The second comment seems pretty reasonable: Set your phone as a wifi hotspot for the car to use.
I don't think it's unreasonable for them to balk at spending $2mil to push a huge data blob out over a free connection that was probably originally scoped purely for small (<100mb) firmware updates.
Even at the corporate tier there's a whole lot of restrictions on caching Google Maps. I suspect someone at Tesla could make a call and get that sorted out, though.
Obviously they wouldn’t have to spend that much. Right now the majority of their customers get these updates via WiFi - so it would just be a matter of finding out which vehicles were sufficiently out of date and only sending them the data.
Fair point, either it's affecting a lot of people or it's not going to cost much to push over LTE for the few remaining ones, they need to pick one.
It sounds like the other half of the issue is that there's no way to force the car to check for updates. That should be quick to add... in the next update (heh).
Edit: The original poster on the Tesla forum did say they usually got their updates a couple of weeks after they were released. Maybe, to get around this very problem, the car waits for a while in hope of a friendly WiFi connection before resorting to LTE?
Once it works without Wi-Fi, few people will bother too set it up.
There are obvious solutions to WiFi-less home parking for a company with their very own charger network, but they take initiative, commitment and acknowledging the problem. I'm pretty sure that pointing out all the ways of how a given happy path solution won't work for everybody is not how you make a career at a company like Tesla.
The Tesla employee ought to have suggested the WiFi hotspot idea. Telling the guy to leech off a Starbucks connection is just weird. And the explanation about "imagining" how much an LTE update costs Tesla is also weird.
Why not offer optional LTE map updates for an additional fee? I guess I hadn't thought much about how Tesla pushes software and map updates. WiFi makes sense but I would assume it doesn't work well for some people. I know my WiFi signal in my garage and driveway is quite poor due to the architecture of my house and I assume the large number of WiFi networks in my neighbourhood.
And as far as the reasoning for why they can't offer it at their service centre -- seems like an issue easily solved by a QoS feature on a router.
>Here's another thought - if you think Tesla is paying retail data rates for 200,000 LTE connections, you're likely mistaken.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Operators can and do gouge for data when they know they can get away with it, including rates over what retail would typically be.[1][2]
These are large file downloads and you can best believe operators are not going to give 'bulk discount rates' just to have their network slowed down every time Tesla pushes an update.
From the comments in the link, it seems like map downloads are triggered randomly. Someone left their phone in their car for 5 days but it didn’t sync.
> The second comment seems pretty reasonable: Set your phone as a wifi hotspot for the car to use.
You can't trigger the update, so you have to leave your phone with the car (remember that the whole problem here is that parking is too remote from living space to share wifi) for an extended period of time and hope for the update to trigger.
And, from the comment on the article page by the author, they've tried that: I have put my phone in hotspot mode for literally 5 days, left it in one car, and connected both cars (at home, just one car at work because my wife works somewhere else) to my iPhone hotspot, leaving me completely phone-less except for once-a-day charging sessions at home. Despite this, because there is NO way to trigger a “guaranteed” maps/nav update (sounds like Elon will only allow triggering firmware updates), I might need to be without my phone for weeks on end.
It was the only way to get a decent wifi signal :-p
But it’s kind of a shock they don’t offer updates via USB. Throw a digital signature on the download to help against unsigned code, encrypt the contents and restrict access to the download to verified owners if they are worried about offering a download of maps they brought from someone else and have the key delivered to the car via LTE via their already inplace vpn the cars use to phone home to the mothership.
Car manufacturers have been offering updates to built in gps devices for years via CD/DVD/USB to none connected cars, kind of a shock that Tesla don’t offer this upgrade method.
Well, when I look at the automation issues on the Model 3 line, it appears that Tesla has a habit of ignoring the experience of other car manufacturers.
Here‘s a better idea: install this „server“ (you‘ll probably not need much more than a Raspberry Pi sized machine) into every Supercharger. Car will have to park there anyway for some significant time, there‘s electricity already and it‘s Tesla property anyway so they don‘t come across as being cheap. Elon, are you listening? :D
And thinking twice about it, you won‘t even need Internet at the Supercharger, either. With some clever cryptography and signing, you can use the existing Tesla fleet with the newest updates loaded as a P2P network on wheels... „Want to get the newest maps? Sure, just take a long-distance trip any time soon...“
Superchargers are connected, but probably don't have the hardware to act as a WiFi hotspot. Teslas, on the other hand, do have WiFi, so if they acted as Tesla-only hotspots when idly charging, I guess they could redistribute their stored firmware updates to other charging peers.
