in this video we're gonna show you what the upgrade of the Tesla's computer
looks like. We're gonna upgrade the main brain of the Tesla, the MCU or the media
control unit and the full self-driving computer. Let's take a look, so on the
surface nothing really looks different the computer and the overall car, the
display, everything looks the same really the differences are under the hood the
media center computer is the main computer that drives the entertainment
system, so the music the maps the entertainment system and the full
self-driving computer controlles how the car actually drives when it's
self-driving using the cameras that are all around the car. Combined the upgrade
gives the car new capabilities both in terms of features in games and
entertainment as well as an improved experience in self-driving so let's take
a look at some of those. So this is a 2017 tesla model and in between the years of
2012 and 2018 tesla used the Nvidia Tegra chipset in its MCU computer after
2018 early 2018 Tesla switched to the new Intel computer and that really
accelerated the graphics, made gaming faster and made the overall experience
significantly smoother. Now the MCU upgrade is around $2,500 the full
self-driving upgrade is around $6,000 with software and hardware. Now if you're
spending close to seven-eight thousand dollars on an upgrade in your doing that
just for gaming, it's probably not a good value it's really expensive to upgrade
just for the gaming and obviously upgrading the car for $7000 is much less
expensive than upgrading the entire car which could cost significantly more. So
the process of ordering is pretty straightforward you make the order
through the mobile application you confirm the order through the mobile
application and you set up your appointment from there I simply drove to
my local Tesla store dropped off the car they had everything ready to go and
even gave me a loaner of older generation Tesla that I could try out
for the day. The following day I came back and the car
was ready and the first thing I really experienced when I tried out the new MCU
was it was significantly faster everything was a lot smoother it's
really easy to use everything was fluid, but the thing that really surprised me
was that the entire experience was brand new. So all of my settings all my
favorites all my connections to my phone bluetooth they were all wiped away and
so really I needed to start from scratch and set up the car as a brand new car so
all the configuration all of the radio stations all of those normal settings
that I'd set up to be just the way I like them, I had to kind of go back into
the settings and reconfigure the car. Now when I was getting the upgrade one of
the drawbacks that I knew from the outset was that it the upgraded MCU didn't have
an FM radio and so the reason it didn't have AM FM radio was that the original
MCU1 was an analog tuner and the upgraded MCU2 was a digital tuner, and so
this is just one of the drawbacks of having the upgraded MCU is that there
was no digital tuner in the car. Now you're able to mitigate this by really
dialing in all of those digital stations via streaming so the tune-in application
has all my favorite stations so I was able to do that now let's get to the fun
part which is the driving. The driving experience of the new MCU, the full
self-driving computer is really smooth you get a lot of new updates a lot of
new visuals on the on-screen display so traffic lights, cones, stop signs, things of
that nature and really over the next months and years this is really what
Tesla is going to be upgrading they're going to be improving that driving
experience improving that self-driving and that's really what I'm looking
forward to, that was the primary reason for me to get the upgrade now all of the
major features that are based on full self driving including summon and some
of the features for parking, parallel parking and otherwise they all seem
really smooth and again I expect those features to continue to
improve month-over-month, year-over-year so really looking forward to some of
those improvements over time as well a lot of new features that were just fun
to play around with like karaoke allows you to sing karaoke in the car and of
course the web browser here's what the old web browser experience looks like
and so I'm just pulling up my web page and it just sits there on the white
screen, never really loads and here's what it looks like with the new MCU,
hit the webpage and a couple seconds later it loads right back up. So huge
marked difference in terms of performance the other thing to note is
with this upgraded MCU and the upgraded browsing experience you can have
services like Netflix and YouTube and this is all inside the Tesla theater so
again great for the kids or if you're supercharging you have a couple minutes
to spare. Now let's talk about games, the updated games are great you obviously
have a number of games that Tesla's released including beach buggy racing,
star view valley and a number of other ones and I'm expecting additional games
to be coming out as well. Now is Tesla a software company or a hardware company?
And that's really the question that's the thing that makes this upgrading
exciting is because Tesla is really a hybrid and there's not a lot of
companies that are both software companies and hardware companies
producing some of the world's best software and some of the most exciting
innovations in the software space but also able to keep up with the pace of
hardware so really excited about this. Again don't forget to take your garage
door clicker with you otherwise you won't be able to get into your garage
which was my problem when I was getting the upgrade. So thanks again for sticking
with me appreciate your time have a good one! Thanks.