Crown

I wish both Tesla and Porsche success in the EV world.  More fun for more people, and more advancement of engineering, technology and environmental solutions.  

MKSGR:

boytronic:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

From what I have heard the next S with Plaid mode will be interesting. At that point I expect that range, efficiency AND speed as well as endurance will not matter again - except for - wait for it - you know it’s coming - a fantastic interior!  Which is a fair standard and measure and I expect the Porsche to be champion of interiors going forward. 

Porsche will always offer the better product compared to Tesla. Tesla is cheaper and more versatile. But Porsche is and will be the better car. To each producer its own segment 

Of course they will. They will sprinkle some magic technology dust and a bit of good old fashioned German battery and electric motor know how in the mix and voila they will have no trouble with the plaid power train at all. They held back the power and efficiency in the Taycan because they did not need to go any faster.  It will simply BE the better car because it is a Porsche and must be so.  And of course have the nicest interior. 
I bet nobody will care or notice if that is not so. Hmmm

By the time Tesla will actually sell their new technology to real customer Porsche will also offer an upgrade of the Taycan, it will be as simple as this. The difference is that Tesla starts talking about a new technology years before you can buy it - only to mislead people who are easy to influence  Fact is: Tesla has been practicing for 10 years. But their finest product is immediately beaten by new entries like the Taycan. That is not a good sign for Tesla...

Upgrade of the Taycan? The current Porsche business model requires you to *pay twice* for that. However at least the upgrade of a Taycan Turbo S could only be to a Taycan Turbo S Black Edition or wait for it... The Taycan RS Touring. 

Upgrade = Facelift (like they do it for decades ).

The new Tesla powertrain (should it be ready at some point in the future) or new batteries will also require a new car. No "upgrade". Same applies to the exterior or interior of the car. Or suspension technology, or brakes etc. etc. Tesla cars are still cars. They age as quickly as the rest of the pack   

Tesla upgrades are constant and given mostly free to previous owners. Show me how that is anything like Porsche’s business model?  Too funny and lots of wishful thinking.  The plaid power train is most likely out this year. While it is not a retrofit it will be state of the art again for many years to come.  Porsche has not even started to deliver the Taycan and you think they will be freely giving upgrades for years to come to stay ahead of Tesla?  Interesting. If anything it is safe to say the Tesla does not age like the rest of the pack, if you have been paying attention. 
 

I agree that more players is better for all of us. No question. And I love the enthusiasm for Porsche. Go go. But sometimes reality needs to be accounted for as well. 

Leawood911:

MKSGR:

boytronic:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

From what I have heard the next S with Plaid mode will be interesting. At that point I expect that range, efficiency AND speed as well as endurance will not matter again - except for - wait for it - you know it’s coming - a fantastic interior!  Which is a fair standard and measure and I expect the Porsche to be champion of interiors going forward. 

Porsche will always offer the better product compared to Tesla. Tesla is cheaper and more versatile. But Porsche is and will be the better car. To each producer its own segment 

Of course they will. They will sprinkle some magic technology dust and a bit of good old fashioned German battery and electric motor know how in the mix and voila they will have no trouble with the plaid power train at all. They held back the power and efficiency in the Taycan because they did not need to go any faster.  It will simply BE the better car because it is a Porsche and must be so.  And of course have the nicest interior. 
I bet nobody will care or notice if that is not so. Hmmm

By the time Tesla will actually sell their new technology to real customer Porsche will also offer an upgrade of the Taycan, it will be as simple as this. The difference is that Tesla starts talking about a new technology years before you can buy it - only to mislead people who are easy to influence  Fact is: Tesla has been practicing for 10 years. But their finest product is immediately beaten by new entries like the Taycan. That is not a good sign for Tesla...

Upgrade of the Taycan? The current Porsche business model requires you to *pay twice* for that. However at least the upgrade of a Taycan Turbo S could only be to a Taycan Turbo S Black Edition or wait for it... The Taycan RS Touring. 

Upgrade = Facelift (like they do it for decades ).

The new Tesla powertrain (should it be ready at some point in the future) or new batteries will also require a new car. No "upgrade". Same applies to the exterior or interior of the car. Or suspension technology, or brakes etc. etc. Tesla cars are still cars. They age as quickly as the rest of the pack   

Tesla upgrades are constant and given mostly free to previous owners. Show me how that is anything like Porsche’s business model?  Too funny and lots of wishful thinking.  The plaid power train is most likely out this year. While it is not a retrofit it will be state of the art again for many years to come.  Porsche has not even started to deliver the Taycan and you think they will be freely giving upgrades for years to come to stay ahead of Tesla?  Interesting. If anything it is safe to say the Tesla does not age like the rest of the pack, if you have been paying attention. 
 

I agree that more players is better for all of us. No question. And I love the enthusiasm for Porsche. Go go. But sometimes reality needs to be accounted for as well. 

Software function upgrades. That means the hardware for the said function is already built into the car and the customer already paid for but didn't get during the initial buying phase. It's more like pre-paying for something that might or might not come later.

Software functions are 'free' to developed. They already have an army of programmers employed full time and the cost is already accounted for, those people get paid whether they are writing code or not. So while the 'free' part is nice and grab headlines, dig deeper then one realized it isn't really free, it was pre-paid already. Nothing in life is free.

I will be impressed if Tesla gives you free hardware upgrades. 

This recent update wasn't free.

Tesla Model 3 Acceleration Boost Costs $2,000 And Adds Quickness

Tesla claims the Acceleration Boost will lower the sedan’s 0-60 time from 4.4 seconds to 3.9 seconds – a half-second quicker. However, it’s not a free upgrade. Owners will have to pay $2,000 for the extra oomph while running that latest Tesla software version 2019.40.2.  

Topspeed:

This recent update wasn't free.

