\n<\/p>\n
For most of its short life, my Tesla Model 3 has aged beautifully. Since I bought the car, in 2019, it has received a number of new features simply by updating its software. My navigation system no longer just directs me to EV chargers along my route\u2014it also shows me, in real time, how many plugs are free. With the push of a button, I can activate \u201cCar Wash Mode,\u201d and the Tesla will put itself in neutral and disable the windshield wipers. Some updates are more helpful than others: Thanks to Elon Musk and his middle-school humor, I can now play an updated array of fart sounds when an unsuspecting passenger sits down.<\/p>\n
But Musk is already starting to leave my car behind. In July, Tesla rolled out a version of Musk\u2019s AI assistant, Grok, to its vehicles. Even as a chatbot skeptic, I could see the usefulness of asking my car for information without having to fumble with my phone. Alas, at present Grok runs only on Teslas made in the past few years, which have a more advanced processor to power their infotainment system. My sedan is simply too old.<\/p>\n
Cars used to be entirely mechanical objects. With hard work and expertise, basically any old vehicle could be restored and operated: On YouTube, you can watch a man drive a 1931 Alvis to McDonald\u2019s. But the car itself was stuck in time. If the automaker added a feature to the following year\u2019s model, you just didn\u2019t get it. Things have changed. My Model 3 has few dials or buttons; nearly every feature is routed through the giant central touch screen. It\u2019s not just Tesla: Many new cars\u2014and especially electric cars\u2014are now stuffed with software, receiving over-the-air updates to fix bugs, tweak performance, or add new functionality.<\/p>\n
In other words, your car is a lot like an iPhone (so much so that in the auto industry, describing EVs as \u201csmartphones on wheels\u201d has become a go-to clich\u00e9.) This has plenty of advantages\u2014the improved navigation, the fart noises\u2014but it also means that your car may become worse because the software is outdated, not because the parts break. Even top-of-the-line phones are destined to become obsolete\u2014still able to perform the basic functions like phone calls and texts, but stuck with an old operating system and failing apps. The same struggle is now coming for cars.<\/p>\n
Software-dependent cars are still new enough that it\u2019s unclear how they will age. \u201cIt\u2019s becoming the ethos of the industry that everyone\u2019s promising a continually evolving car, and we don\u2019t yet know how they\u2019re going to pull that off,\u201d Sean Tucker, a senior editor at Kelley Blue Book, told me. \u201cCars last longer than technology does.\u201d The problem with cars as smartphones on wheels is that these two machines live and die on very different timescales. Many Americans trade in their phone every year and less than 30 percent keep an iPhone for longer than three years, but the average car on the road is nearly 13 years old. (Tesla didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment about how its cars age.)<\/p>\n
Automakers have a legal requirement to offer free repairs on safety recalls for 15 years after a car was sold to its first owner. Many will issue recalls or updates for cars that are even older than that. \u201cBut it\u2019s a different question when it comes to something like the Grok upgrade,\u201d Tucker said. \u201cTesla never promised you Grok.\u201d Future updates could be too computationally demanding for a car\u2019s hardware to handle\u2014especially as automakers race to introduce AI and autonomous features. Although missing out on such features wouldn\u2019t hurt the driving experience, the apps that incorporate these enhancements might get slow or buggy on cars with older computers. \u201cCertain models are destined to age their way out of compatibility with the latest software. It\u2019s like trying to put Windows 11 on a PC from 2010,\u201d Nick Yekikian, a senior news editor at the car site Edmunds, told me. \u201cIt would probably result in something completely unusable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Car companies have already signaled their intent to let older cars become obsolete. Throughout the 2010s, many vehicles came with 3G connectivity to power a host of in-car features, such as the ability to lock or unlock the car from one\u2019s phone. Lapped by superior 4G and 5G, the network shut down in 2022\u2014lots of 3G cars were still driving around. Subaru upgraded some of its vehicles to the new standard for free, and Tesla let its drivers pay for the better hardware. But when the 3G shutdown came along, companies including Ford, Hyundai, and Audi canceled services for the associated vehicles. \u201cMost automakers\u2019 response,\u201d Tucker said, \u201cwas, Well, you don\u2019t have connectivity anymore<\/em>.\u201d Those cars remained drivable, but in some cases, features that relied on the 3G network\u2014including SOS emergency assistance and automatic crash notifications\u2014just stopped working.<\/p>\n Wassym Bensaid, Rivian\u2019s chief software officer, told me that the EV company is trying to combat the obsolescence issue by giving its computer systems \u201cheadroom,\u201d a coder\u2019s way of saying space to grow and add new features. His stated goal is to keep Rivians updatable for seven to 10 years. But what about after?<\/p>\n The worst-case scenario for today\u2019s software-dependent car is the fate of Fisker, which went bankrupt in 2024\u2014leaving no one to send out software patches or fix glitches. Some of the roughly 11,000 Fisker SUVs on the road \u201chad software issues that, if not corrected, would\u2019ve eventually made the car useless,\u201d Cristian Fleming, the president of the Fisker Owners Association, told me. His group of owners banded together to update Fisker\u2019s software. The long-standing auto giants, as well as the established EV start-ups such as Rivian and Lucid, are in a far better position than Fisker to stick around for the long haul. But, although IT support will very likely be there for your EV a decade from now, it is not guaranteed.<\/p>\n Most people just want to make the grocery run, whether they have a 2011 Toyota RAV4 or a new, six-figure Rivan. A vehicle that routes all of its basic functions through a touch screen can\u2019t afford for the software to get laggy like an old iPhone. Bensaid promises that decade-old EVs won\u2019t turn into pumpkins just because they get old. \u201cYou\u2019ll be able to drive your car in a stable and safe way,\u201d he said. But once software-dependent cars stop receiving updates, they will start to get worse. Maybe the navigation system starts to crash, or the Netflix app in your Tesla becomes so buggy that you can\u2019t play KPop Demon Hunters<\/em> while waiting for the car to recharge. These are the kind of nuisances many smartphone owners know well: not bad enough to make the device unusable, but annoying enough to make you think about trading it in.<\/p>\n Applying the same logic to an automobile threatens to ruin one of the best things about cars, especially electric ones: They endure. Unlike gas-powered cars\u2014which have a conglomeration of timing belts, spark plugs, and mufflers\u2014EVs are simple, with just a few dozen moving parts. That means they can last even longer than traditional vehicles, replacing the battery, electric motors, and a few other components when necessary. But as cars become smartphones on wheels, they may not get that shot at longevity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For most of its short life, my Tesla Model 3 has aged beautifully. Since I bought the car, in 2019, it has received a number of new features simply by updating its software. 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