It's Spring! Where's the Design Studio?

[ElSupreme]

Hey, in all fairness, Tesla chose to post "this winter" -- they could have left it as "coming soon" (though, at this point, we're almost 6 months out from when that was posted). They've no one to blame but themselves on that one -- under promise, over deliver.

I agree they missed their deadline. But they are only a few HOURS over it. And people are bringing up questions about serious problems this may be linked to. Hell for all we know the photographer they hired didn't get them pictures in the right format.

And in fairness the first thing I did this morning while eating breakfast was to check for the new design studio.

But I mostly attribute this 'outrage' to the stupidly warm "winter" we had this year. If we still had normal cool temperatures and had an actual cold winter people wouldn't be so looking forward to "spring".

 

[Beavis]

As long as the design is the same the only thing that matters to me is seeing the interior materials in person. The Park Meadows store will have the design studio up in about a week. That's all I care about. The web design studio is something I view as a nice toy. I need to see the actual materials to make a decision. I know a lot of people aren't near a store. That's going to be tough for some.

 

[markb1]

Hey, in all fairness, Tesla chose to post "this winter" -- they could have left it as "coming soon" (though, at this point, we're almost 6 months out from when that was posted). They've no one to blame but themselves on that one -- under promise, over deliver.

They really ought to have changed it by now. "This winter" takes on a whole different meaning when spring starts. I don't have a problem with them pushing out the release of the design studio a little bit, or even not committing to a particular deadline publicly. But leaving it as "this winter" after spring is already upon us is just sloppy.

 

[Arnold Panz]

They really ought to have changed it by now. "This winter" takes on a whole different meaning when spring starts. I don't have a problem with them pushing out the release of the design studio a little bit, or even not committing to a particular deadline publicly. But leaving it as "this winter" after spring is already upon us is just sloppy.

Or maybe it won't be ready until December 2012! :biggrin::tongue:

FWIW, I'm in total agreement with those who are calling for everyone to chill out -- I'd much rather they delay the rollout of a web toy that has no practical application until anyone has to lock in an order and be on time (or early!) with the rollout of, you know, the actual car!

 

[NigelM]

FWIW, I'm in total agreement with those who are calling for everyone to chill out --

There isn't any really rabid posts that require chilling (at least not in this thread). I think some of the posts are resultant from Tesla-EVangelists (us?..) feeling some disappointment that a stated deadline has been missed and some embarrassment that we have been singing the praises of Tesla to our friends and relatives and now the design studio isn't up. It's human and normal.

FWIW, as someone with a marketing background I will say that they should have changed the "winter" reference a while back.

 

[spatterso911]

Perhaps to a "Coming Soon".

 

[Arnold Panz]

FWIW, as someone with a marketing background I will say that they should have changed the "winter" reference a while back.

I was referring to other threads where this has become another symbol of "If Tesla can't meet this deadline, what else are they going to miss the deadline on or screw up?!?!" vibe.

And I completely agree that if they knew it wouldn't be up by today that they should have changed it a few weeks ago (or whenever they knew). Even today they should change it. I have a ten year old who is incredibly anxious to play around with the rest of the design studio and he repeatedly asked me when "winter" ended, and he's been incredibly disappointed that they didn't get the studio up by now.

It must be simultaneously heartening and annoying to those inside Tesla how fanatic so many people are about everything going on with them. As someone wryly noted, I'd really hate for all of my work deadlines to be subject to public scrutiny and flaming when I missed one.

 

[ElSupreme]

I agree they should have changed "this winter" about a week or so ago to "soon" or "spring" or whatever.

On a similar note the new Super Huge Kroger they put in near my house had a sign up for about 9 months that said "coming in 2012" in mid December the "2012" somehow changed to "winter". I saw them putting on the stickers. It opened up at the end of January. I am not sure how many people notice that sort of stuff.

 

[ElSupreme]

It's not Tesla's fault! Spring is WAY early this year.

Spring seem early? It is, the earliest since 1896 - Technology & science - Space - Space.com - msnbc.com

 

[jerry33]

I'd rather have them working on the software and get it out sooner rather than wasting spending time updating the old stuff.

 

[Todd Burch]

I believe the official word is that the Design Studio developers are working on hunting down a memory leak.