If you think about it, even that's expensive. You need a computer, server, software, installation, times 1200 Supercharger stations (dealerships aren't available in a lot of places).
Tesla has only 200k cars on the road. 5 gigabytes of data download off peak is pennies.
According to this forum post [0], the Tesla Navigation data is 5-8 GB in size. This is a large file to download over a cellular network, and I can understand why Tesla/Carriers would prefer people download this file over wifi or wired internet.
Apple has had a related download policy: they won't let you download major iOS updates over cellular data, and require wifi or USB data cable to install them. I believe Apple does this as a result of carrier pressure, however I don't think Apple has publicly stated this (Apple rarely does so).
A lot of people seem to forget that cellular bandwidth is finite, and that wireless congestion is a real problem today.
While you’re not wrong, it’s not necessarily under Tesla’s control if they can do so (do they build and manage their own map data files?) and even if it was, managing an update that supports delta patches is its own headache that comes with extra engineering and testing costs, so maybe in the end the extra cost would be comparable?
We’re only talking about 200k clients here, unlike Google in which each byte of bandwidth reduction is multiplied by hundreds of millions of phones.
You don't need to build your own files to do a delta. You just take the old file and the new one, and you calculate a binary diff using cperciva's bsdiff or Google's courgette.
Then on the car you take the old file and the diff to generate the new file.
Off-topic, but thanks for reminding me about bsdiff [1], it's quite cool. Not something I have had a reason to use, but something I enjoy knowing about.
Also, it's wonderful that the web page about it uses a Pentium at 200 MHz as the performance reference platform (at 45 KB/s). :)
But you have to carefully check which version is currently there before you apply the delta, to make sure it's applicable. Also make sure previous delta was fully applied and not stopped halfway through etc etc. It really is not as trivial as you make it sound, hence the extra engineering burden mentioned in comment above.
OK, but if they're a good member of the tech community, they should put in that effort and/or charge their own customers appropriately. Not just punt on it and exploit somebody else's free service.
But then they also need to download other large files regularly. So I think their policy is to tell people to do it over wifi, and most people can do that, because their car sits in a garage or near a house all night. Seems sensible, no? Why take the risk of messing about with deltas when most customers manage fine.
They are already much better members of the tech community than most car manufacturers. I have to make an appointment with my dealer and leave my car there for a few hours if I want a map update for my navigation system and I have to pay an unreasonable amount of money for it.
I think what people are asking here is too much; it’s not an unrealistic expectation that someone to find wifi occasionally in order to receive free updates.
You already have to check if the file was correctly downloaded over Wifi and not stopped halfway or tampered with. There's no new requirement here.
You do have to compare if the old file is the correct, but not only is that extremely basic (I mean, it's comparing a filename), even if you manage to muck it up, the previously mentioned check will make sure the incorrectly generated file won't be applied, since the signature won't be valid.
You're assuming each different version of this map database will have a different filename? I dont think you've thought this through. Everything in software engineering seems simple if you dont look at the details. You're saying it would be easy to do deltas. I'm saying its not as easy as you think, and secondly why should they bother when there's probably a thousand more important requirements on their to-do list right now. Thats whats real-world projects are like.
You're assuming each different version of this map database will have a different filename?
It'll have whatever Tesla wants it to have. Even if they receive the file as a binary blob, they can attach whatever metadata they want when transferring it to the car. A filename would just be what I'd use, but the specific format is irrelevant.
Everything in software engineering seems simple if you dont look at the details. (...)
And some actually are. But in any case, I never actually said it was simple. I rebutted specific reasons you gave. Is it complicated for other reasons? Sure, maybe, who knows.
An effective delta-based update strategy requires planning and implementation that anticipates such a system; otherwise you’re going to end up with diffs that are not significantly smaller than the original files.
delta-updates, agree. whole discussion is wrong. why do customers need to download multiple gigs of shit all the time? makes no sense. it's not like the map of the world completely changes all the time. perhaps some subtle updates to routes and roads. you could do with just pushing a limited set of data, probarbly not more than a few mb if even so much.,..
