[dtgsrq]

At first I was asking myself the odds of a range-boosting update within the first year. I figured 50-50. Now I'm wondering if it will ever come at all. In fact, can anyone name just ONE single *new* feature/improvement (as opposed to a bug fix) that JLR has made to the I-Pace through software updates in the first 18 months of it's existence? Heck I still can't get SOTA updates... (awaiting dealer callback to 'authorize').

Don't get me wrong, I still love the car, but Tesla set the bar high on expectations of "continuous improvement" in EVs, not only in range or performance (unleash a few more HP to get to sub-4 sec 60-time??), but in other features, including convenience, safety, and entertainment. Will be interesting to see if Tesla stands alone in this regard, or if others producing EVs (Audi, Mercedes, Nissan, Hyundai, etc.) follow suit.

As the one-year mark of the first U.S. I-Pace sale arrives next Wednesday (10/16), I'm curious if other I-Pace owners are even slightly disappointed about this. (FYI, it came out in Europe in March 2018, so really 18 months since launch.) Many of you haven't had the car very long yet (admittedly, readership of the forum drops off for most after 6 months or so), and thus maybe have a different perspective.

Going on 10 months of ownership, am I the only one who had any expectation of this nature?

 

[Meldev##44]

I tend to agree. JLR has not made any proactive updates.
I have done 1 SOTA, waiting for another to happen soon.
My dealer was interested in me after I purchased, but they are silent since then.

 

[sciencegeek]

This is worth reading in the context of this thread.

I had a great session and got a lot of interesting insight. It was not possible to get all questions answered but I was more than happy with what I got. I cant hope to write it all down here but I'll try to cover most of it.

TLDR: A lot of cool stuff is happening on the engineering side. They are extremely passionate about the car and they are working really hard to improve the vehicle in terms of efficiency and performance. I deeply respect the amount of effort and thought that went into engineering the I-Pace and pretty much every aspect I could think of had a logical answer. Infotainment is a bit of a sore spot. Don't expect miracles.

Here are my key takeaways.

Infotainment is, as we already knew, not developed in house at all. My understanding is that going forward the infotainment system will continue to be supported but we're talking bug fixes only. System performance, is, as we already suspected, compromised by the fact that the hardware is underpowered now that it has to power a lot more than the single screen infotainment systems seen in older JLR vehicles (bar the Velar). They are aware of most of the bugs but the infotainment team was not represented so specific bugs were kinda tricky to get into. One of the main challenges for JLR in terms of testing and QA is the fact that the fleet out there is running on a very fragmented combination of different software versions for different components. Some dealers are doing a great job with updating everything with the latest software while others only update the very minimum. JLR really want to use the SOTA program to improve the situation which will in turn make it easier for them to test and do QA in a way that is most representative for a large portion of the vehicle fleet. Infotainment is not developed in house, which is well known. If I was to give my interpretation, it would be as follows. Tesla does their infotainment development entirely in house. This allows them to easily decide to add new features, bring larger overhauls and improvements as they see fit. Other manufactures write a spec and find a vendor to develop the system for them. Once delivered, the vendor's obligation is to support the product (probably for a finite period of time) with bug fixes and minor tweaks. Then the manufacturer repeats the process for the next generation infotainment.

One thing they made very clear was to stop worrying about the max soc. Charge the battery to 100% as much as you want. Charging to 80% makes no measurable difference. To the extent it was ever an issue with EVs it's been pretty much eliminated with the advancements in battery composition. Charging to 50% can theoretically be beneficial but discharging it down below 10% is not so just charge it up all the way and enjoy the car. Frequent fast charging (50kw is not considered fast charging by the way) can also degrade the battery so, as we all know, use fast charging when needed but don't rely on it for daily charging. So, stop worrying and enjoy the car. And help spread the knowledge to all those worried about charging up the battery.

One thing to note. If you find yourself only doing short trips, always charging to 100% and never going below the 90's, it might be a good idea to do a deeper discharge every now and then in order to rebalance cells.

Improvements to charging is coming. 100+kw for more sustained periods is exactly what's being worked on.

The focus moving forward seems to be to keep improving efficiency and charging. They've learned a lot about their EV platform and keep figuring out ways to improve things. Also, we will be seeing some exciting engineering related news soon. Unfortunately, it will require a trip to the dealer but give it a month or two and I'm sure we'll receive official information. i won't spoil it here but some of it has been alluded to here previously several times.

Perhaps surprisingly, there seems to be confusion internally about the state of the SOTA rollout so I wont go out on a limb and speculate too much. However, my understanding is that SOTA currently covers infotainment only. Not for long though.