 

[StephRob]

No kidding. There are common problems like "walking pointers", "edge races", and sometimes "memory/resource leaks" that can be very frustrating to track down. Quite often the fix is trivially simple; the big problem is one of finding the bug, especially when it occurs at random and does random things.

It once took me two months to track down a one-instruction interrupt problem in an aircraft navigation system. It would randomly crash the system every few days!!! Incredibly hard to find.

That's just the nature of software - you really can't predict how long it will take to debug something.

Well, that's kinda scary when we're talking about a car whose very functioning (and thus safety) is so dependent on software. I know virtually nothing about software, but I haven't been very impressed with their web capabilities including their forum which has no edit feature despite constant pleas for one and the fact that I can't post on it ( get the under maintenance sign) despite multiple emails to please fix my login so I can. (And I have a Sig, a production and an X reservation, so I've got some $50K into this puppy. Where's the love??). Still having "coming this winter" on the design studio is pretty pathetic. How hard can that be to change?

 

[Lyon]

I'm kind of glad that they haven't changed the text. To me it means that, while there will be a delay, they don't expect it to be a major one. I would be more worried if they changed it to something less definite like "coming soon" because it would signal to me that the delay was going to be much longer.

I dunno, maybe I'm just an optimist.

 

[vfx]

Very amusing that the general tenor on this thread is "cut them some slack" from a crowd that largely makes it's living in the tech industry. There is much more sympathy when someone's problems are directly relate-able.

 

[brianman]

Well, that's kinda scary when we're talking about a car whose very functioning (and thus safety) is so dependent on software. I know virtually nothing about software, but I haven't been very impressed with their web capabilities including their forum which has no edit feature despite constant pleas for one and the fact that I can't post on it ( get the under maintenance sign) despite multiple emails to please fix my login so I can. (And I have a Sig, a production and an X reservation, so I've got some $50K into this puppy. Where's the love??). Still having "coming this winter" on the design studio is pretty pathetic. How hard can that be to change?

I wouldn't connect the two. Vehicle software designers are a different crowd than web folk, generally speaking.

 

[VolkerP]

there are LOTs of different folks in software development and only few esteem the differences:

 

[Doug_G]

Well, that's kinda scary when we're talking about a car whose very functioning (and thus safety) is so dependent on software.

Ever flown on an Airbus? They are fly-by-wire - the entire airplane is controlled by software. If the software were to fail, you couldn't just pull over to the side of the road; instead you would fall from the sky. Same for modern jet fighters, and the former Space Shuttle. Suffice it to say it is possible, with careful effort, to build highly reliable firmware.

I really doubt the same people are doing the web site as are doing the embedded systems in the car. Most programmers settle into one area of expertise. (Some of the really good ones don't... but they're really good.)

 

[jomo25]

Firmware development is very different than website design and development. Their similar in that they are both technical development, but they are quite different in execution. Sort of like basketball and football are both sports, but they are quite different.

 

[StephRob]

Well, then you can see that I was sincere when I said I knew nothing about software! I'm sure they've got their best team developing a robust and world-class firmware system. Now if only I knew what firmware was . . . :smile: Seems almost a crime around the SF Bay Area to not have a better grasp of this stuff. Maybe it's time to go back to school!

I won't hold their website against the Model S in the future! Thanks to all you software types (and there are MANY here I think!) for setting me straight.

 

[dadaleus]

Similar to some other comments here: I'm much less concerned because Tesla has a track record. My Roadster has performed flawlessly for 25,000 miles. Tesla has had a lot of time to learn what works and doesn't and where the pitfalls are. Fisker had no track record or experience (as a company--I'm not familiar with the history of the individuals involved and I don't mean to be unfair to them) with this.

I do also suspect, contrary to others' speculation here, that the drivetrain software is based on (but clearly updated given the hardware changes) the same software as in the Roadster and is carefully isolated from UI software via APIs. I've spent my life in software development (as many others here probably have too) and if it were me with a situation where reliability is so key, I'd be sure to evolve from what's already proven and tested rather than reinventing the wheel. Even if they did a rewrite (which I doubt given that it was already working well and would therefore only be necessary if the software environment had changed significantly), they would rely on extensive design work and test cases already hammered out with the Roadster.