When Tesla releases a new software update, there are often some things hidden in the source code that are not mentioned in the release notes. Sometimes those things are minor, and other times they can be quite significant.
The latter appears to be the case with Tesla’s latest 2020.24 iteration of its software, as discovered by well-known Tesla hacker @greentheonly.
In his usual dive into the source code, green discovered that Tesla appears to be moving away from its traffic data partner, INRIX. According to green, Tesla used to get this data exclusively from INRIX, and then moved to a combination of INRIX and their own data.
Now it looks like Tesla will rely solely on its fleet of vehicles for traffic and congestion information for re-routing in its in-car navigation.
2020.24 firmware release notes don't say, but Tesla totally removed Inrix there. So now apparently they plan to just depend on their own data gathering?
Also gone is the ability to show accidents ahead and such.Money savings for sure, but I wonder about performance?
— green (@greentheonly) June 24, 2020
If you haven’t heard of INRIX, they are a private company headquartered in Kirkland, Washington that provides location-based traffic data and analytics to Google. Tesla then takes that data from Google to re-route your navigation around accidents and congestion.
According to green, the actual coloured overlays you’re used to seeing on your map will still come from Google.
As green suggests, this could be a cost-cutting measure on Tesla’s part if it believes its fleet of vehicles, now over 1 million, is large enough to provide reliable data. That could certainly be the case in densely Tesla-populated areas like Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, but in areas where there are far fewer it could cause some data-reliability issues.
As Tesla sales continue to grow and more and more vehicles hit the road, this certainly won’t be the last time the automaker will rely on its fleet for certain data elements that drives features in the car.
Do you think there are enough Tesla vehicles where you live for this to work reliably? Let us know in the comments below.