Tesla Model 3 Acceleration Boost Costs $2,000 And Adds Quickness

Tesla claims the Acceleration Boost will lower the sedan’s 0-60 time from 4.4 seconds to 3.9 seconds – a half-second quicker. However, it’s not a free upgrade. Owners will have to pay $2,000 for the extra oomph while running that latest Tesla software version 2019.40.2.  

 

Was this gain possible because the hardware was derated in the original configuration or is Tesla pushing the performance boundaries with future hits to reliability?  Tesla, after all, has a very weedy record on developing less-than-tested vehicles during its initial launch programs.  Arguments about learning and adapting don't make much sense either when observing the various performance upgrades instituted by the company.  

Volkswagen Group has a very defined test protocol for its products and Porsche is renowned for its test and development protocols yet defects occasionally still arise during the launch phase.  Tesla has neither the expertise nor the facilities of Volkswagen Group and Porsche yet the consumer is to believe that these rapidly rolled out upgrades are thoroughly tested with no upgrade in hardware?  

Either way, going from 4.4 to 3.9 seconds is quite an achievement - very impressive, but I still don’t want one ;)

boytronic:

Either way, going from 4.4 to 3.9 seconds is quite an achievement - very impressive, but I still don’t want one ;)

With an EV it isn't terribly difficult.  All they are doing is increasing the discharge rates from the battery pack.  This increases internal heat within the battery pack and stresses drivetrain components that may not be originally designed for the increased stresses. 

The exact problem is not the upgrade , but the fact that Tesla will go into limp mode with or without it. 

They have nothing to loose,  because Tesla owners are ready to live with this fact from the very beginning.  Just a little bit different crowd. 

You have to work very hard to get a Tesla into something like "limp mode" on a German Autobahn. The procedure includes speeding way beyond 200 km/h, a lot of heavy braking, many hard acceleration and a brave driver. If you need a car capable of doing this without problems and/or tracking it, a Tesla is not the best choice (btw my 6.2l C63 couldn't run two laps around Hockenheim without going into a serious limp mode, same behavior on the Autobahn in summer, way worse than the P100D - at least Merc could sort of fix it).

Re the SW updates
Tesla tries to make the car better with the updates, whereas other OEMs just fix bugs. Some of these update are completely useless and some are very cool. Like in one of the last versions they indroduced a feature, that will save the last couple of seconds from the front facing camera when using the horn (someone on Twitter proposed this to Elon). Another update upgraded the max charging power of some MS and M3. They also lowered the max charging power of some older cars to protect the batteries from degradation, which obviously drives some of the owners mad, but shows, that they are monitoring they fleet.

I observe a pretty much consistent pattern, not only here but also in my social environment. People who own an ELV just love it, those who never owned one have all kinds of complaints and concerns

EDITI think that most ELVs - including Tesla -  are not an interesting topic for Rennteam to discuss; maybe in the OT section or maybe in a couple of years when there is a serious electric sports car

- Different Crowd

Tesla is discussed on Rennteam way more than Boxsters for example, so it must be interesting...!

If I remember correctly the Taycan battery warranty is 8 years for 80% charge (Tesla is 70%). For long term owners, if it drops below 80% within 8 years would Porsche change the battery under warranty? Also, if the battery only charged 80% at that point, that means you would get 20% less range - maybe 200 miles or less? Not so good for long distance drivers, unless you buy a new Taycan every few years :)

schmoell:

You have to work very hard to get a Tesla into something like "limp mode" on a German Autobahn. The procedure includes speeding way beyond 200 km/h, a lot of heavy braking, many hard acceleration and a brave driver. If you need a car capable of doing this without problems and/or tracking it, a Tesla is not the best choice (btw my 6.2l C63 couldn't run two laps around Hockenheim without going into a serious limp mode, same behavior on the Autobahn in summer, way worse than the P100D - at least Merc could sort of fix it).

Re the SW updates
Tesla tries to make the car better with the updates, whereas other OEMs just fix bugs. Some of these update are completely useless and some are very cool. Like in one of the last versions they indroduced a feature, that will save the last couple of seconds from the front facing camera when using the horn (someone on Twitter proposed this to Elon). Another update upgraded the max charging power of some MS and M3. They also lowered the max charging power of some older cars to protect the batteries from degradation, which obviously drives some of the owners mad, but shows, that they are monitoring they fleet.

I observe a pretty much consistent pattern, not only here but also in my social environment. People who own an ELV just love it, those who never owned one have all kinds of complaints and concerns

EDITI think that most ELVs - including Tesla -  are not an interesting topic for Rennteam to discuss; maybe in the OT section or maybe in a couple of years when there is a serious electric sports car

- Different Crowd

 

It is nice that they listen to customer suggestions, but at the end of the day, since those cameras are always recording, writing a routine to save video just before a horn sound is not hard at all. 

Regarding owners, I have an e-Tron, and yes I do like it very much. It is a transportation device and I am very satisfied with the function it provides. I can't see myself replacing it with anything else yet. I don't love it like I love my Porsches. Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLaren's etc all have a soul, hence why people 'love' them. 

The EV, together with my pickup, it's just a tool, I like my tools but I don't love them. And they are very replaceable, especially the EV, just like a cell phone. There are always something newer and higher tech just around the corner. 

Don't really care if Audi or even Porsche do software updates to add functions or whatever to the car, it's all fluff at the end of the day, will be very nice if Audi decide to give me another 50km of range, but since I don't even use up 330km in a day, the extra range will just be exactly fluff, it will probably let me charge the car every month instead of every 3 weeks, that's about it. 

Maybe Porsche will add real GT3 engine sound to the interior sound of the Taycan, another meh thing. But if Porsche makes a Taycan 2.0 that has lighter battery and keep the same range, then yes I will trade up, same with Audi. These hardware changes are not fluff, it's material. 

boytronic:

Tesla is discussed on Rennteam way more than Boxsters for example, so it must be interesting...!

