Tesla Will Have Smartphone-Like Regular Iterations Of Its Cars

Tesla seems adamant to prove that it is not just a regular car company. The company will have new versions of its cars every 12-18 months, which would have major improvements over previous versions, as indicated by CEO Elon Musk’s tweets Satuday.

Going by Musk’s tweet, Tesla functioning would be similar to that of a smartphone company rather than traditional car companies.

Traditional car companies generally offer incremental improvements in the next-in-line version of an existing car. For example, while Ford has been incrementally improving its Mustang since 1963, the car still espouses a design philosophy similar to the original.

On the other hand, smartphone companies generally retain just the basics such as design and mostly revamp the device with every new model, enticing the customer to replace their old phones with new versions. After a couple of generations, a phone can very easily be rendered obsolete since smartphone technology evolves fast.

According to Musk’s tweets, there are unlikely to be any retrofits — i.e. your old Tesla car’s hardware would not be upgraded to make it come to par with the new version of the car, even if you are willing to pay for the same.

Musk himself illustrated how different a car’s new version would be from the previous one. Retrofitting a Model X would require “stripping the entire car” and replacing 300 parts.

From the point of view of customers, this could be a mix of good and bad. If you are in the market for a new Tesla, you would get an up-to-date car with the company’s newest technology. But, if you have already invested your savings in a Tesla and then realize that the version of the car you bought would become obsolete in around a year’s time, it might be a sore point.