Tesla is offering a $1500 upgrade for early cars to support “full self-driving”
electrek.co
electrek.co
Nevermind, I misunderstood:)
As I understand it, these are people who already paid for FSD. The same FSD that Tesla claimed was ready to go except for regulatory hurdles. Tesla should give these people what they paid for, or refund that money (with interest) if they're not actually able to live up to their end of the bargain.
From the link's screenshot of Tesla's 10/19/2016 post:
> We are excited to announce that, as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory -- including Model 3 -- will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.
That's a clear marketing claim.
Not sure you can start deprecating before you deliver.
If you sell the alpha with the promise of it supporting the full game, and then charge again when you release the beta no less, I could understand being upset.
How comes the engineers didn't see that coming?
That people thought this company, unique amongst every other manufacturer wouldn't do planned obselesence is part of the massive marketing success of the company.
Incorrect.
These are people who were told they were buying the hardware that allowed FSD.
If the promise boils down to the blog announcement on their blog, the line is 'all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.'
IMO (not a lawyer), it feels like they didn't tell you it would be the latest, greatest, continually supported in perpetuity, never changing hardware. They told you it had hardware that could support a full self-driving system that is safer than a human. Hardware that they do not support now.
I haven't interacted with any Tesla sales folks, but I feel like if you asked about a commitment like this, even before this subscription service, no one is going to commit to that.
They made it clear it's up to you to purchase the self-driving software, and that is where all the magic is. And to boot, the available agreement when people purchased the car is still on the table; if you give them $10k, they will give you hardware. If you want the subscription, you need to have/acquire the supported hardware.
If they had a contract like a phone (which dislike that business model) where you commit to X months, I could see it. But I too wouldn't want to be handing these out to have people cancel after a month.
And this turned out to not be true, because if it were, they would have released FSD on this hardware.
Just imagine if Microsoft sold you PC hardware that they claimed would support windows 11 back in 2016, but now require a processor upgrade to support it. This is exactly the same situation.
the original can (theoretically) play games, but no one with a license wrote any.
They probably won't get there with any hardware package in the next 10 years. But this is a present admission that older generation cars are not currently capable of what Tesla considers FSD without a hardware upgrade.
They continually seem to draw a very prominent line between "Full Self-Driving" and "Autonomous", where what Tesla defines as autonomous is the much higher standard (i.e summon your car from one coast to the other).
I would in that light, argue that Tesla's hurdle for saying a given car is FSD capable is really low, because imo, it seems like they are comfortable saying Level 2 is like, Full Self-Driving (Beta).
To have FSD requires the purchase of two products: the hardware and the software.
Cars purchased from 2016 onwards were claimed to already have the hardware. It is possible to purchase the car with the hardware for FSD only, and not the software. People in this situation were told that they already had the hardware for FSD. Now Tesla is saying that they don’t.
As the owner of two Teslas, as an investor, as a True Believer I have to say that Tesla fucked up here and need to be sued to make it right if they don’t fix this. Not with a “subscribe for two years and get it free.” They should just get the chip installed for free.
Anyway, this was all before the subscription package. Things are not the same as they were in 2016 with the introduction of the 200/mo subscription. By saying "your cars have the hardware to do FSD" it means they're fitted with all the required accessories. If Tesla needs to give them a more powerful computer as a complementary upgrade once they purchase FSD, so be it. It doesn't make sense for Tesla to just ship out a bunch of the more powerful chips to people who never intend on using FSD. And like we've already covered, if you purchase FSD in full, the chip is entirely free.
I guess it comes down to whether you'd rather have a subscription or not. Either FSD remains only accessible in a "bulk purchase attached to the car" capacity, or Telsa figures out how to work the economics of adding in a subscription model. I tend to think this subscription model opens up FSD to more people than not having it, so I think it's a net positive.
This does not change the fundamental fact that Tesla promised something and then did not deliver it. That is, they promised that the hardware shipping with the vehicles 2016 onward were FSD capable. They are not. Remember —- they took investor cash after this announcement. That matters.