Not really, just because someone is constantly and repetitively bringing Tesla up doesn't mean they are interesting, this is a petrolhead sportscar forum, most here could not care less about people mover non-sporty mid sedans and minivans, especially EV ones, quantity is not the same a quality or interesting. Its like talking about electric mopeds in a sportsbike forum...

⇒ Carlos - Porsche 991 Carrera GTS

Leawood911:

 

Tesla upgrades are constant and given mostly free to previous owners. Show me how that is anything like Porsche’s business model?  Too funny and lots of wishful thinking.  The plaid power train is most likely out this year. While it is not a retrofit it will be state of the art again for many years to come.  Porsche has not even started to deliver the Taycan and you think they will be freely giving upgrades for years to come to stay ahead of Tesla?  Interesting. If anything it is safe to say the Tesla does not age like the rest of the pack, if you have been paying attention. 

Plaid & roadster & 1 million self driving taxis. All wet dreams of Musk... It is nice you believe in all this but you are part of a small minority.

These software upgrades are a nice feature - however, your car and all other Teslas - will age like all other cars on this planet... The exterior, the interior, the suspension, the battery, the brakes, 99% of the car will be old and outdated in 3-4 years. No software upgrade will help 

boytronic:

Tesla is discussed on Rennteam way more than Boxsters for example, so it must be interesting...!

If I remember correctly the Taycan battery warranty is 8 years for 80% charge (Tesla is 70%). For long term owners, if it drops below 80% within 8 years would Porsche change the battery under warranty? Also, if the battery only charged 80% at that point, that means you would get 20% less range - maybe 200 miles or less? Not so good for long distance drivers, unless you buy a new Taycan every few years :)

Porsche blocks 12% of Taycan battery so in 8 years you will have the same range as it was new.

Tesla doesn't block it so your car range will decrease over time. Tesla relies on clients to take care of their battery(never go under ~20% and never charge over 90%). Bad strategy IMO.

9:00+ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYMRXlRoHyQ

Thanks Topspeed... Very interesting video. You’d expect nothing less than high quality engineering from Porsche :) It’s just a shame the prices of Taycan options are starting to look more like a Ferrari options list!

Just got back from a Taycan-event that I attended with a friend who ordered one.

Drove one twice myself, next week in Finland again and have experienced Model S / X too. Am most interested in... a quirky Honda-e.

We were standing next to a (soon former) Tesla employee (who happens to drive / own Porsches too).

A near future range of 1000km got mentioned for a Tesla evolution. Oh well, ‘just as a Golf TDI a few years ago’ I thought. Going to sleep thinking of the Yaris GR now... 

Well this is interesting.  What Tesla gives with an upgrade, it can just as easily remove.  
 

Tesla Remotely Removes Autopilot Features From Customer's Used Tesla Without Any Notice

One of the less-considered side effects of car features moving from hardware to software is that important features and abilities of a car can now be removed without any actual contact with a given car. Where once de-contenting involved at least a screwdriver (or, if you were in a hurry, a hammer), now thousands of dollars of options can vanish with the click of a mouse somewhere. And that’s exactly what happened to one Tesla owner, and, it seems many others. 

Alec (I’ll withhold his last name for privacy reasons) bought a 2017 Tesla Model S on December 20 of last year, from a third-party dealer who bought the car directly from Tesla via auction on November 15, 2019. The car was sold at auction as a result of a California Lemon Law buyback, as the car suffered from a well-known issue where the center-stack screen developed a noticeable yellow border.

When the dealer bought the car at auction from Tesla on November 15, it was optioned with both Enhanced Autopilot and Tesla’s confusingly-named Full Self Driving Capability; together, these options totaled $8,000. You can see them right on the Monroney sticker for the car:

Tesla officially sold the car to the dealership on November 15, a date I’ve confirmed by seeing the car’s title. On November 18, Tesla seems to have conducted an “audit” of the car remotely. The result of that audit was that when the car’s software was updated to the latest version in December, the Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capability (FSD) were removed from the car.

Tesla confirmed the date of the audit—which flagged the features for removal—in an invoice:

A disclosure statement from Tesla to the dealership at the time of the sale does not mention anything about Autopilot or FSD removal:

It’s also worth noting that those repairs on the disclosure were not actually made, which is why Alec took his car to a service center in January.

Let’s recap a little bit at this point: A Model S with Enhanced Autopilot (which includes the Summon feature) and FSD “capability” is sold at auction, a dealer buys it, after the sale to the dealer Tesla checks in on the car and decides that it shouldn’t have Autopilot or FSD “capability,” dealer sells car to customer based on the specifications they were aware the car had (and were shown on the window sticker, and confirmed via a screenshot from the car’s display showing the options), and later, when the customer upgrades the car’s software, Autopilot and FSD disappear.

When Alec asked Tesla customer support about this, this was their response:

Tesla has recent identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for Autopilot versions that they did not pay for. Since, there was an audit done to correct these instances. Your vehicle is one of the vehicles that was incorrectly configured for Autopilot. We looked back at your purchase history and unfortunately Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for. We apologize for the confusion. If you are still interested in having those additional features we can begin the process to purchase the upgrade.

This is all very puzzling. Alec bought the car from a dealer based on a set of features that the dealer understood the car to have when purchased at auction. If Alec saw that the car had Autopilot and FSD when he paid for it, how, exactly, did he not pay for those features? 

Those features together are worth $8,000, but as they were already on the car when he bought it, it’s hard to understand how he somehow didn’t pay for them?

I realize that these are software features, but they act like any physical feature of a car. You don’t pay a subscription for FSD or Autopilot, you pay a one-time fee, just like you would for an electromechanical cruise control system on any other car. 

If you buy, say, a used Ford Ecosport (not my first choice, but you do you) that has lane keeping assist and active cruise control, and Ford somehow thinks you didn’t pay for those particular features and sends over a service tech to physically remove them from your car, I think we’d all consider that pretty wrong. We might even consider that theft. I’m not clear how what Tesla did here is any different.