I wonder why is it that large maps update? Is it for whole US maps? If it is, I imagine to just update my local region instead of many other regions or I could choose to update manually myself later. Basically why not break the update to many smaller pieces and let user update the most important.
Probably because the current solution is much simpler, and works better in the majority of cases. I wouldn't want to worry before going for a long drive, whether all my maps data has been updated or not. Since my car is connected to wifi all night long, I'd expect it to download as much data as it might need, so if I suddenly decide to take a road trip, I'm prepared.
>Apple has had a related policy: they won't let you download major iOS updates over cellular data, and require wifi or USB data cable to install them. I believe this is a result of carrier lobbying, however I don't think there is an official reason (Apple rarely has one).
Common sense really. Apple would get two complaints if they didn't do this. 1. From people who blew through their data allowances pulling the update. 2. From the networks and everyone else once the network bogs down every update. (Apple doesn't stage rollout like most manufacturers do)
Related: The 11.2 update had carrier specific modifications made to wifi calling. On networks where congestion was a bigger problem, wifi calling gets preferred. On networks with coverage issues, but less congestion... cellular is preferred if it's there.
>A lot of people seem to forget that cellular bandwidth is finite, and that wireless congestion is a real problem today.
They also seem to think Tesla would get some sort of a deal from the networks for all this bulk data.
But there should be a setting in iOS to disable this requirement of wifi to install updates. For people who have unlimited 4G and no wifi/ethernet.
I only have unlimited 4G SIM and all my internet usage is either on my phone or through my other devices using mobile hotspot. I don't want to pay extra money to carriers for home broadband with wifi since I already have super fast unlimited mobile connection (it's fast enough for Twitch/Netflix streaming so I really don't need dedicated line).
I'd like to make this configurable so people like me don't have to go to Starbucks or other places with public wifi to download updates.
Depends on the time. I'm happy carriers wouldn't mind downloads as long as they happen between 1am-5am. Apple could introduce a feature to allow cell downloads but only do so during off-peak hours.
>But there should be a setting in iOS to disable this requirement of wifi to install updates.
You missed complaint #2. While your plan says unlimited, physics doesn't work that way. It's only fast right now because people aren't pulling large update files in all at the same time. I would not want to be in a populated area trying to use the network on update day. Rush hour at train stations is bad enough...
It's a pretty crude mechanism, though. A better system would have the tower tell the phone if it's overloaded or not - or, ideally, the available bandwidth - and the phone would decide whether to download it now or later.
That’s a workaround. I can connect my MacBook Pro to my iPhone hotspot over Bluetooth and download updates on desktop iTunes app because MacBook think it’s using WiFi even though in reality it’s all 4G. Then I can download and install updates to the iPhone from iTunes. Crude workaround but it’s possible.
Even on iOS's App Store, you cannot download apps over 150MB using cellular. I thought this was actually mandated by the carriers (who were concerned in early days that app downloads would overly congest their network) and wouldn't be surprised if Tesla has similar restrictions as part of their carrier agreement.
EDIT: Weird, I thought when I first hit reply, there was no mention of App Store, but I see we're on the same page with this one :)
Is Tesla not big enough to negotiate off-peak discounts? Do US carriers not support that type of thing? It's such an obvious solution I can't believe they don't do it.
When I visited Sri Lanka, $8 at the airport got me a SIM card and something like 16 GB of data. ~4GB during the day, and the rest at night. So blatantly rational.
Wireless congestion is not a problem at 3am. I've worked at an ISP long enough to know what consumer access patterns look like.
It is absolutely necessary. Windows will happily downloads tens of GB worth of updates (or, you know, a full OS that MS is trying to push on you) without the user being able to do anything about it.
Nope. I've stayed months with only a metered connection and Windows did not download anything. And when I switched to non-metered, I got something like 10 Go of updates on one go.
But I don't if other software, including other Microsoft products, respect this indication.
Similar to your expensive data plan, Tesla also has to pay for the LTE connection in your vehicle, thus we cannot offer this option.
Oh come on, even my AU$40 prepaid sim includes gigabytes per month.
And which carrier wouldn’t jump at the chance to advertise “We partner with Telsa to provide you unmetered firmware and maps updates, simple set your phone as a wifi hotspot and connect your Tesla to take advantage of this offer”.
