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Tesla forced an update of my P85D to 2019.16.2
- Thread starter HankLloydRight
- Start date
Yes, read my first post in this thread. My car hadn't connected to wi-fi in over a year (I changed all our wi-fi passwords and never updated the car for them). I had received (and rejected) many prompts for firmware updates over the last year, and yes, sometimes they did finally just "go away". What's funny is that a week before the forced update, I got a popup message to the effect of "Please connect to wi-fi to download the latest firmware updates"-- I cleared that popup and the immediate next popup was "firmware update available to install" (and of course, I rejected that too). A week later my car was force updated to V9.
And yes, I still hate hate hate so many things that are wrong with V9 causing significantly increased driver distractions and multiple taps to do simple things, and inconsistent UI elements that change. Just the turning the HVAC on and off is immensely frustrating.
What do you have your right scroll wheel assigned to? Climate works great that way.
To turn off HVAC, you can also hold the fan icon for 3 seconds. Albeit not as easy as V8.
I have not been on WiFi for over 2-1/2 years and still would get updates OTA which I would not install. Then, as reported last week, Tesla forced an update without my consent and without informing me beforehand on my P85, which had to have been done OTA.
Btw, my 89% charge dropped from 227 miles before the forced update to 225 miles after the forced update. In addition, sometimes the camera view will appear on the upper half of the screen and at other times on the bottom half of the screen. When the camera view appears on the bottom half of the screen it hides the music portion of the screen.
Screen brightness.
Yeah, like that's intuitive.
Not to mention, even more distracting for the drive to press-and-hold a touchscreen button without any haptic or physical feedback. Idiots.Screen brightness.
Yeah, like that's intuitive.
Oh, your screen doesn’t auto adjust brightness based on light levels? Newer cars do that so brightness on the scroll wheel is no longer needed.
Good Lord, yes. The original HVAC controls were just fine. Not perfect (can think of some improvements), but intuitive enough and one-click-for-everything. Now you have to go through a popup (minimum of 2 presses, and can't really be done without a visual) just to turn it off. Super annoying. The 3-second-hold option is not really an option. I'm not going to take my eyes off the road for three seconds to hold my finger in place on a touch button.
After having given them some slack and using v9 in both the S and 3 since release... I really don't like the interface in either car. There are just too many things that should be simple tasks readily accessible that are stashed away behind too many button presses. I constantly find myself fumbling around with the touchscreen way more than I should be. Things are closer together and smaller, and require more presses to accomplish, leading to errors.
Unfortunately, on the Model 3, this is probably never going to be fixed, since there are virtually no physical controls and limited screen real-estate that has to be shared with instrumentation. It "works", but it's just not ideal by any means and overall I just don't like it. As for the S/X, there is plenty of screen real-estate and at least a few physical controls. There is no reason something as simple as turning off the HVAC should take more than a tap. The Model 3 UI in particular is probably just a lost cause due to the physical limitations of cramming everything needed on a single smaller screen.
Let's look at a bit of the de-evolution of Tesla's UI over the past few versions. Just facts and my own notes, from memory and glancing at the screenshots below. You may or may not care about the changes, but that's not the point. Also, mostly from an S/X standpoint.
(v6,v7,v8,v9 - Credit Electrek)
- V6.x
- Everything you'd need during a drive is accessible with a single press in a static location
- Camera, majority of common HVAC controls, energy, nav, media, etc
- You know, exactly how you'd want something if you want to be able to do it without distraction.
- Real-time power consumption meter with high accuracy available on the IC
- This is still available to non-AP cars, actually.
- Large energy meter in the center of the IC
- This was great for a quick visual indication of SoC
- Odometer always available
- This seems like a no-brainer to me, but, whatever
- Dual app support
- Can have any two of the "apps" open at a time on the screen
- Definitely a skeuomorphic interface
- Lots of opinions there, but I think it was done pretty well overall.
- Everything you'd need during a drive is accessible with a single press in a static location
- v7.x
- First public autopilot release
- Public release included the first "hold the steering wheel" nags
- However, these nags were not timed and pointless, they only happened when the system actually needed human assistance... you know, like these things should be
- Public release included the first "hold the steering wheel" nags
- Removed original visuals from IC
- Realtime power consumption/regen meter moved to the IC "energy" panel
- There is no accuracy here anymore, as there aren't even ticks at reasonable intervals to estimate power usage
- Range/energy meter reduced in size by ~90% to the size of a cell phone style battery indicator
- Basically the fuel gauge on the car went from a reasonable size to something like 25 pixels.
