"Lack of charging stations, lack of support. Lack of cellular, WI-FI and every now and then satellite interruptions seem to cause headaches. Special tires often mean 3-5 days waiting for a flat tire to be replaced."
This was posted by dellet way back in #13. I didn't realize that cell service and WI-Fi was a concern for these. Most of the places we love to recreate at have no cellular, and indeed vast swaths of our state are lacking good or ANY service. In fact you'd better plan carefully just to find a gas station in many areas, and I doubt that the situation would be different for dedicated charging stations -- jd
To be fair and clear, this is becoming more and more of a problem with all cars. The electrics are on the cutting edge of technology, so it shows more.
Drive by phone apps are becoming more common for all cars. In the case of Tesla and I would think all manufacturers, this requires a signal from your phone to the company server, back to the car. You can still use the controls of the car, just can not control them with your phone when you lose service.
Navigation tho, can be a problem. If you leave the car key at home, because you trust your phone, it can be a problem. Tesla has a famous incident a couple years ago when their servers went down, about half the Teslas in the world could not be accessed or started.
Leaving your key at home is operator error. Servers going down and stranding a few hundred thousand people is a design problem. A combination of Bluetooth and WiFi has helped, instead of only one or the other. You can now pair your smart watch to your car, works great until you lose the pairing.
These issues show up in strange ways . A customer walks into an independent repair shop and the complaint is “my phone won’t talk to my car”. First response was take it to the dealer, customer answered with “they told me to take it to the phone store, phone store told me take it to the dealer. Where is the closest Apple store, that won’t help anyway.
Many of the navigation programs are WiFi. Start your trip at home, plot your course, drive to your favorite getaway place, with no connection. The programmed route will stay on screen until you shut the car off or put it in park depending on Model. You’re almost to your remote destination, outside of cell service, and the road is closed. Better have a paper map, your now off route with no way to “recalculate”.
Another interesting technology issue is the life span of a wet magnetic strip or chip. The cutting edge keys these days are cards. How long do you have with your key, phone or both in your pocket after falling in the river before it’s useless?
I still have not found an answer to what happen to self driving systems when the signal disappears. Seems to be conflicting information.
Search “wait times for charging stations in Las Vegas”. Every electric car with a charging station locator sends everyone to the same limited sources. 4-5 hour waits to plug in are common on holidays.
Again some of this is EV specific, some is becoming a problem with all vehicles. But until threads like this pop up and the horror stories get told, no one stops to think.
One last feature every one should disable. Automatic braking.
Imagine finding yourself in the middle of the latest peaceful protest and wanting get out, even if you have to run over someone to escape. The car won’t let you go because it senses an object.
She’s parked at a light and two people walk out, one in front, one to the rear and the third is now at the door. What exactly is the exit plan for your 16 year old daughter?
And at around 4700 pounds, no lightweight.