Telsa might still pay a fee, but it would be a fraction of what you or I would pay for the same amount of quota.
Hard to sympathize with an owner of two Tesla’s complaining his/her pericular edge case is being overlooked. The vast amount of people will be covered with WiFi. The rest of the Teslii owners can buy a cheap WiFi hotspot for a month.
Anyone with on-street parking which isn’t outside their house, or on-street parking but outside an old house with thick walls, also qualifies as this “edge case”. That’s pretty much most of central London and I suspect many other European cities.
It seems like there's a really obvious solution to this problem: why not just allow people to download this update, put it on a USB stick, then plug the USB into the car? For people that don't have/don't want to buy USB sticks, they could have some pre-loaded ones available at service centers.
No need to park at a Starbucks, have your customers tether their cars to their phones, or overload the wifi at the service centers.
>Why not just allow people to download this update, put it on a USB stick, then plug the USB into the car?
I guess a few things:
1- If you give USB to end users to plug it to their cars you eventually going to need to provide some support service for it. If someone has a Tesla that does not make that person who understands about using computers. Tesla cars are still cars.
2- Teslas are cars, again. You can travel to another country with your car. You can put that car in a ship and use it on another continent. (insert Falcon Heavy joke here) As Tesla, the company you still need to provide updates to those intercontinental Teslas.
As I said in and bother comment.
Downloads (signed and encrypted to prevent misuse of the contents, I guess they are someone else’s maps unless Tesla is creating their own maps).
A small piece of software could be created to “handhold” the user though the process of downloading the update file, format a usb stick and copy the update file to it. Look at the Windows 10 media creation tools as an example of preping a usb stick easily.
Once the stick is prepped and inserted into the car, the car should take over and do the rest. Just inform the user that the update is taking place and prompt them once completed that they can remove the stick (when save to do so if they are already on the move)
Have the car look for update.img in the root of the usb on insertion, validate the signature of the file, validate the file isn’t a downgrade, decrypt, install and delete the file once completed automatically.
Friends and family can also be a source of help to download the file onto a usb stick.
> A small piece of software could be created to “handhold” the user though the forces of downloading the update file, format a usb stick and copy the update file to it.
Or just make and sell a cheap device (basically a low-spec tablet dedicated to a single app) that can connect to WiFi, say in the users home, and then be taken to the car and act as a hotspot with no upstream connection and deliver the update. (You can probably make it even smaller and cheaper with no screen if you want to offload the UI to a smartphone app; at which point you can probably have it hang off a keychain.)
In the “mobile first” world we are moving to (thinking about how I see more people reaching for their tablet first over their laptop even if they even own a computer these days) I could see a “bridging cache device” like you say becoming more likely.
Hell with the size of WiFi enabled microprocessors these days (something like an esp8266 paired with enough flash to hold the updates) you could prob squeeze it right into the cars keyfob itself. Though I would want the wifi processor to be separate from the keyfobs key processor.
Edit:
Wireless charging of the fob so the car keeps the fob charged. When the car detects an update is available via its lte connection it wakes up the more power hungry WiFi chip in the fob via induction or something (trying to keep the “cars keys” processor separated from the WiFi processor) and a notice on the cars dash or an push notification to the cars companion phone app notifies the user of an update. If the fob knows of a WiFi station it can listen for that beacon and then download the update. If not found after a while goes into a pairing mode for connection to a phone/tablet like you say by offloading the UI.
Would need some polish to make it user friendly but yeah... I’m liking the idea.
Wouldn't they still need to handle customer support for international customers? I see your points but I still believe that updating your car using a USB stick is too complex for average consumer.
Don't they already offer support for international customers, At Least in regions they already have a presence? Also a download doesn't have to be region locked.
> I still believe that updating your car using a USB stick is too complex for average consumer.
After the Jeep Hack Chrysler offered the update via a mailed out USB stick, A download for self update or allow a dealership mechanic to do it for you.
If an update just needs an USB insert to apply and if you can't prep it yourself, can't get a friend/family member/work colleague to assist, not have the ability to download it via wifi than a trip to a dealership or a local mechanic to do it for you can't really be out of the question.
As the OP post was about map updates, if the car is no longer in a region the company has a presence I wouldn't find it unreasonable if the company charge for the cost of the stick and postage. A "recall update" such like with the jeep issue I would expect the company to foot the bill of the extra postage (as they would be on the hook for the cost of shipping out the stick from and to the original country of purchase anyway).