- Lost outside temp reading on the IC and CID
- Eventually corrected on the IC side due to outrage, IIRC
- Realtime power consumption/regen meter moved to the IC "energy" panel
- UI in general starts it's transition to super flat
- Not quite 8.x+ flat yet, but well on the way
- Apps fill in the gaps gained on edges from v6.x and prior's skeuomorphic interface
- This revealed some screen burn issues in some early cars
- Despite a flatter more spartan UI (thus, potentially less resource intense), overall responsiveness and performance gets worse
- Odometer not always available now
- May not sound like much of a problem, but it's highly useful to have the odometer available at a glance for people who need to track mileage for various reasons.
- Probably way more that I'm missing, but overall, aside from the AP related visual changes and shuffling, there wasn't a lot in terms of usability affected.
- My biggest complaint about this version was the loss of the usable realtime power meter.
- v7.1 introduced the first timed AP nags that were not related to confidence
- Edit: It's worth pointing out that the transition from a skeuomorphic style interface to ultra flat is likely partially due to some screen burn issues in older cars.
- First public autopilot release
- v8.x
- Pancake flatness achieved. Zero visual separation between controls anymore.
- The app selection bar no longer stays on the screen when using navigation at the top of the screen
- So now, if you have nav at the top, and want to go to another app, you have to first click somewhere at the top to make the nav bar appear (actual animation you have to wait for while nav shrinks to make room), then pick your app.
- Workaround was to keep nav on the bottom half app, but this was not ideal.
- Nav could now extend up to the top of the screen to get a few more pixels of real-estate at the expense of quick app changes (See above)
- With the super flat UI (ie, no borders or anything between controls), definitely was difficult to tell active from inactive functions at times.
- Media player was overhauled... but that's a whole different thread
- The media player could now be a double sized app, like nav, and be mostly full screen
- Despite going even flatter with the UI, performance continued to get worse!
- Eventually was improved a bit in later released with an updated Linux kernel
- Despite the visual changes, most functionality remained (aside from losses noted above and carried from other versions)
- On the autopilot side...
- v8 continued to add increasingly annoying nags. Timed nags were bumped in frequency, and actual punishment of the driver implemented for ignoring them.
- Speed restrictions were added to autopilot, reducing functionality
- v9.x
- And here we are... there is probably too much to get into here
- I though the UI had achieved full flatness in v8. I was wrong. Somehow they managed to surpass the previous level of flatness.
- Loss of ability to run two apps
- The "workarounds" for this are BS, as we're always stuck with nav now, and many things cause changes unprompted that dont automatically revert
- Also can only have non-nav at the bottom of the screen.
- All apps hidden behind an extra button press
- This is even worse than v8, as it is always the case now, not just in some configurations.
- The media player isn't even an app anymore
- It pops up and down kind of like the other apps, but it's inconsistent and annoying
- For example, I really just want it gone. I dont ever have the media player up all the time, yet every time I get in the car, there it is! I put it away, eventually it's back.
- The media player is the only "app" with a dedicated button now
- HVAC controls overhauled
- Dual zone controls became hidden behind a slew of touches
- Cant one-touch turn off HVAC anymore
- Cold weather things moved around and now behind even more button presses than before
- If it could take more button presses to accomplish, it does.
- You can not turn off nav now
- This is a waste, as I don't use nav when driving locally
- All other "apps" open at the bottom of the screen now.
- May seem minor, but definitely a loss
- Can not keep the camera or other non-music non-nav app up all the time
- This is a pretty huge one, as being able to keep the rear camera on all the time at the top of the screen is a great feature that's now lost
- A ton of information and interface was dropped to the bottom of the screen, forcing more than just a glance to deal with
- This list is not exhaustive... there are tons more changes, and I don't really know of any v9 UI changes that were an actual improvement
- On the AP side...
- Timed nags are completely out of hand. As often as every 5 seconds you're demanded to "Apply light force", depending on speed, road type, etc. Never more than 20 seconds between nags, though.
- Worse speed restrictions
- Even more broken on newer cars, since they rely on poor map data for speed (AP2+) instead of visually reading the signs (AP1).
- Punitive crap from v8 continues, forcing you to pull over and park the car before being allowed to use features of your own damn car.