If Tesla had conducted their audit prior to the sale of the car, and made everyone in the loop aware that the car was being de-contented, then that would be one thing; still kind of shitty, but a bit more defensible.

But this audit happened after the initial sale of the car. The car was no longer owned by Tesla at the time of the audit, and none of the parties involved were aware that features were being removed from the car. 

As an experiment, Alec reached out to a Tesla Used Vehicle Sales Advisor to try and see if he could ask for Autopilot and FSD to be removed from a used vehicle.

Alec suggested he wanted a particular car, but wanted to save money by having FSD deleted. The Sales Advisor told him that

“...if it’s added and it’s a used car they just simply will not remove it.”

That goes directly against Alec’s experience, where Tesla did remove FSD from a used car. 

Alec isn’t alone in his experience; Tesla message boards have stories from other owners who have experienced similar incidents.

All of what happened here goes completely counter to how we’ve understood the buying and selling of used cars since there were used cars to sell. Whatever equipment the car had on it at the time of sale was part of that sale, period.

Subscription-based services like OnStar would be different, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here; this is an optional feature of the car paid for once, like cruise control or A/C or a radio. You can’t just yank it out after the car is sold with those features understood to be part of the car.

It sets a bad precedent if carmakers are going to be able to de-content used cars after sale; technically, any feature that is available to be activated or deactivated in software could be vulnerable to something like this, and I can’t think of any context where remote removal after purchase is okay. 

In fact, it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do, a craven attempt to double-dip and get money for the same features every time the car is re-sold.

I’ve reached out to Tesla for comment multiple times over the week and have gotten no response. I’ll update when, and if, I do.

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-features-from-customer-1841472617

schmoell:

You have to work very hard to get a Tesla into something like "limp mode" on a German Autobahn. The procedure includes speeding way beyond 200 km/h, a lot of heavy braking, many hard acceleration and a brave driver. If you need a car capable of doing this without problems and/or tracking it, a Tesla is not the best choice (btw my 6.2l C63 couldn't run two laps around Hockenheim without going into a serious limp mode, same behavior on the Autobahn in summer, way worse than the P100D - at least Merc could sort of fix it).

 

How did that happen? Due to oil temp? Never experienced anything of the sort... Did you have a FL model? I heard the FL has a smaller oil radiator which caused issues.

1969 Mercedes-Benz 300SEL 6.3  / 2008 Porsche 911 GT3 RS (sold) / 2011 Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Performance / 2014 BMW-Alpina D3 biturbo Touring / 2018 Porsche 911 GT3 Clubsport

Porker:

schmoell:

You have to work very hard to get a Tesla into something like "limp mode" on a German Autobahn. The procedure includes speeding way beyond 200 km/h, a lot of heavy braking, many hard acceleration and a brave driver. If you need a car capable of doing this without problems and/or tracking it, a Tesla is not the best choice (btw my 6.2l C63 couldn't run two laps around Hockenheim without going into a serious limp mode, same behavior on the Autobahn in summer, way worse than the P100D - at least Merc could sort of fix it).

 

How did that happen? Due to oil temp? Never experienced anything of the sort... Did you have a FL model? I heard the FL has a smaller oil radiator which caused issues.

The radiator (that thing in the front wheel house) was the issue I think...at least it was in my case, they installed a new one ("old" n/a C63 PP).

As to Tesla and limp mode: I've seen various videos where this happened, so definitely not something unknown.

Also, I see Tesla on the Autobahn and none of them usually goes faster than 130 kph, there must be a reason for it. I guess the drivers often have a different driving style, also drive slower to preserve energy, I get it. Not my driving style though. 

--

RC (Germany) - Rennteam Editor Lamborghini Huracan Performante (2019), Mercedes GLC63 S AMG (2020), Mercedes C63 S AMG Cab (2019), Range Rover Evoque Si4 Black Edition (2019)

CGX car nut:

Topspeed:

This recent update wasn't free.

Tesla Model 3 Acceleration Boost Costs $2,000 And Adds Quickness

Tesla claims the Acceleration Boost will lower the sedan’s 0-60 time from 4.4 seconds to 3.9 seconds – a half-second quicker. However, it’s not a free upgrade. Owners will have to pay $2,000 for the extra oomph while running that latest Tesla software version 2019.40.2.  

 

Was this gain possible because the hardware was derated in the original configuration or is Tesla pushing the performance boundaries with future hits to reliability?  Tesla, after all, has a very weedy record on developing less-than-tested vehicles during its initial launch programs.  Arguments about learning and adapting don't make much sense either when observing the various performance upgrades instituted by the company.  

Volkswagen Group has a very defined test protocol for its products and Porsche is renowned for its test and development protocols yet defects occasionally still arise during the launch phase.  Tesla has neither the expertise nor the facilities of Volkswagen Group and Porsche yet the consumer is to believe that these rapidly rolled out upgrades are thoroughly tested with no upgrade in hardware?  

   Clueless?  No room for tuning in Porsche’s?  Gt3 engines blow up? Diesel?  RMS?  Too funny but certainly entertaining. I don’t see any electric motors blowing up

Whoopsy:

Leawood911:

MKSGR:

boytronic:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

From what I have heard the next S with Plaid mode will be interesting. At that point I expect that range, efficiency AND speed as well as endurance will not matter again - except for - wait for it - you know it’s coming - a fantastic interior!  Which is a fair standard and measure and I expect the Porsche to be champion of interiors going forward. 

Porsche will always offer the better product compared to Tesla. Tesla is cheaper and more versatile. But Porsche is and will be the better car. To each producer its own segment 

Of course they will. They will sprinkle some magic technology dust and a bit of good old fashioned German battery and electric motor know how in the mix and voila they will have no trouble with the plaid power train at all. They held back the power and efficiency in the Taycan because they did not need to go any faster.  It will simply BE the better car because it is a Porsche and must be so.  And of course have the nicest interior. 
I bet nobody will care or notice if that is not so. Hmmm

By the time Tesla will actually sell their new technology to real customer Porsche will also offer an upgrade of the Taycan, it will be as simple as this. The difference is that Tesla starts talking about a new technology years before you can buy it - only to mislead people who are easy to influence  Fact is: Tesla has been practicing for 10 years. But their finest product is immediately beaten by new entries like the Taycan. That is not a good sign for Tesla...