Installing over WiFi is something that doesn't require a user guide beyond 'connect your car to the WiFi' which anyone with a smart phone is used to.
Entrusting non-technical people with installing via USB sticks is not something I'd want to do. As others pointed out Windows allows it for installing their OS, but installing Map updates should be orders of magnitude simpler.
If the customers are going to go to the service centres to get the stick - better just to offer them a coffee there whilst the updates are downloaded over the service WiFi.
"We don't want to pay for it, please make Starbucks pay instead. kthanxbye" ???
Can this possibly be the official corporate position?
There should be entire 2 semester course in biz school about how to scale without ending up with corporate policies creeping in that are so mind-bendingly stupid that everyone starts wondering if the company leadership is a bunch of 12-year-olds laughing behind a gym somewhere.
> Why is it a problem if Tesla does the same thing?
Because Tesla isn't selling a smartphone that users in places where parking and living space aren't immediately adjacent so as to share a wifi router can reliably be expected to carry into their home, where they can connect to their in-home network, but a car which is a very different device.
Also, map data updates are necessary to maintain function, unlike major iOS updates, which provide new function.
Tesla is still more consumer-friendly in this respect than any other car manufacturer I know of. You have to pay for map updates in most other cars... it's not cheap either.
> Tesla is still more consumer-friendly in this respect than any other car manufacturer I know of.
Tesla's the only car manufacturer selling vehicles that supposedly have full autonomy hardware with full autonomy itself a near-future firmware update away.
That becomes meaningless hype on a whole new level if the many owners the Tesla rep acknowledges have stated a need for this can get firmware updates but not map updates.
They can get map updates for free, all they need is WiFi access... am I missing something here? There is free public WiFi all over.
I'm shocked that the complaint comes from the SF area of all places, there is probably a higher density of WiFi there than anywhere else on the planet.
> They can get map updates for free, all they need is WiFi access... am I missing something here? There is free public WiFi all over.
The updates can't be triggered by the user, so you have to leave your car somewhere (or your phone in your car) for a extended period of time to hope to get an update.
There's also not free public parking everywhere (much less free public parking with WiFi coverage), especially in the urban areas where “my parking is remote from my living space and doesn't share wifi with it” is most likely to be an issue.
Also, outside of certain urban areas (and this can still be a problem outside of urban areas) there isn't free public WiFi everywhere.
Yep pay £100 for a hooky 3rd party copy of an official DVD for your Land Rover at least and then have to fuck around for ages trying to get it to work. That's because the official one is about £300 a year.
This is just not a real problem, seems like entitled complaining. You have two Tesla's but can't find a friend, office, or public WiFi to download the map update? Boo hoo!!
That should have been the target of his rant not that they won't turn on LTE updates. He comes off sounding like first world problems in the bulk of this article.
> Lastly, there are currently 200,000 vehicles that could hypothetically receive LTE map updates. Imagining it would cost Tesla $10 minimum per map update via LTE, which would cost approximately $2,000,000; you can quickly see why this would be problematic for our future as a business.
It would be moot if you just charged a premium for LTE maps updates for the subset of customers who need it. Heck, price it right, and it'll probably be profitable, and also make owners happier.
Why aren't they downloading the updates while charging? Shouldn't be too much effort to either install WiFi at the superchargers or run data over the charge cabling. Then maybe just update the "local" map data around the supercharger (the next charger along the route will update the next area; no need to update unused maps).
Also I'm wondering why updates are generally fat blobs instead of deltas.
Come on Tesla... You should do the following: As suggested by jasonlingx, have cars update each other. If after a few days this doesn't happen, you need another option. You'll have to go negotiate some deals. First, Comcast has an enormous network of wifi hotspots that their customers create. The per-GB price on this should be very low, particularly if you're willing to be throttled. Second, one of the four major carriers should be willing to work out a deal for extremely cheap data if it's at super off-peak hours, say 2-4am, when there is loads of spare capacity.
My Harley-Davidson doesn't have Wi-Fi or LTE (SiriusXM is as good as it gets), but it does have a USB port that I can use to install updates (downloaded onto a flash drive).
