The article made it sound like it would be a hardware upgrade. The S and X just got the permanent magnet whatever motor upgrade which the Model 3 already has. It sounded like the M3 would be getting something even newer in the next few months. gee I wish I could find that article.
In the conventional auto world (yes, I know Tesla is different, so do not slam me for not saying it), manufacturer have something different each model year (2018 vs 2019 etc.). Sometimes the only change is the model year (no real changes other than possibly price), or some minor and possibly inconsequential changes. In other cases there be more significant changes and there is often a total re-design in say 6 years or more. This is called the facelift vs redesign vs refresh part of the cycle (
https://www.autotrader.com/car-shopping/buying-car-whats-facelift-redesign-and-refresh-244744 ). Even though Tesla is different, it is not totally isolated from having to upgrade the product both due to a combination of economic/consumer and technological forces. In three years time, many consumers want to see something new in a Model 3, that was different from the 2018 version. Manufacturers also want consumers to buy new products and they need to make an old version obsolete (planned obsolescence), for the new version to be attractive. Yes there is another thread where
@101101 claims Tesla Model 3 will last a million miles, but most people do not want to drive the same car for a million miles. Also, there are technological advances that consumers want including safety, and so the life of a car is limited.
So then the question is "why cannot I just upgrade my car?". There are physical and hardware restrictions. For example, the computer that I used for Windows Vistas for years cannot handle Windows 10 and so I converted that computer to Linux, so that I still can use it but with less features. There is a limitation to how much software can take care of these changes. In other words, some improvements in features and capabilities cannot be done through software updates alone. They may need a combination of software and hardware changes. For example, as new high resolution cameras become available, the software would need to be upgraded to work with those newer cameras but there may be no backward compatibility i.e. that the redesigned new software will not work with the old cameras etc. At that stage, the manufacturer stops supporting the old hardware. The specific nuances may vary but I am sure you get the point.
In order to keep up with technology, competition and even to reduce costs, certain hardware improvements need to happen to a Model 3, and there will be a time when current owners of Model 3 will get limited or no updates when the software specifications become incompatible with the say 2018 hardware. May be the hardware can be changed, and may be not.
This is nothing to do with Tesla, it is to do with product development life cycle imposed on the software development life cycle (SDLC). So I am not surprised that Tesla is looking to improve the motors and transmission hardware. Model 3 is already more than a year old now, and they are coming up on a facelift cycle pretty quick (they have done a few small refreshes already) and I am sure in a few years they will be looking at a redesign.
