Despite years The effort and expenditure of billions of dollars, none of the car manufacturers in the world has yet equaled the prowess of Tesla to provide live software updates (OTA). As with your phone and laptop, these refreshments of the operating system allow owners to upgrade their cars remotely.
Tesla presented OTA in 2012, but now Elon Musk’s company exhibits these updates like no other car manufacturer. “Tesla published 42 updates once in the six months,” CTO for the Capgemini automobile. But for many other car manufacturers, says Lapeyre, Otas Ship “maybe once a year”.
For traditional car manufacturers, software remains or has been until recently, only one bolted component among many. On the other hand, for Tesla and other digital native car manufacturers – Rivian, Lucid, Polestar and Chinese brands such as Byd, Xpeng and Xiaomi – it’s almost the whole shebang.
Interestingly, GM was in fact the first automaker to introduce the OTA functionality, two years ahead of Tesla, but it was limited to the onstar telematic system. OTAs of traditional car manufacturers often add infotainment adjustments, while OTA of digital marks focused on digital can be shifts, increasing scope and strengthening speed. They often also offer the characteristics of the childish to real performance: PET noise at Tesla’s request, the plush suspension for Rivian owners and unlocking cars by phone from Polestar.
Cars have had microprocessors on board since the 1970s, but until relatively recently traditional car manufacturers have made their cars with software designed to remain largely unchanged throughout the life of a vehicle. Since 2021, the complexity of the latest vehicle software platforms has increased by around 40% per year, Estimates McKinsey. In the United States, there are now 69 million OTA compatible vehicles in the United States.
These vehicles defined by software, or SDV, would stimulate car sales, hoped for car manufacturers. According to two dashboards measuring the progress of the SDV, Tesla leads the pack. Gartner’s digital manufacturer’s index for 2025 places manufacturers of Chinese electric vehicles Nio and Xiaomi in second and third positions, respectively. Wards Intelligence should be the three to beat. At the other end of the scale, and similar to the analysis of the neighborhoods, Nissan, Toyota, Mazda and Jaguar Land Rover is worth it.
Economy and sale
Well done, the OTAs not only refresh the user experience of a car, but they can also reduce the cost of reminders for car manufacturers. More than 13 million vehicles were recalled in 2024 due to software problems, an increase of 35% compared to the previous year. Before OTA, the average cost of an automobile recall was around $ 500 per vehicle. OTAs can be delivered wirelessly, but they are not free, neither for the environment nor for car manufacturers – Harman Automotive, an OTA software provider, estimates that it costs a car manufacturer $ 66.50 per vehicle to offer an update of 1 GB.
But these are generally only digital natives sending huge update files, because generally they are capable of updating live firmware (FOTA). These can update motorcycle groups, battery management and braking systems. FOTA capacities require cars – generally electric vehicles – to have good persistent connectivity and significant calculation power, a large part has left latent for future updates. The Gravity de Lucid electric SUV, for example, is equipped with the latest Nvidia Orin-X processor, with 512 GB of storage on board, but the vehicle operating system adapts to only 100 GB, leaving lots of space for subsequent OTA refreshments.
As income from Western automotive companies are falling, car manufacturers are looking to earn money with OTA compatible subscriptions. Give Tesla $ 2,000 and, with the optional acceleration boost, your EV can be unlocked live to become a tire scream more quickly. For an additional $ 10 per month, Tesla’s “Premium Connectivity” package adds streaming data, live sentry cams and other goodies. Do you want what the criticisms say that the supervised functionality of the self-automatic (FSD) is worried? It is yours for an additional $ 99 per month.