Upgrade of the Taycan? The current Porsche business model requires you to *pay twice* for that. However at least the upgrade of a Taycan Turbo S could only be to a Taycan Turbo S Black Edition or wait for it... The Taycan RS Touring. 

Upgrade = Facelift (like they do it for decades ).

The new Tesla powertrain (should it be ready at some point in the future) or new batteries will also require a new car. No "upgrade". Same applies to the exterior or interior of the car. Or suspension technology, or brakes etc. etc. Tesla cars are still cars. They age as quickly as the rest of the pack   

Tesla upgrades are constant and given mostly free to previous owners. Show me how that is anything like Porsche’s business model?  Too funny and lots of wishful thinking.  The plaid power train is most likely out this year. While it is not a retrofit it will be state of the art again for many years to come.  Porsche has not even started to deliver the Taycan and you think they will be freely giving upgrades for years to come to stay ahead of Tesla?  Interesting. If anything it is safe to say the Tesla does not age like the rest of the pack, if you have been paying attention. 
 

I agree that more players is better for all of us. No question. And I love the enthusiasm for Porsche. Go go. But sometimes reality needs to be accounted for as well. 

 

Software function upgrades. That means the hardware for the said function is already built into the car and the customer already paid for but didn't get during the initial buying phase. It's more like pre-paying for something that might or might not come later.

Software functions are 'free' to developed. They already have an army of programmers employed full time and the cost is already accounted for, those people get paid whether they are writing code or not. So while the 'free' part is nice and grab headlines, dig deeper then one realized it isn't really free, it was pre-paid already. Nothing in life is free.

I will be impressed if Tesla gives you free hardware upgrades. 

 

As a matter of fact my coworker was driving a new model S loaner today while her 2 year old Tesla 3 was being upgraded for free to hardware 3.0.  Anything else?

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

 

Tesla upgrades are constant and given mostly free to previous owners. Show me how that is anything like Porsche’s business model?  Too funny and lots of wishful thinking.  The plaid power train is most likely out this year. While it is not a retrofit it will be state of the art again for many years to come.  Porsche has not even started to deliver the Taycan and you think they will be freely giving upgrades for years to come to stay ahead of Tesla?  Interesting. If anything it is safe to say the Tesla does not age like the rest of the pack, if you have been paying attention. 

Plaid & roadster & 1 million self driving taxis. All wet dreams of Musk... It is nice you believe in all this but you are part of a small minority.

These software upgrades are a nice feature - however, your car and all other Teslas - will age like all other cars on this planet... The exterior, the interior, the suspension, the battery, the brakes, 99% of the car will be old and outdated in 3-4 years. No software upgrade will help 

His wet dreams are pretty real. The model s has clearly aged better than any car out there.  What looks outdated are all those busy and elaborate interiors which they dust and dirt collection together with rattles and crap. From what I have seen so far my T3 is extremely solid and well build. It should be as they are using the very best technology.  The chassis is actually very impressive. 

CGX car nut:

Well this is interesting.  What Tesla gives with an upgrade, it can just as easily remove.  
 

Tesla Remotely Removes Autopilot Features From Customer's Used Tesla Without Any Notice

 

One of the less-considered side effects of car features moving from hardware to software is that important features and abilities of a car can now be removed without any actual contact with a given car. Where once de-contenting involved at least a screwdriver (or, if you were in a hurry, a hammer), now thousands of dollars of options can vanish with the click of a mouse somewhere. And that’s exactly what happened to one Tesla owner, and, it seems many others. 

Alec (I’ll withhold his last name for privacy reasons) bought a 2017 Tesla Model S on December 20 of last year, from a third-party dealer who bought the car directly from Tesla via auction on November 15, 2019. The car was sold at auction as a result of a California Lemon Law buyback, as the car suffered from a well-known issue where the center-stack screen developed a noticeable yellow border.

When the dealer bought the car at auction from Tesla on November 15, it was optioned with both Enhanced Autopilot and Tesla’s confusingly-named Full Self Driving Capability; together, these options totaled $8,000. You can see them right on the Monroney sticker for the car:

 

Tesla officially sold the car to the dealership on November 15, a date I’ve confirmed by seeing the car’s title. On November 18, Tesla seems to have conducted an “audit” of the car remotely. The result of that audit was that when the car’s software was updated to the latest version in December, the Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capability (FSD) were removed from the car.

Tesla confirmed the date of the audit—which flagged the features for removal—in an invoice:

 

A disclosure statement from Tesla to the dealership at the time of the sale does not mention anything about Autopilot or FSD removal:

 

It’s also worth noting that those repairs on the disclosure were not actually made, which is why Alec took his car to a service center in January.

 

Let’s recap a little bit at this point: A Model S with Enhanced Autopilot (which includes the Summon feature) and FSD “capability” is sold at auction, a dealer buys it, after the sale to the dealer Tesla checks in on the car and decides that it shouldn’t have Autopilot or FSD “capability,” dealer sells car to customer based on the specifications they were aware the car had (and were shown on the window sticker, and confirmed via a screenshot from the car’s display showing the options), and later, when the customer upgrades the car’s software, Autopilot and FSD disappear.

When Alec asked Tesla customer support about this, this was their response:

Tesla has recent identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for Autopilot versions that they did not pay for. Since, there was an audit done to correct these instances. Your vehicle is one of the vehicles that was incorrectly configured for Autopilot. We looked back at your purchase history and unfortunately Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for. We apologize for the confusion. If you are still interested in having those additional features we can begin the process to purchase the upgrade.