> It doesn't make sense for Tesla to just ship out a bunch of the more powerful chips to people who never intend on using FSD.
By this you mean: “It isn’t in Tesla’s best immediate financial interest.” But we have laws and norms in place in the US to counter balance the interest of corporations vs that of customers. Two of those laws and norms is not lying to your customers and making them whole whole whenever you make a mistake.
As well, cars go through several owners. People purchased Teslas after the announcement with the value calculation that it was FSD capable. Tesla essentially robbed those customers of $1500 of resale value. That is, the customers expected to buy a car they could resell as FSD capable. Now they can’t.
>And as a high margin buyer it doesn't sit well with me knowing Tesla is subsidizing free HW upgrades out of my purchase price so it just feels like moving the problem around not actually solving it.
You shouldn’t buy high margin products if you care what the company does with the high margin. The same goes for Apple products. Apple’s high margin goes to pay devs and for decades long R+D products, many of them will fail. It also goes to pay settlements when they fuck up. Them’s the breaks.
The only reason the topic came up is because you lead with "low margin buyers are subsidized all the time so they should also be subsidized by high margin buyers in this case". While a company may choose to do that, and I really don't care if they do, in the context of an external discussion about which strategy is better, I do care to respond to that point when presented as part of an argument by an equally outside party.
This is how the specific point comes off to me:
Alice: I'm annoyed Tesla's new subscription requires a $1500 upgrade for my older model, Tesla said it was FSD capable. Make me whole.
Bob: I already paid in full for my FSD subscription and got the hardware included, why should you get it for free?
Alice: Because Tesla could use revenue from people who have already purchased FSD in full to fund my hardware upgrade.
Bob: Sure, they could. But now my "investment" in FSD doesn't go as far as I thought it would and I'm "out" $1500. Make me whole.
...
Anyway that's just why I think some sort of compromise makes tons of sense so that nobody perceives themselves as being out anything and people who want to use the subscription can get the HW for "free" rather than the up front $1500. You've changed my mind on that front (:
If you can’t or aren’t willing to make an example of a company on regular occasion, the rest will just factor the weak penalties into the cost of doing business.
This is a potential dispute between the buyers of luxury cars and their maker. Not sure why tax dollars need to be spent intervening. (Would also note that it’s said “weak” regulation that permitted Tesla to launch and scale in the first place.)
Allowing market players to deceive consumers just creates bad incentives and terrible companies.
I do not have the 10 years and 10 million dollars required to sue any of the fortune 100 for any wrong doing regardless of its severity.
So are Teslas.
I get the argument. I’m not saying we legalise fraud. But if we’re spending the earnings of the average American, who barely earn enough in a whole year after tax to buy one, I would want to be damn sure there isn’t anything applicable to them being de-prioritised. (Hint: there is.)
If you’re buying an upgrade on a luxury car, you can afford a lawyer or find someone in a similar situation who can.
Lawsuits are RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE and are effectively inaccessible for almost all Americans. The civil and criminal legal systems are unbelievably tilted in favour of the wealthy.
And the argument that Tesla can only exist because they could mislead consumers thanks to weak American regulation seems pretty dubious.
Even if Tesla sold the dad package to 30% of their customers then they’ve likely doubled their margins overall.
In Germany, we call - and punish! - things such as this as "unlauterer Wettbewerb" (roughly: Unfair business practices).
The reason why the German government spends tax dollars on cracking down on companies making false or misleading promises to consumers is to protect people from being exploited thousands of dollars or more, and to protect businesses who play by the rules from the beginning and so suffer from less sales.
In short: You need to spend tax dollars to have a sphere of good behavior for the common good.
Why would you want more bureaucrats when they dont even go after the bad apples, but instead they actively protect deceptive firms and real fraud??
However, did Tesla not also sell in other areas, like in the EU? Were those claims absent?
