Tesla Reckons It's Cured Range Anxiety With This New Over-The-Air Update

When Elon Musk announced last week that Tesla was bringing an end to range anxiety, we were expecting something groundbreaking. At a press conference today, Musk revealed the next over-the-air update to the Model S’s software (v6.2, for those keeping count) will introduce two new features that will mean it’s pretty much impossible to run out of battery charge by accident. Not as exciting as we’d hoped, but interesting nonetheless.

The first feature is Range Assurance, which communicates with the supercharger network in real time to make sure you’re always aware of which chargers are within range. It can take a number of factors into consideration, such as traffic, hills and wind speed along the route to provide a more accurate calculation of your range.

The other new feature is Trip Planner, which calculates the fastest route to your destination via any Superchargers that may be needed along the way. This is particularly useful for long trips, such as our fraught London to Paris journey, as we had to research which Superchargers we’d need beforehand. With this update, we could’ve just tapped Paris in as the destination, and the onboard GPS would figure out when and where we should recharge.

Couple these with the fact that Tesla’s Supercharger network is constantly growing, and you can see how range anxiety is becoming less of a problem for Tesla owners. If the clever people at Musk’s disposal can drop charging times further, EVs will continue to become ever-more viable alternatives, especially considering topping up is free.

As well as the range anxiety announcements, Musk revealed new autonomous driving features that are being added to the Model S. In the next update, which is expected to take effect in the next 10 days, autonomous emergency braking and blind spot monitoring will be activated.

Later this year, v7.0 of the Model S’s software will be released, with a complete overhaul of the user interface and even more autonomous driving features. It’ll include self-steering functions that can be used on major roads - test cars can currently get from San Francisco to Seattle with the driver hardly touching the wheel.

Another cool feature is the ability to summon your car; hit a button on your phone and the car will leave your garage or its parking space and meet you.