This is all very puzzling. Alec bought the car from a dealer based on a set of features that the dealer understood the car to have when purchased at auction. If Alec saw that the car had Autopilot and FSD when he paid for it, how, exactly, did he not pay for those features? 

Those features together are worth $8,000, but as they were already on the car when he bought it, it’s hard to understand how he somehow didn’t pay for them?

I realize that these are software features, but they act like any physical feature of a car. You don’t pay a subscription for FSD or Autopilot, you pay a one-time fee, just like you would for an electromechanical cruise control system on any other car. 

If you buy, say, a used Ford Ecosport (not my first choice, but you do you) that has lane keeping assist and active cruise control, and Ford somehow thinks you didn’t pay for those particular features and sends over a service tech to physically remove them from your car, I think we’d all consider that pretty wrong. We might even consider that theft. I’m not clear how what Tesla did here is any different.

If Tesla had conducted their audit prior to the sale of the car, and made everyone in the loop aware that the car was being de-contented, then that would be one thing; still kind of shitty, but a bit more defensible.

But this audit happened after the initial sale of the car. The car was no longer owned by Tesla at the time of the audit, and none of the parties involved were aware that features were being removed from the car. 

As an experiment, Alec reached out to a Tesla Used Vehicle Sales Advisor to try and see if he could ask for Autopilot and FSD to be removed from a used vehicle.

 

Alec suggested he wanted a particular car, but wanted to save money by having FSD deleted. The Sales Advisor told him that

“...if it’s added and it’s a used car they just simply will not remove it.”

That goes directly against Alec’s experience, where Tesla did remove FSD from a used car. 

Alec isn’t alone in his experience; Tesla message boards have stories from other owners who have experienced similar incidents.

All of what happened here goes completely counter to how we’ve understood the buying and selling of used cars since there were used cars to sell. Whatever equipment the car had on it at the time of sale was part of that sale, period.

Subscription-based services like OnStar would be different, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here; this is an optional feature of the car paid for once, like cruise control or A/C or a radio. You can’t just yank it out after the car is sold with those features understood to be part of the car.

It sets a bad precedent if carmakers are going to be able to de-content used cars after sale; technically, any feature that is available to be activated or deactivated in software could be vulnerable to something like this, and I can’t think of any context where remote removal after purchase is okay. 

In fact, it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do, a craven attempt to double-dip and get money for the same features every time the car is re-sold.

I’ve reached out to Tesla for comment multiple times over the week and have gotten no response. I’ll update when, and if, I do.

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-features-from-customer-1841472617

My first M3 was a demo and had full self driving. As soon as I bought it and decided not to pay for that they turned it off. I get that perhaps some people had theirs turned on without paying for it.  Maybe a rouge employee or simply that a free demo was allowed for a week (they have done this in the past) and the subsequent updates to remove it were avoided.  Who knows. But clearly Tesla can prove it had not been paid for so they removed it.  Big deal. Either the dealer or the customer simply need to pay like everyone else. No big deal. Is someone here afraid that they would remove stuff you paid for?  Show me that story. 

RC:

Porker:Also, I see Tesla on the Autobahn and none of them usually goes faster than 130 kph, there must be a reason for it. I guess the drivers often have a different driving style, also drive slower to preserve energy, I get it. Not my driving style though. 

 

 

I recently met a Tesla 3 Performance on the Autobahn and in this case the driver wanted to test the car's abilities  No luck though 

Leawood911:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

 

Tesla upgrades are constant and given mostly free to previous owners. Show me how that is anything like Porsche’s business model?  Too funny and lots of wishful thinking.  The plaid power train is most likely out this year. While it is not a retrofit it will be state of the art again for many years to come.  Porsche has not even started to deliver the Taycan and you think they will be freely giving upgrades for years to come to stay ahead of Tesla?  Interesting. If anything it is safe to say the Tesla does not age like the rest of the pack, if you have been paying attention. 

Plaid & roadster & 1 million self driving taxis. All wet dreams of Musk... It is nice you believe in all this but you are part of a small minority.

These software upgrades are a nice feature - however, your car and all other Teslas - will age like all other cars on this planet... The exterior, the interior, the suspension, the battery, the brakes, 99% of the car will be old and outdated in 3-4 years. No software upgrade will help 

His wet dreams are pretty real. The model s has clearly aged better than any car out there.  What looks outdated are all those busy and elaborate interiors which they dust and dirt collection together with rattles and crap. From what I have seen so far my T3 is extremely solid and well build. It should be as they are using the very best technology.  The chassis is actually very impressive. 

I even visited Tesla's configurator on the Internet some days ago. The major advantage I see is the attractive pricing. A Tesla S Ludicrous is around 106k Euro. Sounds like a reasonable deal. I see why some people just try it. Spot on in the mid-range price category 

Yes, pricing is attractive, lease offers could be a little bit better though but they're getting there...

I was thinking about leasing a Tesla 3 Performance as a company car when the GLC 63S lease runs out in two years but now I am so in love with this car that I am thinking about keeping it a bit longer (if possible).

My favorite would still be the Urus though...   My Lambo dealer is trying hard to make me get one but lease cost is too high for me and my business.  Me and an Urus for the business...the tax auditor would have a field day. 

--

RC (Germany) - Rennteam Editor Lamborghini Huracan Performante (2019), Mercedes GLC63 S AMG (2020), Mercedes C63 S AMG Cab (2019), Range Rover Evoque Si4 Black Edition (2019)

Leawood911:

CGX car nut:

Well this is interesting.  What Tesla gives with an upgrade, it can just as easily remove.  
 

Tesla Remotely Removes Autopilot Features From Customer's Used Tesla Without Any Notice

 

One of the less-considered side effects of car features moving from hardware to software is that important features and abilities of a car can now be removed without any actual contact with a given car. Where once de-contenting involved at least a screwdriver (or, if you were in a hurry, a hammer), now thousands of dollars of options can vanish with the click of a mouse somewhere. And that’s exactly what happened to one Tesla owner, and, it seems many others. 

