Hard to believe it's been a year with my Model 3. Fortunately, the free premium connectivity expiring was a good reminder 😏. Two days after premium connectivity expired, the satellite maps and the live traffic icons were gone from the map and clicking on the Tesla T icon to bring up car information indeed indicated "Standard Connectivity".
Essentially the system rebooted at some point and disabled the features only available with premium connectivity. I signed into my account online (not via the mobile app) and was able to signup and restore the premium connectivity. The Tesla system then rebooted 2-3 times, which was bizarre, and premium connectivity was restored.
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The comparison of the two options as per Tesla are below...
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| Comparing standard and premium connectivity |
Reasons why I think Premium connectivity is well worth $10/month.
- The audio quality when using the built in Spotify app is much better compared to Spotify on a mobile phone even when using HD Audio setting on BT5 and downloading Spotify music with "Highest Quality". Tested this with my kids and hands down many lower and higher frequencies were just missing over Bluetooth.
- Video streaming such as Netflix and Hulu is extremely useful and popular when parked with kids in the car and (super) charging.
- On my phone plan (Google Fi), $10 gets me 1GB of data, I can easily burn through that with 1 show and some streaming music on the Tesla.
- Fumbling with a hotspot is simply not practical for in town driving and for longer trips not reliable because switching cell towers tends to slow or stop the hotspot function on phones.
- Live Traffic has already saved me from sitting in traffic, well worth $10 of my time,
My only wish is that premium connectivity also came with a hotspot function, which is technically possible because the car has both a Wi-Fi chip and SIM card, just needs the proper drivers and configuration.