I think it's pretty obvious that Tesla's UI is not being designed by people with actual experience in human/machine interface design. In summary, v6 was pretty decent. v7 was alright. v8 was getting pretty bad. v9 is just holy crap wtf were you thinking. (Note: the first Tesla I bought had v4.x)
I really hope they get their sh*t together and overhaul this disaster for v10. The continuous, blatantly obvious, and objectively true loss of functionality version over version is ridiculous, especially when they say things will improve over time with OTAs.
Suffice it to say, Tesla's complete disregard for this sort of stuff hits a nerve with me. It's highly frustrating and could be completely avoided. As someone who has purchased quite a few of their products, and wants the company to succeed, I fear that they're just going to be knocked out of the water when one of the existing OEMs decides to actually do so... and that's pretty sad, really.
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Good Lord, yes. The original HVAC controls were just fine. Not perfect (can think of some improvements), but intuitive enough and one-click-for-everything. Now you have to go through a popup (minimum of 2 presses, and can't really be done without a visual) just to turn it off. Super annoying. The 3-second-hold option is not really an option. I'm not going to take my eyes off the road for three seconds to hold my finger in place on a touch button.
After having given them some slack and using v9 in both the S and 3 since release... I really don't like the interface in either car. There are just too many things that should be simple tasks readily accessible that are stashed away behind too many button presses. I constantly find myself fumbling around with the touchscreen way more than I should be. Things are closer together and smaller, and require more presses to accomplish, leading to errors.
Unfortunately, on the Model 3, this is probably never going to be fixed, since there are virtually no physical controls and limited screen real-estate that has to be shared with instrumentation. It "works", but it's just not ideal by any means and overall I just don't like it. As for the S/X, there is plenty of screen real-estate and at least a few physical controls. There is no reason something as simple as turning off the HVAC should take more than a tap. The Model 3 UI in particular is probably just a lost cause due to the physical limitations of cramming everything needed on a single smaller screen.
Let's look at a bit of the de-evolution of Tesla's UI over the past few versions. Just facts and my own notes, from memory and glancing at the screenshots below. You may or may not care about the changes, but that's not the point. Also, mostly from an S/X standpoint.
(v6,v7,v8,v9 - Credit Electrek)
- V6.x
- Everything you'd need during a drive is accessible with a single press in a static location
- Camera, majority of common HVAC controls, energy, nav, media, etc
- You know, exactly how you'd want something if you want to be able to do it without distraction.
- Real-time power consumption meter with high accuracy available on the IC
- This is still available to non-AP cars, actually.
- Large energy meter in the center of the IC
- This was great for a quick visual indication of SoC
- Odometer always available
- This seems like a no-brainer to me, but, whatever
- Dual app support
- Can have any two of the "apps" open at a time on the screen
- Definitely a skeuomorphic interface
- Lots of opinions there, but I think it was done pretty well overall.
- v7.x
- First public autopilot release
- Public release included the first "hold the steering wheel" nags
- However, these nags were not timed and pointless, they only happened when the system actually needed human assistance... you know, like these things should be
- Removed original visuals from IC
- Realtime power consumption/regen meter moved to the IC "energy" panel
- There is no accuracy here anymore, as there aren't even ticks at reasonable intervals to estimate power usage
- Range/energy meter reduced in size by ~90% to the size of a cell phone style battery indicator
- Basically the fuel gauge on the car went from a reasonable size to something like 25 pixels.
- Lost outside temp reading on the IC and CID
- Eventually corrected on the IC side due to outrage, IIRC
- UI in general starts it's transition to super flat
- Not quite 8.x+ flat yet, but well on the way
- Apps fill in the gaps gained on edges from v6.x and prior's skeuomorphic interface
- This revealed some screen burn issues in some early cars
- Despite a flatter more spartan UI (thus, potentially less resource intense), overall responsiveness and performance gets worse
- Odometer not always available now
- May not sound like much of a problem, but it's highly useful to have the odometer available at a glance for people who need to track mileage for various reasons.
- Probably way more that I'm missing, but overall, aside from the AP related visual changes and shuffling, there wasn't a lot in terms of usability affected.
- My biggest complaint about this version was the loss of the usable realtime power meter.
- v7.1 introduced the first timed AP nags that were not related to confidence
- Edit: It's worth pointing out that the transition from a skeuomorphic style interface to ultra flat is likely partially due to some screen burn issues in older cars.
- v8.x
- Pancake flatness achieved. Zero visual separation between controls anymore.
