I had an incident that was as fortuitous as the alignment of the holes in Swiss cheese and, frankly, I wanted to take the vehicle to an open field, pour petrol on it and burn it. Fortunately, I am calm now and I think I will pay special attention to prevent that from happening again.

Let me tell you what happened first. The fire alarm went off in the building next to our apartment and soon after I saw three or four fire trucks, police cars and ambulances and I realised how serious the situation was. There was an air of panic and I tried to stay as calm as possible and take precautions. I even didn’t have time to think about if there was a possibility of the fire spreading or not. At that moment I just wanted to get my family into the car and get away from the crowd for a while. We wouldn’t get cold and my wife and kids could sit in the car for a long time, or even sleep if necessary. I had in mind to switch on the camping mode, listen to music, put on cartoons and keep my daughters occupied.

Guess what happened? No, it was charged, don’t worry. Even if the charge was 10%, that was no problem. There was a bigger problem:

Yeah, when I needed the car the most, it started updating for half an hour. The car wouldn’t move, I couldn’t get the air conditioning to work. I also couldn’t open the doors in my first try, I had to use the manual handle to get out. I had to deal with this stupid thing while my neighbours were leaving the building with or without their cars. And Tesla didn’t help me when we needed it most. We had to wait outside in the cold.

Now that I think about it, I realise that scheduling the update is actually a feature that shouldn’t be there. When I first got the car, I tried it in a supermarket car park to learn how to do the update. It took 45 minutes, and if it had taken another five minutes I probably would have got a ticket, Germany is very strict about parking. I then got into the habit of doing these updates at night, but I have learnt first hand that this is also a very bad idea, as you never know when you will really need the car.

I have some questions to Tesla: Does it really make sense to you that for one reason or another you can’t drive the car for 45 minutes? I am okay with 2-3 minutes, but how about 45 minutes? Another question, I can imagine how technically difficult this is, but why can’t I drive the car during the update? At least that should be possible for a short distance to be able to get away from the scene, and at least I should be able to use the air conditioning. I also have to say that the black screen during this update is very annoying. I didn’t know until I tried it that I could wake up the car by touching the screen randomly, or at least use the door openers. I still don’t know if it was possible to stop the update somehow. It would be better to see some instructions instead of a black screen.

For now, I will keep the following rules in mind for future update:

• Update the software as infrequently as possible. Read the changelog and if there is no important update, skip it.
• If you’re going to update, make sure you don’t really need a car. Choose a time and place where it is easier to get a taxi, take the bus or hire a car for a short time.
• Ask for an update when you return the car to the service center, or ask for an update when you collect the car and carry it out there.

Many EV lovers tell that you don’t need to leave your car to the service for updating the software, however it’s not such a harmless advantage. I would never ignore the positive aspects that an electric car has brought to my life, but at that moment any internal combustion engine car would have been more than enough, and believe me, I wanted it. I hope that never happens to anyone else.