THE NAVIGATOR

There is no such thing as a free lunch, as the old truism goes. For more than a century, the auto industry business model has been to sell it and forget it. Once you drove off the lot in that shiny new machine, you were on your own, aside from warranty repairs for defects or compliance recalls.

If you wanted to upgrade the functionality of your vehicle or even put fuel in to operate it, you paid out of pocket. Then Tesla seemed to turn that model on its head with free battery charging via its Supercharger network, and over-the-air (OTA) software updates.