We haven’t been able to get the recent maps updates on either of our 2 cars (2017 S and X) because we live in an apartment and park in an underground garage with obviously no WiFi but surprisingly strong LTE reception. We get all the firmware updates over LTE, albeit typically with a 1-2 week delay.



I emailed Tesla the other day about this issue and got this crazy response. I offered to reimburse them the $10 per car for LTE data, which this guy claims would bankrupt and cripple the company, but all he had to say was “park at Starbucks.” They seriously want us to park outside a Starbucks (they shut off their Wi-Fi at night and most wont let you park near them overnight to begin with!) for days or weeks on end to get map updates that they can easily push via LTE at a relatively small cost?! Thoughts on how to handle this?



“Sorry to hear that you are having trouble getting the new maps update pushed to your vehicle! Definitely want you to get updates when they become available, however, it is not feasible or sustainable for us to push map updates over LTE due to the costs Tesla would incur as a result. Map files are multiple gigabytes in size.





Similar to your expensive data plan, Tesla also has to pay for the LTE connection in your vehicle, thus we cannot offer this option. There are many owners who request this, and if we obliged then you can possibly imagine the exponential costs we would incur as a result.





Similarly, we cannot offer service center WiFi because we have to use the connections therein for local and remote service. As such, allowing customers to download map updates via this option would slow down the entire network within the service center, overloading bandwidth and preventing resolution of other customer issues.





Lastly, there are currently 200,000 vehicles that could hypothetically receive LTE map updates. Imagining it would cost Tesla $10 minimum per map update via LTE, which would cost approximately $2,000,000; you can quickly see why this would be problematic for our future as a business.



The best existing option may be for you connect at a Starbucks if you don’t have any other convenient method of connecting your Tesla to WiFi. I regret that we cannot provide your desired resolution, but I hope the information provided herein helps clarify our position on this matter.





Best,



Scott McCarthy | Executive Care



12832 Frontrunner Blvd | Draper, UT 84020”

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