Software Download Speed

Is this your first time? Par for course last 10 years

If you have a mobile hot spot on your phone you can connect the hot spot to the car and enable it to stay connected while driving. Then you can download updates while driving and do the install whenever you get to where you're going. The downloads do take an annoyingly long time.

No way this has been par on any course for 10 years. My ‘23 M3 would never start fast, slow down to turtle speeds and then ramp back up. This is something in the last 1-1.5 years I’ve noticed and it’s quite obnoxious. No software should take well over an hour JUST to download.

Done it with my mobile hotspot and it doesn’t change how it slows down to deathly slow speeds. It just makes absolutely no sense. I submitted a suggestion ticket, I’m sure nothing will happen but like I’ve said before- it shouldn’t take longer to download the software than it does to install it.

Had Tesla way longer but sure

I’m telling you with complete confidence, my M3 I leased in 2023 NEVER did this, only after roughly the 2 year mark did I see this strange ass slow down. It’s something they’ve changed in how the software downloads, but starting fast to slow down this much….makes no sense.

Its going to take a while regardless. Im just saying with the mobile Hotspot you can at least do it while driving to wherever you're going .

Let’s put it this way, I’ve been watching it on and off (in the car) with solid WiFi for 90 minutes and it isn’t even 3/4 done. That’s just wild. If I were using my hotspot- it would probably be worst since I’d be driving and getting better and the worse internet. At least where I am, it’s a steady strength and it still makes no difference.

i thought i could expedite the update by connecting to home wifi. sat there waiting for 3 hours playing sudoku until i gave up and switched to hotspot. waited another hour, still slow. end up having to drive to a client, and speeds increased from 9kb/s to 20-40mb/s or something insane. my brain was like, gotta heat up the receptor just like ya heat up the battery for preconditioning. no way its true but im gonna make sure i have the car download updates during an active trip just to check. (andfor good luck)

I just gave up after 90 minutes. It’s a wild waste of time especially since the first 50% downloaded in 5 minutes and I got maybe 10% more downloaded after in 85 minutes. Something doesn’t add up.

Good luck with that

It has always been like this. Fast - check - fast.

its that slow. Thats why i installed wifi at my parkingspace so it can download it over night

Why are you asking a question, and then arguing with people when they give you an answer.

It stops for multiple checks along the way which makes it feel like a crawl

normal af

After reading through the comments I think you should go through Tesla service. They’ll determine if it’s a faulty modem. Wouldn’t be the first time one needed replacing.

Normal since my first M3 in 2019. Sometimes you don’t notice because it does it overnight. Didn’t matter if it was my WiFi, a hotspot, or a supercharging WiFi. Guessing the servers at the other end consider it a background activity and it gets a lower priority than, say, unlocking your doors from the app. Plus when a new release comes out, it’s probably busy updating lots of cars.

Mine has always been like this too (2020 M3P) I asked about it at a Tesla dealership and the guy said that because the updates are so absolutely critical and can brick the car if they go tits up, it is designed to download various packets of data, verify them, repeat. So you get these long pauses despite it looking like it's downloading.

Correct me if i'm wrong since this is just a tech guess, but when any device downloads any update two things happen. The actual update package download and then writing(reading) it to the hard drive. I don't know the specifics apart from the processor, but I would assume that the hardware in Tesla are not top of the line most expensive computer parts. Basically why it takes so long to download is because writing the update to the hard drive is slow, which is normal and this reduces the download speed or stops it completely. I had a very old PC for years and game updates would work the same way as these Tesla software updates.

My 2018 model 3 does this, it ain’t new brotha

Yeah, when you start downloading, it takes awhile! They take awhile to install as well!

Never understood why updates don’t download over cellular? You can stream dozens of gigabytes using YouTube or Netflix but their own updates is where they draw the line?

That’s what I do as well, only problem I have are the ridiculous size of the downloads. Since end of October I’ve downloaded 18GB worth of data just for software updates.

A watched pot never boils.... Reason it probably "never happened" before is because you didn't sit and stare at it while it downloaded and installed. Also, your maximum download speed is probably a moot point because you're governed by the speed at which Tesla have prescribed, or the specific CDN you're connected to, or the allocation of upload speed you're allotted among the thousands of others receiving the same update. Also, OTA updates are always finicky with literally any device and I'm sure there's craploads of checks and balances along the way to ensure the package you're downloading doesn't become corrupt. Basically, not an issue, move on.

If you think about that... YouTube or Netflix are their own hosting, and that's their literal speciality and what they pump all their millions into. None of that traffic ever touches Tesla's network. You're on your cellular network's infrastructure going to YouTube/Netflix... I would imagine YouTube and Netflix have orders of magnitude more bandwidth available for content than the infrastructure Tesla have assigned for software updates. Hosting and bandwidth cost money, so for Tesla, I don't see any real benefit in them spending more money to make an update download in 5 minutes rather than 20 minutes.

Unfortunately, the update downloads always move in fits and starts

You know what…that actually makes a lot of sense, thanks.

That’s not at all what I’m remotely describing. Since everyone downvotes everything, I’ll leave it as it is

This isn’t a check, this is after the check- it resumes at an insane slow speed. I hit the 0 speed and I know that means it’s checking it.

Well let’s put it this way, I waited 90 minutes and barely hit 60% downloaded. 50% of that downloaded in 5 minutes. Make those numbers make sense.

Dude while I appreciate your input, if in a 90 minute duration I was able to download 60% (roughly) of the update and the first 50% was done in 5 minutes, that means the other 10% took 85 minutes and that’s an insane slow down. You all are crazy for not seeing an issue in that.

Everyone uses CDN servers. Tesla used Akamai and AWS

Imagine being this mad at a software update you take a picture and type up this post.

If you don’t know how this technology works, then just say so. You wasted everyone’s time here.

This is hilarious.

Updated to this post, this morning I tried it again and it downloaded the rest in 15 minutes. So it’s clearly a server related issue, thanks for all the oddly negative feedback- definitely warms my heart up.

Mines been deathly slow today as soon as it started downloading the update. I'm getting 1gbps up and down from my phone in the car, but only \~500kbps in my M3 '25 on Cloudflare speedtest

Be careful what you say here, 99% of the people will try and undermine you and say it’s 100% normal when it isn’t. After 90 minutes last night, I was at best, 60% done. Retried today, the remainder was downloaded in 15 minutes- same internet the whole time. Something doesn’t add up…