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Comment by Lendal | Hacker News Reader

The irritating thing is it's all so unnecessary. My Tesla is a great car. But I paid an extra $10,000 for a feature that was promised but still hasn't been fully delivered, FSD. It feels like I paid extra for my awesome car to be sabotaged. What was promised by FSD was never going to be possible, and yet they are doubling down. They need to stop this idiocy. The vision system is horrible. The car stops at green lights. It swerves around phantoms at speed. It fails to brake when it ought to, and brakes way too late after it should have decelerated. When it encounters a car parked on the side of the road it stops instead of going around.

Okay I'm glad we get over-the-air updates, but it just makes me sad that the updates improve things so slowly in a two steps forward one step back sort of way. I thought it would be further along by now.

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Have they delivered ANY of the features of FSD? Is even Summon out of Beta? I have a Model 3 but I refused to pay for basically a Kickstarter version of FSD. For the purposes of revenue recognition, they can't claim any of the revenues until the features they promised are delivered. But the fact that it has been years is still shocking to me. How have they avoided getting a class action lawsuit? And the fact that they admitted that their "FSD" is only Level 2 is mind blowing. Some of the statements by Elon are borderline fraudulent, if not fraudulent, like how he expects the price of FSD to be worth more than $100k.

And this seems to be par for the course for Tesla. If you look at what they've done with Solar Roof, they have increased prices by 50% for people who already have signed contracts. It's blatantly illegal and yet they are fearless in trying to trick people into cancelling their contracts. Hopefully the current class action lawsuit for Solar Roof gets traction because it's incredible to me that Tesla behaves like this and doesn't get their ass handed to them in court.

>But I paid an extra $10,000 for a feature that was promised but still hasn't been fully delivered

As far as I'm concerned, that $10k is basically an interest free loan to Tesla. FSD as promised by Elon is going to take decades, and the worst part is that it's not even transferable from one car to another.

> the worst part is that it's not even transferable from one car to another.

That would make sense to do it that way: Sell FSD as some sort of license that always works in any Tesla one drives.

How does it currently work? If someone sells their Tesla does the FSD package follow the car or does the new owner need to purchase FSD for that car?

I believe it follows the car, as you can buy used Teslas with FSD.

IIRC it depends on if it was ordered with FSD or bought it as an upgrade. My understanding is if it wasn't originally ordered with it, the new owner has to upgrade again to get it.

(Since its on the monroney label they have to keep it for cars that are ordered with it originally)

It follows the car if you sell directly to another person or through a third party dealership. If Tesla gets the car back, they'll wipe the upgrade and charge for it again.

thanks for answering my question. wow, "wipe the upgrade and charge for it again"... what a racket smh

Full Self Driving actually counts as deferred revenue to Tesla, and is reported as a liability on the balance sheet. They cant realize that income until the feature is delivered.

>deferred revenue to Tesla, and is reported as a liability on the balance sheet

if it is a liability on their books, then i would agree with OP that it is an interest free loan.

They can still spend that cash though. It's just an accounting formality.

They already recognized large part of that revenue. That was the main reason for them to release half baked party tricks, like smart summon, or weird ones like traffic light control (that will stop your on green light). They used it to recognize more FSD revenue. In 2020 they booked over $250M of that revenue, to help them boost profits.

Don't underestimate power of accounting, mixed with loose ethics.

Interesting. Do you have a source that confirms this?

I searched "Tesla recognizes FSD revenue" and found several immediately.

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-autopil...

https://loupventures.com/teslas-software-advantage-is-clear-....

Parent stated that Tesla is using party tricks to recognize a larger than merited portion of FSD revenue. Your links do not make this case.

A "full self driving" car does not exist in this universe, from any company, let alone Tesla, so the fact that they've recognized any revenue against "full self driving" packages does "make the case". If you think the name was meant to mean something lesser, when this $10000 option was added, Elon Musk was publicly saying that there'd be a million Tesla Robotaxis on the road by the end of last year, earning money driving people around while the car owners are at work.

FYI Tesla has already told regulators that it won't be able to deliver FSD by the end of 2021, which it had earlier committed to. If you are still holding your breath on it, it's probably time to give it up.

How is it a loan? Can he recover the principle?

It’s a “loan” insofar the interest is paid out in over-the-air FSD updates and the principle is irrecoverable.

It's a cash payment to Tesla for a feature that doesn't yet exist, so technically they owe you something until they deliver FSD. If you bought this, you would have been owed $10k but in the form of a self-driving feature. So until they deliver that they technically owe you money, but they owe it to you in the form of FSD.

I would be really pissed if I were an FSD customer. Tesla needs to at least uncouple the license from the VIN and attach it to the account holder instead, so you can take it with you. As it is, I think it is entirely reasonable to expect that the current Model 3 might never actually get FSD, or that for all practical purposes it won't because people will have moved on to other cars as usually happens.

I am actually surprised they haven't been hit with a class action over FSD yet.

If you paid 10k, that means you bought your car in the past year or so. I've been following Tesla for a while now and FSD has been around the corner since 2016 or so. Maybe sooner. I love my model S but I'd recommend that you not delude yourself with FSD. It will bring nothing but frustration. On the other hand, regular AP does a fantastic job and I use it daily.

Yes, I can't imagine spending $10k on the promise of some half-baked FSD--especially when regular Autopilot is a reality today, and it's freaking fantastic. I, too, use it daily.

Yeah, I don't understand the allure of point a to point b self-driving. All I need autopilot to do is to keep me in the lanes on long tiribg drives or in traffic when it's mind numbing.

I feel for you, but I would not expect them to "stop this idiocy". Tesla has climbed the hype ladder to incredible heights. One can't just step off that ladder.

They're doubling down because their technoking can't admit he's wrong, and they keep getting away with it. Maybe a class-action lawsuit would be a good idea.

But having auto-parallel parking on a rainy night with tight spacing is awesome. (even though I think it exclusively uses sonar)

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