I'm honestly quite surprised that Teslas have both Wi-Fi and LTE but can't be updated via a similar method.
The suggestion to park at Starbucks is skeezy, but otherwise the response sounds entirely reasonable. Having many cars pull multi-gigabyte updates over LTE would be prohibitively expensive.
What Tesla should do is allow people to receive updates at a service center (or at superchargers), either manually from a technician or just automatically in the background with a known Tesla WiFi network that the car knows how to connect to when at a service center. Hell, the service center could even keep cached copies of the downloads locally to speed things up.
I have a portable WiFi hotspot that gives me unlimited downloads over LTE for less than €20/mth. I'm sure a Tesla owner can afford that. Problem solved.
139 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] threadI don't think it's unreasonable for them to balk at spending $2mil to push a huge data blob out over a free connection that was probably originally scoped purely for small (<100mb) firmware updates.
Hence the large size of this update: the entire base map is now stored in the car rather than downloading local tiles as needed.
It sounds like the other half of the issue is that there's no way to force the car to check for updates. That should be quick to add... in the next update (heh).
Edit: The original poster on the Tesla forum did say they usually got their updates a couple of weeks after they were released. Maybe, to get around this very problem, the car waits for a while in hope of a friendly WiFi connection before resorting to LTE?
There are obvious solutions to WiFi-less home parking for a company with their very own charger network, but they take initiative, commitment and acknowledging the problem. I'm pretty sure that pointing out all the ways of how a given happy path solution won't work for everybody is not how you make a career at a company like Tesla.
Why not offer optional LTE map updates for an additional fee? I guess I hadn't thought much about how Tesla pushes software and map updates. WiFi makes sense but I would assume it doesn't work well for some people. I know my WiFi signal in my garage and driveway is quite poor due to the architecture of my house and I assume the large number of WiFi networks in my neighbourhood.
And as far as the reasoning for why they can't offer it at their service centre -- seems like an issue easily solved by a QoS feature on a router.
I wouldn't be so sure of that. Operators can and do gouge for data when they know they can get away with it, including rates over what retail would typically be.[1][2]
These are large file downloads and you can best believe operators are not going to give 'bulk discount rates' just to have their network slowed down every time Tesla pushes an update.
[1] https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/60000987609.pdf
[2] https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7521151798.pdf
You can't trigger the update, so you have to leave your phone with the car (remember that the whole problem here is that parking is too remote from living space to share wifi) for an extended period of time and hope for the update to trigger.
And, from the comment on the article page by the author, they've tried that: I have put my phone in hotspot mode for literally 5 days, left it in one car, and connected both cars (at home, just one car at work because my wife works somewhere else) to my iPhone hotspot, leaving me completely phone-less except for once-a-day charging sessions at home. Despite this, because there is NO way to trigger a “guaranteed” maps/nav update (sounds like Elon will only allow triggering firmware updates), I might need to be without my phone for weeks on end.
And they're the ones who have a Roadster roaming in space.
It was the only way to get a decent wifi signal :-p
But it’s kind of a shock they don’t offer updates via USB. Throw a digital signature on the download to help against unsigned code, encrypt the contents and restrict access to the download to verified owners if they are worried about offering a download of maps they brought from someone else and have the key delivered to the car via LTE via their already inplace vpn the cars use to phone home to the mothership.
Car manufacturers have been offering updates to built in gps devices for years via CD/DVD/USB to none connected cars, kind of a shock that Tesla don’t offer this upgrade method.
USB is an attack vector - USB descriptor attacks have been used to hack systems in the past.
I mean FFS, downloads through a local server over WiFi is gonna be way faster than downloading through the internet over WiFi anyways!
And the servers are cheap, not to mention they probably already have spare computing power at a dealership to get this working!
Tesla has only 200k cars on the road. 5 gigabytes of data download off peak is pennies.
Apple has had a related download policy: they won't let you download major iOS updates over cellular data, and require wifi or USB data cable to install them. I believe Apple does this as a result of carrier pressure, however I don't think Apple has publicly stated this (Apple rarely does so).
A lot of people seem to forget that cellular bandwidth is finite, and that wireless congestion is a real problem today.
[0] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/firmware-update-2018...
We’re only talking about 200k clients here, unlike Google in which each byte of bandwidth reduction is multiplied by hundreds of millions of phones.
Then on the car you take the old file and the diff to generate the new file.