- The app selection bar no longer stays on the screen when using navigation at the top of the screen
- So now, if you have nav at the top, and want to go to another app, you have to first click somewhere at the top to make the nav bar appear (actual animation you have to wait for while nav shrinks to make room), then pick your app.
- Workaround was to keep nav on the bottom half app, but this was not ideal.
- Nav could now extend up to the top of the screen to get a few more pixels of real-estate at the expense of quick app changes (See above)
- With the super flat UI (ie, no borders or anything between controls), definitely was difficult to tell active from inactive functions at times.
- Media player was overhauled... but that's a whole different thread
- The media player could now be a double sized app, like nav, and be mostly full screen
- Despite going even flatter with the UI, performance continued to get worse!
- Eventually was improved a bit in later released with an updated Linux kernel
- Despite the visual changes, most functionality remained (aside from losses noted above and carried from other versions)
- On the autopilot side...
- v8 continued to add increasingly annoying nags. Timed nags were bumped in frequency, and actual punishment of the driver implemented for ignoring them.
- Speed restrictions were added to autopilot, reducing functionality
- v9.x
- And here we are... there is probably too much to get into here
- I though the UI had achieved full flatness in v8. I was wrong. Somehow they managed to surpass the previous level of flatness.
- Loss of ability to run two apps
- The "workarounds" for this are BS, as we're always stuck with nav now, and many things cause changes unprompted that dont automatically revert
- Also can only have non-nav at the bottom of the screen.
- All apps hidden behind an extra button press
- This is even worse than v8, as it is always the case now, not just in some configurations.
- The media player isn't even an app anymore
- It pops up and down kind of like the other apps, but it's inconsistent and annoying
- For example, I really just want it gone. I dont ever have the media player up all the time, yet every time I get in the car, there it is! I put it away, eventually it's back.
- The media player is the only "app" with a dedicated button now
- HVAC controls overhauled
- Dual zone controls became hidden behind a slew of touches
- Cant one-touch turn off HVAC anymore
- Cold weather things moved around and now behind even more button presses than before
- If it could take more button presses to accomplish, it does.
- You can not turn off nav now
- This is a waste, as I don't use nav when driving locally
- All other "apps" open at the bottom of the screen now.
- May seem minor, but definitely a loss
- Can not keep the camera or other non-music non-nav app up all the time
- This is a pretty huge one, as being able to keep the rear camera on all the time at the top of the screen is a great feature that's now lost
- A ton of information and interface was dropped to the bottom of the screen, forcing more than just a glance to deal with
- This list is not exhaustive... there are tons more changes, and I don't really know of any v9 UI changes that were an actual improvement
- On the AP side...
- Timed nags are completely out of hand. As often as every 5 seconds you're demanded to "Apply light force", depending on speed, road type, etc. Never more than 20 seconds between nags, though.
- Worse speed restrictions
- Even more broken on newer cars, since they rely on poor map data for speed (AP2+) instead of visually reading the signs (AP1).
- Punitive crap from v8 continues, forcing you to pull over and park the car before being allowed to use features of your own damn car.
I think it's pretty obvious that Tesla's UI is not being designed by people with actual experience in human/machine interface design. In summary, v6 was pretty decent. v7 was alright. v8 was getting pretty bad. v9 is just holy crap wtf were you thinking. (Note: the first Tesla I bought had v4.x)
I really hope they get their sh*t together and overhaul this disaster for v10. The continuous, blatantly obvious, and objectively true loss of functionality version over version is ridiculous, especially when they say things will improve over time with OTAs.
Suffice it to say, Tesla's complete disregard for this sort of stuff hits a nerve with me. It's highly frustrating and could be completely avoided. As someone who has purchased quite a few of their products, and wants the company to succeed, I fear that they're just going to be knocked out of the water when one of the existing OEMs decides to actually do so... and that's pretty sad, really.
Excellent write-up. The only thing I would add, and it's so important for the folks with the reading glasses, is the tiny icons and non-intuitive shapes of the icons: the similarity between the camera and web. The bizarre look of the phone icon, all being so tiny, colorless, and lacking the foreground/background contrast.
@wk057 As someone who has dabbled in a lot of CAN bus sniffing, can you control a lot of things from the bus? HVAC, infotainment, heated seats etc? If so, I assume someone could make a button array to mount somewhere and make programmable buttons (not that this excuses poor UI design, just as an aftermarket option).