Finally, they are genuinely surprised and fascinated by the technical interest shown by customers. They realize we are frustrated by the lack of clear communication and they seem to be working on ways to improve the situation.

 

[LewisLatimer]

Excellent! Thanks for sharing!

 

[dtgsrq]

Yes, sciencegeek, very appropriate and useful referral. It's a long thread, with about 200 posts and 10k views.
Makes sense about the Infotainment being outsourced and therefore unlikely to see meaningful upgrades.

arvdev sets some high expectations for "engineering news" this month, let's see what comes...

Vote?
(a) faster charging
(b) range improvement
(c) improved GoM accurracy
(d) SOTA updates for more than just Infotainment
(e) all of the above

 

[LewisLatimer]

@sciencegeek -- What's the URL to the original UK forum discussion? I'd like to read this info in context. Thanks!

 

[jsimon7777]

I never expected feature updates, just maybe bug fixes. It seems 9/10 times, people hate their Tesla updates.

 

[dennis]

@dtgsrq - One way to look at this is that the core competencies of the traditional auto makers are in drivetrains, body design and manufacturing. They outsource the engineering and production of the rest of the components, and especially the electronics and software, to suppliers. The core competencies of Tesla are in electronics (including the electric drivetrain), software and body design. This gives Tesla an advantage with cars becoming much more electronics and software intensive, but they have a disadvantage in manufacturing. So as an iPace owner you get superior paint, panel gaps and interior materials but have to live with substandard software and no feature updates. The Tesla owners are in exactly the opposite situation - issues with paint and panel gaps but good software that keeps getting better with OTA updates. Choose your poison.

 

[LewisLatimer]

Found it: https://www.ipaceforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2353&start=70

 

[Ayepace]

@dtgsrq - One way to look at this is that the core competencies of the traditional auto makers are in drivetrains, body design and manufacturing. They outsource the engineering and production of the rest of the components, and especially the electronics and software, to suppliers. The core competencies of Tesla are in electronics (including the electric drivetrain), software and body design. This gives Tesla an advantage with cars becoming much more electronics and software intensive, but they have a disadvantage in manufacturing. So as an iPace owner you get superior paint, panel gaps and interior materials but have to live with substandard software and no feature updates. The Tesla owners are in exactly the opposite situation - issues with paint and panel gaps but good software that keeps getting better with OTA updates. Choose your poison.

Have you forgotten that the whole assembly of the I-pace is outsourced too? Magna Steyr builds it. Same Austrian plant as MB G-wagon, BMW 5 series, E-pace and something else, as I recall. Jaguar did design their own electric motors. Every car is an assembly of parts (and software) from the lowest bidder. "You get what you pay for."

VW outsourced engine control module programming to Bosch. Look what that got them. Yes, there was collusion between VW and Bosch people.

It appears that someone is trying to make "one program fit all" too. Microsoft pushed out OS updates in a one-for-all package and ran into many issues. The first of which is that the upgrade was so big it didn't fit on smaller devices than they apparently use to test. For example, the upgrade was 10GB in size and didn't need most of that on a 16GB device. There was no room the upgrade to download or for its "back up" files so the upgrades failed. Their current updates seem to be looking for what is really needed and downloading appropriately.

Jaguar (or their supplier) should take note of this. ICE vehicles don't need EV related programming and vice versa.

Also, the last dealership I went to said that each update had to be downloaded fresh from England thus making a very long update. I hope Jaguar has been addressing this with mirror sites located much closer to their markets to reduce the network lag. Download from the UK for every car worldwide can't possibly be sustainable as the number of Jaguar cars increases (positive thinking).

Yes, sciencegeek, very appropriate and useful referral. It's a long thread, with about 200 posts and 10k views.
Makes sense about the Infotainment being outsourced and therefore unlikely to see meaningful upgrades.

arvdev sets some high expectations for "engineering news" this month, let's see what comes...

Vote?
(a) faster charging
(b) range improvement
(c) improved GoM accurracy
(d) SOTA updates for more than just Infotainment
(e) all of the above

None of the above. If they are keeping step with t-company then they have to get rolling on games, body sounds, and different ways to toot the horn. Let's spend that TATA investment money wisely! :wink2:

Faster charging may limited by the hardware.

Range improvement may be limited by what they designed into motors.

GoM - possibly achievable like the mpg guess in one of the cars I have. It adapts its fudge factor based on range and amount of fuel fill over several of the most recent fill up intervals. It becomes very accurate. That's 2004 technology though. Is it repeatable in 2019 technology?

SOTA for more. Well they've announced it a long time ago. Based on what we've seen in the non-SOTA updates, I'd be happy to wait for better quality before jumping to more modules.