Elon Musk has been promising to offer early Tesla owners a media computer upgrade to improve performance, but it has yet to happen.
The CEO now says that it could still happen in the future and cost $2,000, but he doesn’t recommend it – raising some doubts.
Last year, Tesla introduce a new media computer (MCU) and it proved to be about twice as fast as its previous computer.
After launching the new computer in new cars in March 2018, Musk said that existing owners would be able to upgrade, but Tesla service centers haven’t been offering the service more than a year later.
The upgrade is even more in demand right now since Tesla has released a lot of features over the last year that only works on the new computer, like video streaming, TeslaCam, and Sentry Mode.
On Twitter today, Musk said that the upgrade is quite complicated, but he still hopes to offer it “in a few months”:
This is quite a thorny hardware problem, as there are many diff versions of mcu & autopilot computer & supporting hardware. Cars last so much longer than phones! Hopefully able to upgrade mcu1 & ap2.0 in a few months.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2019
However, Musk is also talking down the upgrade – going as far as saying that it is not recommended:
“MCU (infotainment computer) upgrade not recommended in my opinion. Isn’t needed for full self-driving and cost is ~$2,000 for limited entertainment improvements.”
The CEO says that Tesla is working on another software update for the MCU1 that he hopes will improve performance enough.
But he didn’t say if MCU1 Tesla owners will have access to the latest features.
Electrek’s Take
I have a MCU1 Tesla vehicle, but I don’t really mind not having access to an upgrade. I see a lot of early owners complaining about it, but I think it’s foolish.
Tesla delivered so many improvements through software updates that we are now kind of expecting them, but that’s not the right way to look at it.
I see new features that Tesla didn’t promise or sold (looking at you FSD) as bonuses, but we need to understand that the hardware has limitations.
Like most other automakers, if you want the latest hardware, you need to buy a new car.
Of course, that’s more expensive than $2,000, but you get a lot more than a new MCU. And I am not sure that what you get out of a MCU upgrade is worth $2,000.
Would you buy one?
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