Also, it's wonderful that the web page about it uses a Pentium at 200 MHz as the performance reference platform (at 45 KB/s). :)
[1] http://www.daemonology.net/bsdiff/
I think what people are asking here is too much; it’s not an unrealistic expectation that someone to find wifi occasionally in order to receive free updates.
You do have to compare if the old file is the correct, but not only is that extremely basic (I mean, it's comparing a filename), even if you manage to muck it up, the previously mentioned check will make sure the incorrectly generated file won't be applied, since the signature won't be valid.
It'll have whatever Tesla wants it to have. Even if they receive the file as a binary blob, they can attach whatever metadata they want when transferring it to the car. A filename would just be what I'd use, but the specific format is irrelevant.
Everything in software engineering seems simple if you dont look at the details. (...)
And some actually are. But in any case, I never actually said it was simple. I rebutted specific reasons you gave. Is it complicated for other reasons? Sure, maybe, who knows.
My understanding is that the new database uses vector rendering rather than rendering image tiles and it’s supposed to be much better than before.
This is also why so many Tesla owners are so keen to switch over to it.
Common sense really. Apple would get two complaints if they didn't do this. 1. From people who blew through their data allowances pulling the update. 2. From the networks and everyone else once the network bogs down every update. (Apple doesn't stage rollout like most manufacturers do)
Related: The 11.2 update had carrier specific modifications made to wifi calling. On networks where congestion was a bigger problem, wifi calling gets preferred. On networks with coverage issues, but less congestion... cellular is preferred if it's there.
>A lot of people seem to forget that cellular bandwidth is finite, and that wireless congestion is a real problem today.
They also seem to think Tesla would get some sort of a deal from the networks for all this bulk data.
I only have unlimited 4G SIM and all my internet usage is either on my phone or through my other devices using mobile hotspot. I don't want to pay extra money to carriers for home broadband with wifi since I already have super fast unlimited mobile connection (it's fast enough for Twitch/Netflix streaming so I really don't need dedicated line).
I'd like to make this configurable so people like me don't have to go to Starbucks or other places with public wifi to download updates.
You missed complaint #2. While your plan says unlimited, physics doesn't work that way. It's only fast right now because people aren't pulling large update files in all at the same time. I would not want to be in a populated area trying to use the network on update day. Rush hour at train stations is bad enough...
I’d assume few hundred MBs or even few GBs of updates every couple of weeks can’t be of significance.
I think Netflix, YouTube and Twitch traffic are much bigger concern for carriers.
EDIT: Weird, I thought when I first hit reply, there was no mention of App Store, but I see we're on the same page with this one :)
When I visited Sri Lanka, $8 at the airport got me a SIM card and something like 16 GB of data. ~4GB during the day, and the rest at night. So blatantly rational.
Wireless congestion is not a problem at 3am. I've worked at an ISP long enough to know what consumer access patterns look like.
But I don't if other software, including other Microsoft products, respect this indication.
Everyone knows a interrupted update isn't good and downloading several times isn't good either.
Similar to your expensive data plan, Tesla also has to pay for the LTE connection in your vehicle, thus we cannot offer this option.
Oh come on, even my AU$40 prepaid sim includes gigabytes per month.
And which carrier wouldn’t jump at the chance to advertise “We partner with Telsa to provide you unmetered firmware and maps updates, simple set your phone as a wifi hotspot and connect your Tesla to take advantage of this offer”.
Telsa might still pay a fee, but it would be a fraction of what you or I would pay for the same amount of quota.
It's not a peculiar edge case; the Tesla rep explicitly notes in the reaponse it's an issue that Tesla has heard about from many owners.
No need to park at a Starbucks, have your customers tether their cars to their phones, or overload the wifi at the service centers.
A small piece of software could be created to “handhold” the user though the process of downloading the update file, format a usb stick and copy the update file to it. Look at the Windows 10 media creation tools as an example of preping a usb stick easily.
Once the stick is prepped and inserted into the car, the car should take over and do the rest. Just inform the user that the update is taking place and prompt them once completed that they can remove the stick (when save to do so if they are already on the move)
Have the car look for update.img in the root of the usb on insertion, validate the signature of the file, validate the file isn’t a downgrade, decrypt, install and delete the file once completed automatically.