Alec (I’ll withhold his last name for privacy reasons) bought a 2017 Tesla Model S on December 20 of last year, from a third-party dealer who bought the car directly from Tesla via auction on November 15, 2019. The car was sold at auction as a result of a California Lemon Law buyback, as the car suffered from a well-known issue where the center-stack screen developed a noticeable yellow border.

When the dealer bought the car at auction from Tesla on November 15, it was optioned with both Enhanced Autopilot and Tesla’s confusingly-named Full Self Driving Capability; together, these options totaled $8,000. You can see them right on the Monroney sticker for the car:

 

Tesla officially sold the car to the dealership on November 15, a date I’ve confirmed by seeing the car’s title. On November 18, Tesla seems to have conducted an “audit” of the car remotely. The result of that audit was that when the car’s software was updated to the latest version in December, the Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capability (FSD) were removed from the car.

Tesla confirmed the date of the audit—which flagged the features for removal—in an invoice:

 

A disclosure statement from Tesla to the dealership at the time of the sale does not mention anything about Autopilot or FSD removal:

 

It’s also worth noting that those repairs on the disclosure were not actually made, which is why Alec took his car to a service center in January.

 

Let’s recap a little bit at this point: A Model S with Enhanced Autopilot (which includes the Summon feature) and FSD “capability” is sold at auction, a dealer buys it, after the sale to the dealer Tesla checks in on the car and decides that it shouldn’t have Autopilot or FSD “capability,” dealer sells car to customer based on the specifications they were aware the car had (and were shown on the window sticker, and confirmed via a screenshot from the car’s display showing the options), and later, when the customer upgrades the car’s software, Autopilot and FSD disappear.

When Alec asked Tesla customer support about this, this was their response:

Tesla has recent identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for Autopilot versions that they did not pay for. Since, there was an audit done to correct these instances. Your vehicle is one of the vehicles that was incorrectly configured for Autopilot. We looked back at your purchase history and unfortunately Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for. We apologize for the confusion. If you are still interested in having those additional features we can begin the process to purchase the upgrade.

This is all very puzzling. Alec bought the car from a dealer based on a set of features that the dealer understood the car to have when purchased at auction. If Alec saw that the car had Autopilot and FSD when he paid for it, how, exactly, did he not pay for those features? 

Those features together are worth $8,000, but as they were already on the car when he bought it, it’s hard to understand how he somehow didn’t pay for them?

I realize that these are software features, but they act like any physical feature of a car. You don’t pay a subscription for FSD or Autopilot, you pay a one-time fee, just like you would for an electromechanical cruise control system on any other car. 

If you buy, say, a used Ford Ecosport (not my first choice, but you do you) that has lane keeping assist and active cruise control, and Ford somehow thinks you didn’t pay for those particular features and sends over a service tech to physically remove them from your car, I think we’d all consider that pretty wrong. We might even consider that theft. I’m not clear how what Tesla did here is any different.

If Tesla had conducted their audit prior to the sale of the car, and made everyone in the loop aware that the car was being de-contented, then that would be one thing; still kind of shitty, but a bit more defensible.

But this audit happened after the initial sale of the car. The car was no longer owned by Tesla at the time of the audit, and none of the parties involved were aware that features were being removed from the car. 

As an experiment, Alec reached out to a Tesla Used Vehicle Sales Advisor to try and see if he could ask for Autopilot and FSD to be removed from a used vehicle.

 

Alec suggested he wanted a particular car, but wanted to save money by having FSD deleted. The Sales Advisor told him that

“...if it’s added and it’s a used car they just simply will not remove it.”

That goes directly against Alec’s experience, where Tesla did remove FSD from a used car. 

Alec isn’t alone in his experience; Tesla message boards have stories from other owners who have experienced similar incidents.

All of what happened here goes completely counter to how we’ve understood the buying and selling of used cars since there were used cars to sell. Whatever equipment the car had on it at the time of sale was part of that sale, period.

Subscription-based services like OnStar would be different, but that’s not what we’re dealing with here; this is an optional feature of the car paid for once, like cruise control or A/C or a radio. You can’t just yank it out after the car is sold with those features understood to be part of the car.

It sets a bad precedent if carmakers are going to be able to de-content used cars after sale; technically, any feature that is available to be activated or deactivated in software could be vulnerable to something like this, and I can’t think of any context where remote removal after purchase is okay. 

In fact, it seems like a pretty shitty thing to do, a craven attempt to double-dip and get money for the same features every time the car is re-sold.

I’ve reached out to Tesla for comment multiple times over the week and have gotten no response. I’ll update when, and if, I do.

https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-removes-autopilot-features-from-customer-1841472617

My first M3 was a demo and had full self driving. As soon as I bought it and decided not to pay for that they turned it off. I get that perhaps some people had theirs turned on without paying for it.  Maybe a rouge employee or simply that a free demo was allowed for a week (they have done this in the past) and the subsequent updates to remove it were avoided.  Who knows. But clearly Tesla can prove it had not been paid for so they removed it.  Big deal. Either the dealer or the customer simply need to pay like everyone else. No big deal. Is someone here afraid that they would remove stuff you paid for?  Show me that story. 

Reading comprehension isn’t a strong point with you.   The Model S was purchased as a used vehicle after it was part of a buyback program, i.e. lemon law, and sold to the dealer.  After it was sold to the dealer, Tesla decided to remove full-self drive.  That wasn’t conveyed to the customer who that was part of the vehicle purchase.  Tesla, through its EULA may be within its legal rights but these maneuvers make it difficult for a consumer in the secondary market to determine exactly what they are purchasing.  Without a strong secondary market, Tesla’s sales will suffer too, unless you believe a vehicle purchase is not a capital purchase for most households. 

