What happened to the Tesla updates every month or so?

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After writing “13 Possible Things for Tesla’s Demand (Good and Bad) in the Years to Come,” I was still thinking about demand drivers and thinking about what makes Tesla cars special. And then I remembered something Elon Musk wrote years ago. Shortly after I bought my Tesla Model 3 in 2019, we got a new software version that added YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and some awesome video games to the Tesla’s touchscreen. It was exciting, fun, and made owning a Tesla something very special. I think it was at that time that Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla would release important updates to Tesla cars about once a month. These days, it’s rare to find significant Tesla system updates, especially if you take the “Full Self Driving” updates (which most owners don’t get) out of the equation.

In fact, going back further, before 2019, Tesla was the king of Easter eggs. Tesla had incorporated tons of fun, playful, sometimes even surprising Easter eggs into his cars. It seemed that it was often one or two of these that caught the new buyer. They were more hidden, where you had to know or guess the key word and type it to reveal the Easter egg. Tesla collected the big ones and placed them in the clear are for the touch screen. Since then, it seems that not much has been added.

Whether we’re talking about efficiency and range improvements, cool new features, or funky Easter eggs, Tesla’s software updates have been few and far between for a while. We certainly don’t get notable upgrades every month – not even close.

Now, I haven’t spent much time thinking about this, I’m just one person, and I’m going to spend a few minutes here brainstorming updates that would be nice to have. So, Tesla should be able to do better if it cares and tries, but it seems the company doesn’t care and doesn’t try to add as many fun and useful features as often as it used to. Here are some improvements that I would like to enjoy:

1. Enable it to send what I’m looking at on my phone to the Tesla touch screen.
2. Add ESPN+ to the Venue options. (There’s already Disney+ and Hulu — how hard could it be to add ESPN+, which is in the same corporate family and comes as part of a package with Disney+ and Hulu?)
3. Add a Mandalorian easter egg where the touchscreen turns into a Razor Crest control panel and Grogu appears in the front passenger seat on the screen. Also send some random missions or “tasks” given by the Guild. (Oh, well, considering Elon Musk’s fight with Disney, maybe this wouldn’t be a legal option for Tesla.)
4. Give Tesla owners the option to customize the touchscreen the way they want it most, or at least restore the previous versions that were better and easier to use!
5. Provide the option to drag part of the navigation path to a different street of your choice.
6. Provide an option to lock the navigation bar so that it doesn’t change to you while driving for no apparent reason.
7. Add a warning (a yellow flash on the screen or something, for example) when you enter the school zone.
8. Make other Teslas on the road look like Teslas on the traffic map and show them in their own color scheme.
9. Add Tennis Channel+, Peacock, and Paramount+ to Theater options.
10. Add apps like Google Suite apps, Weather app, Starbucks, Target, WhatsApp, etc
11. Give owners the option of having automatic windshield wipers that work like a normal car (ie, work properly).

Those are just a few quick thoughts that came to me this evening. Any others?

I can’t remember the last time we got any of the above updates.