Today was Tesla’s quarterly earnings call where they shared information about the company’s financial position. While the net loss was a little higher than projected ($408 million), the company has plenty of money in the bank, $5 billion in fact.
Right now the company is still in a growth phase, so are continuing to expanding production and invest heavily in R&D.
One area that consumers and even existing owners benefit from that investment, is over-the-air software updates and over the last 6 months, the list is quite impressive.
While some software updates contain minor feature improvements and bug fixes which may not contain noticeable changes, other software updates are more substantial.
We’ve compiled a list of some of the most significant software updates for Australian owners from the past six months which show how owning a Tesla means you own a car that will only get better over time.
February 2019 – Sentry Mode
To further enhance the security of our vehicles and give our customers additional peace of mind, we rolled out a new safeguard – Sentry Mode – to protect against break-ins and theft. Sentry Mode continuously monitors the environment around a Tesla vehicle when it’s left unattended by using the car’s external cameras. Since rolling out Sentry Mode in February, the feature has already been successful in preventing theft and capturing incidents. You can read more about Sentry Mode here.
February 2019 – Dog Mode
Dog Mode allows you to set a cabin temperature to keep your dog (or other furry friends) comfortable while letting passers-by know that your pet is safe by displaying a message on the centre display. Our tweet introducing Dog Mode is here.
February 2019 – Dash Cam Improvement
Building on the Dash Cam feature introduced in Version 9.0, these additional features record and store video footage captured by a car’s side cameras in addition to the narrow forward camera.
March 2019 – On-Route Battery Warm Up
Whenever an owner navigates to a Supercharger station, their vehicle will intelligently heat the battery to ensure they arrive at the optimal temperature to charge, reducing average charge times for owners by 25%. Our blog about On-Route Battery Warm Up is here.
May 2019 – Lane Departure Avoidance and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance
Lane-keeping and hands-on monitoring features are designed to help prevent drivers from inadvertently departing their lane. Lane Departure Avoidance lets a driver elect to have corrective steering applied in order to keep them in their intended lane.
Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance steers a Tesla vehicle back into the driving lane if our system detects that it is departing its lane and there could be a collision, or if the car is close to the edge of the road.
These features are another way that we are helping to protect Tesla drivers and passengers, and others on the road, every day. Our blog post about Lane Departure Avoidance and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance is here.
June 2019 – New Language Support
Our new language support update enables the touchscreen display to support ten different languages. In addition to English, the available languages for Tesla’s UI include French, French (Canada), Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Korean, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese (Taiwan) and Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong).
June 2019 – Tesla Arcade
Tesla Arcade is a new section of the on-screen UI called Tesla Arcade which houses a growing catalogue of games including the Teslatari collection and Beach Buggy Racing 2.