You know there's a problem when this question even exists.
And here's a real head scratcher. This weekend I went to open the sunroof. So I have to open the main car controls button, then go to "Quick Controls".. then adjust the sunroof... but wait! WTF happened to that big % slider that used to be there to open the sunroof a certain percentage? GONE... just two buttons now "Open" and "Vent".
There's no obvious indication or control on how to open up the sunroof, so 50%. Oh wait, you have to tap and drag the actual sunroof on the toy car. Yeah, that's intuitive. ESPECIALLY WHILE DRIVING. Really, WTAF were they thinking removing the one thing that both showed you you could open the sunroof a specific amount, and allowed you to easily select that amount? They've stripped all existing intuitive visual cues on how to operate the interface.. a complete FAIL in UI/UX.
Then there's those two "open" buttons on the front and rear of the car. But what do they open? It looks like the bottom "open" button could also mean the sunroof. It used to say "Frunk" and "Hatch" (or something like that). Nope, too obvious, we need to flatten that too to just say "open". But the charge port door has an lightning bolt icon instead of "open/close"? Yeah, that's consistent. Is that were I plug in my iPhone?
But the arrogant, inexperienced, young, asshat developers at Tesla think they know what's best, and no matter what we try to tell them, we're just the dumb users who don't know what's good for us. I alone probably have more experience designing and developing user interfaces than their whole team combined. I'm not saying everything I've done is gold, but damn, I know total crap when I see it.
The difference this is dangerous crap.
There's no obvious indication or control on how to open up the sunroof, so 50%. Oh wait, you have to tap and drag the actual sunroof on the toy car. Yeah, that's intuitive. ESPECIALLY WHILE DRIVING. Really, WTAF were they thinking removing the one thing that both showed you you could open the sunroof a specific amount, and allowed you to easily select that amount? They've stripped all existing intuitive visual cues on how to operate the interface.. a complete FAIL in UI/UX.
Then there's those two "open" buttons on the front and rear of the car. But what do they open? It looks like the bottom "open" button could also mean the sunroof. It used to say "Frunk" and "Hatch" (or something like that). Nope, too obvious, we need to flatten that too to just say "open". But the charge port door has an lightning bolt icon instead of "open/close"? Yeah, that's consistent. Is that were I plug in my iPhone?
But the arrogant, inexperienced, young, asshat developers at Tesla think they know what's best, and no matter what we try to tell them, we're just the dumb users who don't know what's good for us. I alone probably have more experience designing and developing user interfaces than their whole team combined. I'm not saying everything I've done is gold, but damn, I know total crap when I see it.
The difference this is dangerous crap.
Great write up WK. One thing you left out that has always annoyed me was the slow hide of the date. It used to be in the IC, then it was moved to the icon for the calendar app on the MCU and was hidden if nav was on top. Now it's completely hidden from both screens. Something else they just eliminated for no reason over time.
You can still slide the roof but now 99% of the time it drags the entire window (which should be fixed in place like always). It's a glitchy interface, they definitely didn't remove that on purpose - or if they did it still works 1% of the time so they screwed it up anyway. I also miss the animated lights etc on the settings screen.
You can still slide the roof but now 99% of the time it drags the entire window (which should be fixed in place like always). It's a glitchy interface, they definitely didn't remove that on purpose - or if they did it still works 1% of the time so they screwed it up anyway. I also miss the animated lights etc on the settings screen.
And to top it all off, it appears the refresh coming later this year will remove the instrument cluster screen and go with the single screen layout like the 3. That will be the end of it for many who currently own the S. ....and yes, I've driven the 3 multiple times and can't stand the single screen layout. Being closer but to the right, I need reading glasses and have to be distracted by turning my head right to see important stuff I'm used to seeing right in front of me that's at a distance I can still see with my distance glasses.
Same here. I'm constantly using the thumbwheel to dim the display when it's bright outside to keep the MCU from getting hot.
Brass Guy
Active Member
Assuming you mean without disabling connectivity completely, I just had a thought.
You can try leaving your car "ON" all the time. If you press the brake pedal after getting out of the seat, the car will go to "ON" mode and not shut off when you close the door. It'd be a bit wasteful with excessive vampire drain, and you'd have to make sure the car locks every time or someone could sit and drive away. I doubt the car can upgrade when "ON."
Oops - nor can you charge though... Maybe if you charge during the day and leave it on at night? Aren't all these forced updates happening over night?
