool to hear, particularly the bit about managing the car's music over the network

Yes, and that's another complication with wi-fi. Depending on the owner's configuration, wi-fi nodes may be on a different subnet from the main PC and thus inaccessible even for owners savvy enough to connect a wi-fi router. By having an expert onsite, they can ensure that the wi-fi is either acting as the primary gateway for the whole house, or configured in AP mode (and thus on the same subnet), or that a route is set up to enable communication with the car. Gateway or AP mode would be much more preferable of course.

[Mycroft]

I avoid setting up wi-fi at home because the jury is still out on wi-fi's long term effects and have 2 little ones at home. Hope the Model S has an RJ-45 port

VERY unlikely that there will be an Ethernet port on the car. You should be able to buy and install a low power "B" wi-fi on the far side of the garage and link it via Ethernet to the main connection. Then you should have the same exposure as if your neighbor had wi-fi.

Personally, I don't worry about wi-fi radiation effects. We're constantly bombarded by microwaves, radio-waves, solar-waves, cellular, etc. etc. 24x7 whether we have the devices or not.

[Doug_G]

Personally, I don't worry about wi-fi radiation effects. We're constantly bombarded by microwaves, radio-waves, solar-waves, cellular, etc. etc. 24x7 whether we have the devices or not.

Yeah, that's one of the sillier faux controversies. I suspect it's an "anti-placebo" effect.