Extra Musing: Tesla cars can now park themselves in your garage

Link: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/11/tesla-cars-can-now-park-themselves-after-software-update-summon-detroit-auto-show.html

Recently Tesla motors updated its vehicles with a new feature called Summon. This feature will make it possible for its cars to park itself in and out of a tight parking spot. It can all do this without a driver being present inside the vehicle. The car is literally summoned to do this with a single click on a button. While this is an impressive feature by itself, even more impressive is the ability for Tesla to roll this feature out with an over-the-air-update.

Firmware upgrades are commonly issued for smaller electronics (e.g. call phones) for over a decade but, up to now, the car industry has been mainly using software updates to fix issues with the existing software. For example, in July 2015 Toyota recalled 625,000 Prius models due to a glitch discovered with the hybrid system. Updating an existing a car with new features through software is a relatively new concept, let alone, doing this through an over-air-update from the comfort of one’s garage.

I’m fascinated by this concept as it demonstrates a shift from hardware to software. Over the years, cars have transitioned from a 100% hardware products to a mixture in which software is taking a more important role. Especially electric cars, like Tesla’s vehicles, contain fewer moving parts than existing cars and have many functions taken over by software. Taking the combustion engine out of the equation it is estimated to safe car-owners substantial amounts of maintenance costs. In addition, the car that you buy today is no longer the same as car that you own tomorrow as software updates will provide new features during product lifetime.

While the latter is very exciting to the consumers and car enthusiasts, it is at least as exciting to us as MIS majors. It is a sign that a better product, with less hardware can eventually be sold with many more software features and the option for continuous improvement. This all creating ample opportunities for us to practice agile development.