Because if not, the case would be seem to be easy: Tesla sells a car with self-driving capable hardware (advertised in a manner where your purchasing decisions would be influenced by that claim), has obviously not delivered and has therefore up to three attempts to fix the issue during whatever the warranty period is. If that doesn't happen, you, the customer, can simply invoice your money back. It doesn't seem like this would turn out well for Tesla.
I mean, I have done stuff like this before - not on a scale of a car, but pretty expensive electronics. The company in question (Samsung) pretty quickly decided to play ball. It gets difficult to prove after six month if the issue is a defect. But if a thing is simply missing or doesn't work as advertised, then the chances for the company to wiggle out of it are rather slim.
Also, EU regulation is quite friendly to the auto-industry. There is a pretty tight coupling, for instance, between environmental tax rates and the models produced by EU manufacturers. This targets both international models and older models, increasing sales of new EU models.
One of the reasons VW's diesel scandal was so infuriating.
Ok, the car is usable without it and it's indirect funding of the feature, but still.
That said, this Tesla thing isn't a pre-order exactly, because they explicitly promised FSD capabilites, so it should at least save on a trip to the shop to install something later. Unfortunately, it wasn't FSD, but just some basic stuff, so if you want more you've got to go in and pay anyway.
The key here is "full self-driving" = FSD, which can only be interpreted to mean that the car can in fact drive itself (safely).
Based on videos I've watched, this is the understatement of the year. Tesla is nowhere near having full self driving software.
So this is more like "pay $1500 for something you've already paid for, which we may not even be able to deliver".
Also, I spoke with a Tesla sales guy, and he said, "don't pay for something that doesn't exist", which seems super obvious when you think about it objectively and step away from the hype.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1416511905515048966?s=20
Some Tesla customers have paid $10,000 for that. I think they should demand their money back and only purchase it if and when "full self-driving" actually exists.
I think they do have a 'Fools Self Driving' system though.
Either way, the customers are still paying for a package that not only they already paid for it, but it does not work as advertised. And Tesla continues with the lies and U-turns.
Literally taking them for a self-driven ride.
If there is a class action attorney reading the thread, happy to join...
I LOVE my model 3. I've recommended (with verified purchases) 10+ friends who purchased. The blatant fake it till ya make it marketing isnt needed and yet Tesla continues to do it. WHY?!?
Also HW3 is pretty clearly not enough for FSD, so even if you pay for this upgrade you are probably going to need another one to get the level 5 FSD everyone was promised.
Also I don't see how level 5 is possible if your cameras can be blinded by the sun or obstructed by road spray.
1. From 2016-2019, Tesla said that FSD would someday be available via a $10k software update, and that all their cars came with all the hardware that would be required to use that update.
2. In mid-2019, Tesla started installing more powerful hardware on their new cars.
3. They have now started offering FSD as a subscription service. They do not offer the one-time $10k FSD product.
4. The FSD they are offering via that subscription service requires the new hardware. Tesla owners with the old hardware who want to use the subscription service will have to pay $1500 to upgrade the old hardware.
It comes down to whether or not the subscription FSD counts as the FSD from #1, or if it counts as a different FSD product with different requirements.
Legally, I'm sure they are in the clear because the subscription product is in no way even remotely FSD and so they can claim that #1 is referring to some future real FSD.
It's also worth remembering that FSD stands for Full self driving, not "kind of some extra driver assist that still requires the driver's attention and intervention and doesn't work at all under a load of conditions".
So all you're saying is there's a difference between full self driving on old hardware versus full self driving on new hardware?
As a business owner, IMO you should be free to put any price you want on anything you sell in anyway you choose to sell… people will either buy it or not and that’s the best way to figure out if it’s worth it or not…
As a tesla owner, this sucks because well the hardware is in the car… too bad there are no other cars on the market that even come close
>This was all fine and dandy – owners who would make use of the FSD Computer got a hardware upgrade along with their purchase of the software, and owners without Full Self-Driving weren’t missing out on anything since they didn’t have the software anyway.
