I stopped by the Bellevue Store and sat in VIN # 46 with updated firmware. There was an owners manual built into the touch screen, so I scanned through it. It's still a work in progress, but there were some interesting things I ran across. If you have the power lift gate, it appears as if you will be able to customize the opening height. The key fob will be able to open the trunk, Frunk as well as all the windows. It will also be able to close the rear power lift gate and the windows. The screen has customizations for how the door locks can be opened. There was an option for multiple unlock (So for those who are security conscious, you can probably set it to only open up the driver's side door or open up all the doors of the car). The onboard manual appears to confirm that there will be a sealed 12 volt battery that will run the car subsystems.
Through the touch screen you can control the regen level (low or normal), there are settings for different steering modes, you can turn traction control on or off, you can adjust the height of the car (with the air suspension), there are adjustments to the night time brightness on the touch screen, controls to adjust the exterior lights (auto, manual, Daytime running etc.). So it seems as if Tesla is listening to us and basically giving us full control of the car to tweak to our individual likings, down to the height of the power lift gate! You can toggle between Kilometers and Miles, Fahrenheit and Celsius, 12hr or 24hr. You can access to two trip odometers that have energy information and mileage information. You can still do all the other stuff we're familiar with (open pano roof, charge port etc.).
I was impressed with the improvement also in the responsiveness of the screen from earlier firmware versions. The pinch to zoom function works much better in the browser now. Also the scrolling and navigating around the Google map view was much improved. Downloading of the map screens and browser screens also seemed much quicker. So I'm very pleased with the progress I saw in the controls with this firmware version and am confident that the production version of the console control screen will be all that we hope for and more. Didn't poke around the music section much as I was more interested in the car controls and reading through the onboard manual.
I don't know if we will have easy access to it in the production versions, but I was able to poke around the developers screens and there were even more settings in there that gave even more control as well as access to interesting diagnostic screens. It did seem as if there were some settings in there that would be a bit scary for the public to have access to though!
