So how does the rollout for Tesla updates work? Are there specific updates that are marked mandatory before you can drive the car? Wondering how these disclosures are avoided from being exploited when not all of the cars have the patch.
Hey, it's the guy from the video. I worked with Tesla on this and we waited until a sufficient amount of vehicles had the patch before releasing it out. But if someone that acts maliciously, just releases it out without co-ordination with Tesla, that's a different ballgame. I would imagine they would roll it out ASAP.
Cars get eligibility for updates depending on when they were purchased, what hardware they have (including incremental revs that happen with newer versions of a model), what features they have that relate to the update, whether they have purchased the (future) full self driving add on, whether they are in the Early Access Program, and whether the customer has complained to service about a related issue that the update covers... those are the ones I know about.
On top of this (or maybe under it) they have a layer with rollout tiers for Tesla owned cars, cars of employees who opt in for early updates, and customer cars. Probably more than just this. And then with all that they roll it out over time, so we're not all getting the update the same hour, but generally it starts with a trickle the first week and then becomes a flood of users getting a given update over the course of the following week or two.
If you're not on WiFi you might get the "Update Available" notice in the UI first, and then when you get to WiFi it downloads it. But it doesn't wait, if you don't see that notice and it has WiFi, it just downloads it.
Also Tesla says that if conditions warrant, it will download the update even when there is no WiFi. But I think it waits a while to try to opportunistically get on WiFi if it can, to reduce load on the LTE network it uses. If your car never connects to WiFi (which is up to you to do) then it will download, if it can, over LTE if the update is high enough priority.
There are probably silent updates as well as another commenter indicated. Don't know about those but it makes sense.
Note that (a) you’d have to load a specific web page to make this happen; (b) you’re usually not surfing the web while you’re driving, but maybe a passenger would ... (c) this crash just makes the screen hang until the watchdog resets it (apparently 2 minutes) or the driver forces a reset by holding down the two steering wheel buttons.
Rebooting the infotainment screen while driving is no big deal. The car drives just fine without it, and so do I.
They’re not mandatory to drive. Tesla does silent over the air updates with important fixes since the car has data capabilities. Larger updates happen over WiFi.
Every Tesla comes with always-on cellular connection which their cars use to log onto mothership.tesla.com or authenticate your phone through it to allow you to drive.
Save for small numbers of cars explicitly ordered off-menu with that feature removed, or has been hiding under the rock for six months, they keep the VIN, the connection, and rotating ssh keys to log into any instances of cars of their current models that have ever delivered, and it's not like there are trillion Teslas on the road.
There's no mandatory updates that I've seen. You get an alert that there's an update, and it shows up every time you put the car in Park. It prompts you to update now or schedule a time.
You usually have to be in range of wifi to download updates, afaik.
