Quote:
Originally Posted by raptor5244
They have to keep the Dodge Brotherhood happy.  If Dodge just builds a basic EV then how do they differentiate themselves? They will lose big time. They are just trying to maintain some of that customer Charger/ Challenger customer base.
Keep in mind, all of these manufacturers have a lot of proving to do with their 1st gen EVs. It is not just about looks and whether you can keep the battery from overheating and burning down your house while charging. These companies require a whole new cloud management platform to manage the fleet of vehicles. The UI and ability for the engineers to properly tune and update these vehicles over the air will take time to refine. You have to remember EVs are getting updates all the time. I got two updates on my Tesla this month alone. They just added a chime alert now for when the light turns green and you are not paying attention and the ability to tell the car what tires you have so it can update it range algorithm accuracy. There is so much software going on that is requires a different set of skills. This is probably why you see the two separate divisions at Ford.
Battery management systems are quite complex and are critical to getting the advertised range and lifespan from the battery. One example is proper heating of the battery to accept a fast charge. In a Tesla when you navigate to a supercharger the battery management system automatically begins to heat the battery for you. Another caveat of BEVs is how regen works. If your battery is at a high state of charge you will not be able to use as much regen braking which makes the car feel different depending on the charge level and temperature of the battery. So, Tesla will automatically mix in some friction braking to make it feel the same regardless of the state of charge. These are just some examples to the tuning that is required to these EVs dialed in and these tweaks and features arrive via updates all the time. I am not suggesting that they won’t be able to do it but they have some proving to do when it comes executing the driving characteristics and UI. It sound like they are working on some cool features but things like that fake exhaust sound need to be user selectable, etc. |
I think Tesla sends updates so the customer feels a small “I’ve got a cool car” reminder. Sometimes it’s just a game update.
But although a crude platform for doing it GM has used OnStar to download updates. But as you’ve pointed out what’s coming is much bigger. UltiFi?