Friends and family can also be a source of help to download the file onto a usb stick.
Or just make and sell a cheap device (basically a low-spec tablet dedicated to a single app) that can connect to WiFi, say in the users home, and then be taken to the car and act as a hotspot with no upstream connection and deliver the update. (You can probably make it even smaller and cheaper with no screen if you want to offload the UI to a smartphone app; at which point you can probably have it hang off a keychain.)
Hell with the size of WiFi enabled microprocessors these days (something like an esp8266 paired with enough flash to hold the updates) you could prob squeeze it right into the cars keyfob itself. Though I would want the wifi processor to be separate from the keyfobs key processor.
Edit: Wireless charging of the fob so the car keeps the fob charged. When the car detects an update is available via its lte connection it wakes up the more power hungry WiFi chip in the fob via induction or something (trying to keep the “cars keys” processor separated from the WiFi processor) and a notice on the cars dash or an push notification to the cars companion phone app notifies the user of an update. If the fob knows of a WiFi station it can listen for that beacon and then download the update. If not found after a while goes into a pairing mode for connection to a phone/tablet like you say by offloading the UI.
Would need some polish to make it user friendly but yeah... I’m liking the idea.
> I still believe that updating your car using a USB stick is too complex for average consumer.
After the Jeep Hack Chrysler offered the update via a mailed out USB stick, A download for self update or allow a dealership mechanic to do it for you.
If an update just needs an USB insert to apply and if you can't prep it yourself, can't get a friend/family member/work colleague to assist, not have the ability to download it via wifi than a trip to a dealership or a local mechanic to do it for you can't really be out of the question.
As the OP post was about map updates, if the car is no longer in a region the company has a presence I wouldn't find it unreasonable if the company charge for the cost of the stick and postage. A "recall update" such like with the jeep issue I would expect the company to foot the bill of the extra postage (as they would be on the hook for the cost of shipping out the stick from and to the original country of purchase anyway).
Entrusting non-technical people with installing via USB sticks is not something I'd want to do. As others pointed out Windows allows it for installing their OS, but installing Map updates should be orders of magnitude simpler.
If the customers are going to go to the service centres to get the stick - better just to offer them a coffee there whilst the updates are downloaded over the service WiFi.
Can this possibly be the official corporate position?
There should be entire 2 semester course in biz school about how to scale without ending up with corporate policies creeping in that are so mind-bendingly stupid that everyone starts wondering if the company leadership is a bunch of 12-year-olds laughing behind a gym somewhere.
Why is it a problem if Tesla does the same thing?
Because Tesla isn't selling a smartphone that users in places where parking and living space aren't immediately adjacent so as to share a wifi router can reliably be expected to carry into their home, where they can connect to their in-home network, but a car which is a very different device.
Also, map data updates are necessary to maintain function, unlike major iOS updates, which provide new function.
Tesla's the only car manufacturer selling vehicles that supposedly have full autonomy hardware with full autonomy itself a near-future firmware update away.
That becomes meaningless hype on a whole new level if the many owners the Tesla rep acknowledges have stated a need for this can get firmware updates but not map updates.
I'm shocked that the complaint comes from the SF area of all places, there is probably a higher density of WiFi there than anywhere else on the planet.
The updates can't be triggered by the user, so you have to leave your car somewhere (or your phone in your car) for a extended period of time to hope to get an update.
There's also not free public parking everywhere (much less free public parking with WiFi coverage), especially in the urban areas where “my parking is remote from my living space and doesn't share wifi with it” is most likely to be an issue.
Also, outside of certain urban areas (and this can still be a problem outside of urban areas) there isn't free public WiFi everywhere.
The person complaining did try. Made his iPhone a hot spot, put it in the car and left it there for days. But the update wasn’t triggered.
It would be moot if you just charged a premium for LTE maps updates for the subset of customers who need it. Heck, price it right, and it'll probably be profitable, and also make owners happier.
Also I'm wondering why updates are generally fat blobs instead of deltas.
I'm honestly quite surprised that Teslas have both Wi-Fi and LTE but can't be updated via a similar method.
What Tesla should do is allow people to receive updates at a service center (or at superchargers), either manually from a technician or just automatically in the background with a known Tesla WiFi network that the car knows how to connect to when at a service center. Hell, the service center could even keep cached copies of the downloads locally to speed things up.