The tyres alone weight 25 lbs, which leaves 35 for the wheels. That seems pretty good for a 21 inch wheel on a luxury saloon. What are you expecting, a track car? Keep in mind that the forged aluminium 20 inch wheels fitted to the 458 Italia weigh 25 pounds apiece.
After a pair of highly trained researchers spent a year finding an attack vector into a Jeep Cherokee, many said that a savvy company like Tesla could not be subjected to a similar attack.
According to the Financial Times, security experts Kevin Mahaffey and Marc Rogers did just that, forcing a Tesla to shut down and turn on its handbrake. They demonstrated this capability at 5 mph when the effects would be minor, but serious injuries could be caused at, say, 75 mph.
The point was to show that a “technologically savvy” company could also have its products hacked, despite vaunted “firewalls” between telematics and operating systems.
Tesla said it would issue a patch by Thursday. Chrysler has issued a recall to distribute a patch, which is also available to owners on-line now
So the whole thing with Chrysler is fine because obviously everyone has an OBD II connector and CAN compatible hardware and drivers with which they can reprogram their car. Right.
I don't see the issue. The only effort you have to put in is to hook the car up to your wifi connection. The rest is done over night when you are sleeping and you can get up and go to work in the morning like nothing ever happened. That's certainly better than buying a new car every year or two just for some minor updates.
That's not how it works in the tech world.
It does offer every feature you purchased it with. Anything after that is a bonus, really. And if you are getting these updates for free, why complain? In Tesla's case, you wake up one morning and your car notifies you that a new patch has been installed and you have more power/torque and a longer range. You are telling me you wouldn't like that?
If you're buying a product because you "think" it'll get more features than the car is advertised with sometime in the future, that's on you.
And the Tesla does, when you buy it. But they add more features and abilities over time, and a software update while you're sleeping is quite a bit better than having to wait half a model cycle for a whole updated car to come along.
And as @R1600Turbo says, you can wake up one morning and your car will actually be faster and more efficient than it was before, since Tesla's techs have figured out ways to use the drivetrain better.
I'm not sure where the downside to that is - unless Audi or BMW has a similar service in which they'll rock up to your house in the evening, remove your engine, fit new pistons, recalibrate the ECU and refit everything without waking you.
For free.
They've made one major performance improvement, but since the Model S has been on sale they've made almost constant alterations and improvements to minor software functions.
There's no doubt that one of the less desirable aspects of the Model S so far is that it shipped without functions now expected on luxury vehicles.Yet Features which got updated by Tesla over time have been in use for many years in german cars.
For example:
- Traffic aware cruise control: The W220 S Class got this feature in 1998 (Distronic). The W222 has already improved so much that it even steers by itself. Audis ACC works very well too, you can even get this system in a A3.
- Emergency braking: See above, I have already expierienced ACC saving my butt while being a Audi A8 (D4) passenger. ACC has been around for years.
- Blind spot warning: See above, a very common safety feature you can equip your car with
- Auto high beam: Audis Matrix LED seems better to me and has been around for years and even found its way to Audis smaller cars (A6, A4). + Audi tested this technology in Le Mans
- Forward collsion warnung: See above (Mercedes Pre Safe etc). The W213 E Class will be able to detect upcoming collisions, check the area around your car and then evade the upcoming object by itself (or do emergency brake)
Indeed they do, but it shouldn't be overlooked that when you pay a couple of grand for say, Mercedes 'COMAND' infotainment system, you're stuck with that system for your rest of your time with the car. As is the next owner, and the owner after that.
