By Fred Lambert of electrek
Tesla and over-the-air software updates
Tesla was an early leader in adopting the capacity to push over-the-air software updates to its customer vehicles back in 2012.
While most automakers have little to no capacity to release software updates beyond having their owners bring their cars into service at a dealership, Tesla was able to simply push new features, improvements, and bug fixes over-the-air like for a smartphone.
New updates become available through the vehicle’s center display or even through the Tesla app, which can then push the update to the vehicle remotely.
When the electric vehicles haven’t been delivered yet, Tesla can push new software updates directly and someone managed to catch it on video happening to a whole fleet of vehicles in a parking lot.
The person who filmed the video added captions that it was done by “satellite”, but Tesla actually pushes updates through 4G LTE or Wifi.
Other automakers are finally catching up
It took them almost a decade, but some automakers are catching up to the idea that Tesla’s ability to push over-the-air software update is a massive advantage and they need to get on board to compete.
Ford is bringing over-the-air software updates to the Mustang Mach-E.
GM, VW, and several other automakers have also announced plans to start rolling out over-the-air software updates to their new electric vehicles.
With the ID.3, Volkswagen notoriously had a lot of issues with software and this is how they were updating their fleet prior to delivery:
One of the things that made Tesla’s sotware update approach easier is the fact that the automaker own its service operations.
Other automakers rely on franchise dealerships to provide service and some see over-the-air software updates, which can provide things like remote diagnostic, taking business away from them.
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