Leawood911:

Whoopsy:

Leawood911:

MKSGR:

boytronic:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

MKSGR:

Leawood911:

From what I have heard the next S with Plaid mode will be interesting. At that point I expect that range, efficiency AND speed as well as endurance will not matter again - except for - wait for it - you know it’s coming - a fantastic interior!  Which is a fair standard and measure and I expect the Porsche to be champion of interiors going forward. 

Porsche will always offer the better product compared to Tesla. Tesla is cheaper and more versatile. But Porsche is and will be the better car. To each producer its own segment 

Of course they will. They will sprinkle some magic technology dust and a bit of good old fashioned German battery and electric motor know how in the mix and voila they will have no trouble with the plaid power train at all. They held back the power and efficiency in the Taycan because they did not need to go any faster.  It will simply BE the better car because it is a Porsche and must be so.  And of course have the nicest interior. 
I bet nobody will care or notice if that is not so. Hmmm

By the time Tesla will actually sell their new technology to real customer Porsche will also offer an upgrade of the Taycan, it will be as simple as this. The difference is that Tesla starts talking about a new technology years before you can buy it - only to mislead people who are easy to influence  Fact is: Tesla has been practicing for 10 years. But their finest product is immediately beaten by new entries like the Taycan. That is not a good sign for Tesla...

Upgrade of the Taycan? The current Porsche business model requires you to *pay twice* for that. However at least the upgrade of a Taycan Turbo S could only be to a Taycan Turbo S Black Edition or wait for it... The Taycan RS Touring. 

Upgrade = Facelift (like they do it for decades ).

The new Tesla powertrain (should it be ready at some point in the future) or new batteries will also require a new car. No "upgrade". Same applies to the exterior or interior of the car. Or suspension technology, or brakes etc. etc. Tesla cars are still cars. They age as quickly as the rest of the pack   

Tesla upgrades are constant and given mostly free to previous owners. Show me how that is anything like Porsche’s business model?  Too funny and lots of wishful thinking.  The plaid power train is most likely out this year. While it is not a retrofit it will be state of the art again for many years to come.  Porsche has not even started to deliver the Taycan and you think they will be freely giving upgrades for years to come to stay ahead of Tesla?  Interesting. If anything it is safe to say the Tesla does not age like the rest of the pack, if you have been paying attention. 
 

I agree that more players is better for all of us. No question. And I love the enthusiasm for Porsche. Go go. But sometimes reality needs to be accounted for as well. 

 

Software function upgrades. That means the hardware for the said function is already built into the car and the customer already paid for but didn't get during the initial buying phase. It's more like pre-paying for something that might or might not come later.

Software functions are 'free' to developed. They already have an army of programmers employed full time and the cost is already accounted for, those people get paid whether they are writing code or not. So while the 'free' part is nice and grab headlines, dig deeper then one realized it isn't really free, it was pre-paid already. Nothing in life is free.

I will be impressed if Tesla gives you free hardware upgrades. 

 

As a matter of fact my coworker was driving a new model S loaner today while her 2 year old Tesla 3 was being upgraded for free to hardware 3.0.  Anything else?

That's great news! But your co-worker also paid what, $6000 up front for the full self driving option at purchase? 

Not unlike that time when I had my Bangle 745i, an early one and the amp keep crashing the infotainment system and BMW replaced it with a newer version of the latest production batch. That amp was 9k a pop and BMW replaced it 4 times. 

Two points - my reading comprehension is fine. I stated that Tesla must have had a record of what was actually paid for by the original customer and during an audit stuff that had not been paid for was removed. The used car dealer sold something that did not belong to the car.  There may have even been liability if the hardware was out of date. It bolsters the fact that it is best to buy used Tesla’s from Tesla. They do see to that and not unlike other makers like Ferrari. Etc. all of them. They all want you to extra for a cpo car. Tesla is getting better at selling parts for 3rd party repairs but they are notable for not helping or selling to repair shops they don’t approve of.  
 

Next - my coworker paid $2k for the full self driving feature a while back when it was on sale. Good deal. The price keeps going up. 
The $2k option to shave .5 seconds off was for all models other than the performance model. It had a recent power and range update for free dropping time to 2.9 to 60.  The long range dual motor has exactly the same motors and batteries as my performance model. They are just software limited. Everyone is aware of that. So cutting .5 sec in exchange for a bit of revenue is a brilliant idea and did not hurt the car at all. They are still way short of my car’s performance. Btw the base morel got the same $2k offer and it is now under 5 seconds to sixty. Not a bad deal for $37k

Update to the story below.  This has blown up all over the Internet and you are one of the few, and that includes those posting on Electrek, the Tesla Cult stronghold, to have zero qualms about Tesla’s actions.  In fact you actually condone those actions.  The behavior of Tesla, with this actions, is reckless.

Updated: Friday, February 7, 2020, 1:27 p.m. ET: 

The dealership, United Traders, reached out to me to add some details and more information about the sale of the Tesla and what they knew of its features at the time of the sale:

I saw the Tesla story blowing up on your website and a few others as well. We are the dealership (United Traders) that sold the Tesla to Alec B_____.

I bought that vehicle personally, and used the full self drive on it multiple times. It was working fine. One day, a random message popped up saying your autopilot has been upgraded after a software update. Then it disappeared. I figured it was a glitch. I already had an agreement with Alec to purchase the vehicle. 

He did come and test drive it a few days later, and we both agreed it was a technical difficulty or bug that would be fixed by next software update. Since then Tesla has been of no assistance to him, and I have been doing my best to get him some help in this case. 

I sell dozens of Teslas a year, and sold my father in law a Model X P90D with ludicrous speed package. 60 days after the purchase of the car, Tesla removed his ludicrous speed package. Upon complaints to them they said he never paid for it. We have video evidence and multiple pictures of the vehicle with it. They even removed the line under the P90D. I am still shocked at these acts.