Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtgx | Hacker News Reader

Maybe if they hadn't included $5,000+ worth of (fake) "full self-driving" hardware by default into all Model 3s, they wouldn't have needed to do this, and maybe they would've been able to make the base Model 3 a little cheaper, too, which I'm sure would've positively impacted its popularity (I think a $29,900 base Model 3 would be far more popular than Standard Plus).

I could understand all the other carmakers being lured by the bells and whistles of "self-driving" marketing blitz over turning their cars into EVs, but I expected more from Tesla.

Making great EVs that are also affordable should have always remained Tesla's #1 priority. Last I checked, Musk said he wanted the world to switch to EVs and the way to do that is through them making cheaper EVs with each generation. The priority shouldn't be to keep adding gimmicks to those Teslas and keeping them more expensive than they need to be. Has he forgotten that?

I don't know if the cost is ~$5K to Tesla, but I for one am sold on their EV business and less so the 'self-driving capabilities'.

I think all these self-driving options are being bundled into it because other car companies already add various forms of adaptive cruise/lane-keep to their base models so Tesla wants to have these things to stay competitive (prob adding the 'advanced functionality' to seem like they have a competitive edge).

I wish that Tesla did have a non-smart car option. On the flip side, that makes me sound like one of the tech late-adopters who didn't "need" a smartphone, where a regular phone could have sufficed. In 5 years time, there may not be non-AI (not necessarily full self-driving) cars.

> Maybe if they hadn't included $5,000+ worth of (fake) "full self-driving" hardware by default into all Model 3s

FSD hardware is known as "HW3" (now known as "FSD Computer") and is not in any Teslas at the moment.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1111788218142216192?ref_...

HW3/AP3 started shipping recently.

AFAIK we haven't seen it in the wild, only found the option codes - and only for Models X and S.

That hardware is necessary for safety features included in every car, and I seriously doubt it costs anywhere near that much money.

The hardware is like $1-2k, the $5k is just what they charge for the feature.

Many cars in this class have radar adaptive cruise and 360 cameras. I don't think the hardware here is really that expensive compared to other cars.

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