My Tesla Software Wishlist

I recently purchased a Tesla Model 3 and have found it to be an amazing car and piece of technology in general. After driving it for a while, I find it hard to going back to driving a traditional car. To me, it is like going from a PC to a Mac. Tesla’s software greatly enhances the hardware and it is, for the most part, very intuitive. My kids, who don’t know a world without touch screens took to the console right away. The latest v9 software update added even more cool features and now I don’t mind waiting for my wife in the car since I can play Atari games!

However, there are a bunch of things that I wish the Tesla Software could do in the future. They are as follows:

Smart Charging

I currently have my car set to charge when rates are lowest, around 2AM. However, there are times when I need a long charge and times when I don’t. It would be cool if the Tesla software would calculate how long it needs to fully charge and start charging when it needs to, centered around a time that I provide. For example, I should be able to specify that my ideal charging time is 2AM and if it needs only an hour to charge, start then, but if it needs four hours to charge, it should begin two hours prior to 2AM and end two hours after 2AM. If it needs to charge six hours, it would charge from 11PM to 5AM. This feature would mean that I would never have to manually change the charging start time based upon how much I have driven that day.

Unlock Chargeport @ Home

One this ever happened to you? You are at home. It is late at night. You want to charge your Tesla overnight. You go to the garage and then realize you don’t have your phone or keycard on you. Thus, you cannot open the chargeport and charge your car unless you go back and grab your phone or key. I think you should have an option setting to tell your car that if it is at the home address and I press the button on my charger to open the chargeport, it should always open, even in the car is locked.

Top of Screen Buttons

In the latest v9 software release, some of the key buttons you need on the console have moved all of the way to the right. Things like choosing the driver profile, selecting the phone, etc… My wife can’t easily reach these buttons. The ones used most often should be closer to the driver at the top of the screen.

Apple Carplay-like features

Apple Carplay has some really cool features that I think Tesla should copy. The ability to have texts read, deep integration into phone music playlists/podcasts, etc…