Connected Car
The Connected Car means just that. EVs are basically tablets on wheels in the sense that they connect to and are heavily dependent on the Internet for updates and reporting issues and videos back to the mothership. That and they have some of the fastest and highest tech AI computing capability on the market. They also connect to your smart phones for keyless entry and connect you via the smartphones to both the car and yes, again, the mothership. This isn't to say that they need the internet to drive, use GPS, charge at home, use autopilot or FSD, etc, but they still use the internet for quite a few important features. Including:
Driving Analysis for Tesla Insurance purposes (Tesla insurance only available in a few states so far)
Real World Driving Metrics and Video sent back to the car company for AI training
So, in summary, how is this accomplished? Well, Teslas all come with wifi, bluetooth, and wireless telecommunications capability built in. Wifi is used to download over the air updates while at home or connected to any available wifi. Bluetooth is used to connect to your smart phone which it uses as a key to allow you to just walk up and open the door and also to lock the door automatically as you walk away from the car. Wireless Cellular is where the car shines, though...this keeps you connected to streaming music, news, etc as well as updates on Superchargers (number of stalls in use at a station, number of out of order stalls, location of new stations, etc). It also sends information back to Tesla at the time of a crash (you get a call almost instantly after a crash asking if you need help). It even allows Tesla to check out information logs to help determine what is causing a problem in your car and lets you report said problems from the car at the time of the problem.