Except at a service center there's presumably the opportunity to replace the firmware chip or board if they brick it during the update whereas a bad OTA update leaves you little option.
OTOH I'd risk a bad OTA update 1% of the time if it meant avoiding the service center the other 99% of the time. And I'm sure a bad update is just a call and a tow away from a fix at a Tesla service center. Unless you're on a road-trip I guess.
How about registering your "garage coordinates" with your car's computer so that it can detect when you're on a road trip and give you the option of installing an update or not? (When you are stopped and have parked the car, of course.)
Exactly. In the same way my computer remembers which monitor I plug into it (work, home office one, home office two, etc) and recalls the configuration of the second screen... the car should know when it is plugged into your home charge port. Various features should only be available when plugged into your home charge port.
With the march of Moore's Law, it should currently be feasible for automobile controllers to actually run under a kind of hypervisor and keep a copy of the old system so that it can roll back. (Including by request of the owner.)
I feel like you've uncovered a horror movie plot from the future. Teen girls take off on a road trip in their Tesla Model Z, when an unfortunately timed OTA update leaves them stranded in a land of backwoods hillbillies... with secrets they'd rather stay secret.
They could make the previous firmware easily restorable - like the BIOS on post-2008 computers - all of them have a shadow copy that can be restored if the new BIOS does not work. Hold two buttons and start the car or something :-)
