After several months, I finally received the first OTA update for my R7 from RisingAuto. Through the app, I made a remote upgrade appointment, which took about half an hour to complete. I felt that the upgrade process was excellent, just like a phone system update, which was “seamless.”
Now, let’s discuss the features I like about this update:
Firstly, the vehicle’s navigation system can now automatically plan a route for recharging, known as “The Energy Supplement Planner” and “Cost Accountant” by the official website. In short, the car’s navigation system comprehensively considers “remaining mileage, time used for route, the availability of charging stations, and the electricity price when arriving” to calculate the best navigation and energy supplement route. Previously, we had to plan this by ourselves, but now R7 has taken care of it. As someone who frequently travels on the Jiangsu and Zhejiang circuit, this feature is very suitable. In fact, functionally, it’s not much different from my other automatic energy supplement route planning Tesla, but RisingAuto’s feature is more intuitive in terms of displaying the electricity price and time.
Secondly, the optimization of the intelligent driving system display is excellent. Lane departure warnings are now displayed in a more intuitive red, and the animation for automatic lane changes has also been improved to a flashing prompt. Although there is no functional change, for intelligent products, including visual interactions that alter users’ experiences, this kind of improvement is necessary.
Finally, the third feature is that support for assisted driving has been opened up to more cities. Since Shanghai is the headquarters of RisingAuto, it has the most extensive coverage of roads. During my usual trips on highways, I found that Hangzhou had navigation assistance coverage. On highways, it can almost achieve 100% unmanned driving, and with 4D radar, R7 can reliably measure distances on the road. The assisted driving experience with RisingAuto is not much worse than my Model 3, and is even better in some respects.
The fourth feature is a custom “scene mode”, similar to the “Shortcut” function on the iPhone, which allows you to customize some commonly used operations. For example, when I want to rest in the car while listening to music at noon, I set up a “lunch break” card, which is associated with the scene setting of turning off the air conditioner to avoid blowing at people, turning on the internal circulation of the car, adjusting the seat to the most flat position, and turning on the NetEase Cloud Music. These settings have become linked. I think this is very convenient, and combined with the different ways of living of each car owner, it can also create some interesting content, which can be discussed in the comment section~
Others include the “MiGu Quick Game” gaming platform, etc. Personally, I don’t play games, so I’m not very concerned about this aspect. Other car owners who have relevant experience can also share it together.
After mentioning so much about the content of this OTA, let me talk about some areas that I think still need improvement or hope that FEYVAN can add in the next OTA: Although the voice assistant update has added instructions for adjusting the seat mode, I think there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of delay; Secondly, the Touch Bar touch wake-up of the central control is not very sensitive, and I hope that the unlocking logic can be adjusted again. Other than that, there are no issues.
Overall, the experience is still very good, and there are quite a few functional updates in this OTA. I hope that every update in the future can optimize the original functions on the basis of adding new functions, which will be even better!
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.