Tesla’s V10 Updates — Freakin’ Awesome Home Movie Theater, Autopilot & Navigation Improvements, Joe Mode … (1st Impressions!)
Credit to Author: Zachary Shahan| Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2019 03:17:13 +0000
Published on September 16th, 2019 | by Zachary Shahan
September 16th, 2019 by Zachary Shahan
I got quite lucky tonight. I was walking along Sesame Street minding my own business when I all of a sudden got plopped into a Tesla Model 3 with Tesla’s new V10 software. I know, I know — you shouldn’t talk to strangers. But when you get an opportunity like this, you just have to take it.
Let’s run through the various improvements coming to Tesla vehicles in V10.
Cuphead joins the various games in Tesla’s in-car arcade.
There is, as of yet, no indication whether Sentry Mode will be recording you as you commit various crimes as Cuphead or Mugman. Proceed with caution.
Tesla minimalism is wonderful, but Tesla’s navigation features have historically been a bit … sparse. It’s nice to see that more destination info will be shown, autocomplete will include distance to the location, and Area 51 is indeed an Alien Center.
The smart Sentry Mode improvement looks useful, too. These over-the-air software updates are turning out to be quite a nifty idea, aren’t they?
A more intriguing and fun update to the navigation is a new “feeling lucky” feature — or two of them.
Click the “Hungry” button and the navigation will throw you a restaurant suggestion. (Did the car taste the food before recommending? Unlikely. Are the suggestions for restaurants with decent online rations? They seem to be. Are you actually going to let the car decide where to eat? Of course you are.)
Click the “Lucky” button and the navigation system suggests some nearby attractions. Playing with this for a couple of minutes, it was interesting to see the range in suggestions — from simple parks to legitimate tourist attractions. The suggestions can be in other cities in the region, too, so expect to see some places you’re not familiar with.
“Joe Mode” is something I have wished for almost every day we’ve had the Model 3, except I’d name it “Julia Mode.” The chimes from the car seldom (if ever) actually wake up our little girl while she’s napping, but it’s often a concern — and having a toddler wake up before nap time is over isn’t fun. #ThanksTesla!
There’s some other stuff in that screenshot, too, that’s minor but potentially useful, depending on your needs.
Enhanced Summon is freakin’ wicked. It’s awesome. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen in or from a Tesla. It’s also super eery. I did not record any clips of it out of concern for the vehicle owner’s privacy and Tesla’s wishes that this stuff not be recorded until it’s ready for wide release. But for real — this thing is cool.
As leaked by Elon Musk himself, watching Netflix in the car is like sitting in your own personal home theater. The sound quality from the car’s premium speaker system makes this an amazing experience. All I kept thinking is there’s going to be a huge number of people who never want to leave their Teslas. Thought long Tesla road trips and camping in your car was popular before? This is about to get out of hand.
Just turning on a YouTube video for a moment, you could see the difference between non-Hollywood sound and Hollywood sound, but the Tesla touchscreen is definitely a great place for YouTube as well. I’d love to try out different types of videos to see how they play and sound, but we didn’t have all night and, honestly, I couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing it is to watch Netflix in the car and how that’s going to tranform what a car means to people.
Caraoke?!! My daughters are going to have a new favorite feature in the Tesla. Goodbye, Beach Buggy. Hello, Caraoke.
I’m going to come back to this for a separate article, but the gist of this update is that automatically changing lanes is improving and the visualizations for Autopilot are improving. Stay tuned for more on that. (It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s interesting to see how Tesla keeps incrementally improving this system.)
If you’d like to buy a Tesla and get 2,000 miles (3,000 km) of free Supercharging, feel free to use my referral code by October 1: https://ts.la/zachary63404. After October 1, it’s presumed that you will get 1,000 miles (1,500 km) of free Supercharging by using that referral code (or someone else’s).
Zachary Shahan Zach is tryin’ to help society help itself (and other species). He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director and chief editor. He’s also the president of Important Media and the director/founder of EV Obsession and Solar Love. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, and Canada. Zach has long-term investments in TSLA, FSLR, SPWR, SEDG, & ABB — after years of covering solar and EVs, he simply has a lot of faith in these particular companies and feels like they are good cleantech companies to invest in. But he offers no professional investment advice and would rather not be responsible for you losing money, so don’t jump to conclusions.