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by enragedcacti 1600 days ago
Munro praised the heat pump design in newer Model 3/Ys which are now failing at pretty high rates in dangerously cold conditions. I don't doubt that the design is very clever and efficient, but I wouldn't take Munro's approval as an indication of how reliable a design will be into the future and in extreme (i.e. non-Californian) conditions.
1 comments

They failed to fix it with the first OTA update. As far as I'm aware we don't really know if the second OTA has fixed it entirely, if its just switching to the "motor slip" mode of heating sooner, or if we will see more failures in the future.

Either way I think the point stands that Munro's analysis didn't catch this possible failure mode.

Are you at least going to acknowledge the fact that Tesla can, in span of a few days, and then few days after, push multiple fixes to its entire fleet of vehicles whereas any other manufacturer would have had to physically get those cars in, pay for labor, hire cars, etc.

Are you aware of how often other cars of any brand/class are recalled for issues that Tesla simply pushes OTA to fix? Issues that never makes the news (dozens per week of them) while the OTA does? If you don't know, I suggest you look into it.

The first OTA was last winter, not a couple days before the next OTA. I am glad that Tesla has started to drag everyone else forward with software updates but I think the heat pump issue is still a valuable data point for evaluating Tesla's engineering prowess and methodology. You can't hotfix every mechanical issue and I think you could argue that Tesla's methodology can lead to more rapid improvements but more unexpected problems than the more cautious approach of other manufacturers.