>But now the much-awaited subscription scheme offers a lower barrier to entry. Tesla owners with cars from late 2016-mid 2019 might want to try out the software and see what it can do, especially since it has improved since they purchased their car. Maybe they don’t know if they’ll like it enough to want to spend $10,000, maybe they don’t think they’ll have the car long enough for it to be worthwhile, any number of reasons.
Article is poorly written, but it sounds like this only affects people who didn’t pay for FSD, and now want it. So the title is exactly wrong.
The title is correct in that these owners paid for hardware they were told was sufficient for FSD. Now they are being told that isn't the case and they have to pay more for /more hardware/.
No one is disputing having to pay for the software upgrade, but requiring a hardware upgrade makes it pretty clear the previous hardware was not as capable as it was advertised to be.
Both software & subscription based business models have proved way better than just selling stuff. Tesla's business is increasingly proving that its in these businesses. If Tesla can normalize >$200 software subscriptions, this changes the game.
For example, there is an interesting & contested economic question about planned obsolescence in cars. Once a long lived product reaches maturity/saturation, demand plateaus or depletes. Refrigerators, for example, are a different industry once most houses have one TVs too. Some theories of the great depression, for example, have market saturation as a primary culprit.
In the 30s, planned obsolescence was transparently promoted as a depression ending plan^. Orwell, writing 1984 after the war, predicted continuous low level warfare, a means of destruction to counterbalance production. It was widely thought that saturation points were the weakness in modern industrial economics.
In any case, Henry Ford's engineering ideal of simple, built-to-last cars lost out to GM's annual design changes... demand based in fashion & trivial novelty, rather than utility.
Today, Japan absolutely enforces obsolescence for cars. EU countries, often via environmental taxes also push old cars off the road to encourage new ones. Many cars are built to last 100kms/10yrs. Between insurance, tax, biannual roadworthiness tax and such, the most economical way to own a car is a cheap, new one.
Anyway... contrived obsolescence is just the most on-the-nose way of keeping the ball rolling. One of many. There are also new markets. There's fashion, like it or not. There's technological improvements, at least during some periods. Any can work.
In any case... subscription and software business models could change some real imperatives in the auto industry. Building cars to last is possible, manufacturers just haven't had the incentives to. If the number of Teslas on the road becomes a multiplier for a meaningful revenue source... the incentive to build long term becomes significant. Turns a linear trajectory to a saturation point into an exponential.
To the extent that this succeeds, the auto industry is going to be all about the fleet, rather than the factory door, soon. As always, affordability will not be the endpoint.
^https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/London_%...
Tesla, much as any other recent company, has opened their post-90's Economics textbooks and has seen that two-part contracts allow to extract much more welfare (money) from the customers. The car industry already got wise early on about price discrimination by employing bundling. Now this is combined with subscriptions to create IC/IR two-part contract menu.
Add customer data, and you're golden.
Edit: Just to be clear, this may be efficient. It just isn't beneficial to the consumer.
In fact, a lot of Tesla's current market cap is tied to customer data. It's an "unavailable at any price" ingredient of their (prospective) self driving end goal. It also allows them to credibly claim that they'll eventually have a great insurance business/etc. A moat.
I was just commenting on a potential feature of this post-90s market.
In the "Model T" economy, the sweet spot was somewhere between "no one can afford your product" and "everyone already has it." Ford in the 20s. Demand. Efficiency. durable products. In the post WWII economy, the sweet spot was about optimising efficiency (modern trade deals/routes grew around auto industries' efficiency needs) and fashion-based demand. Cars as a means of self expression and such... fleet turnover rates determine market size. Disposable products.
The economy we're stepping into, revenue will come from sources other than just making & selling cars. That means we might see much longer lasting cars.
Maybe by 2031 we'll know if 1931 theories of market saturation and planned obsolescence are true.
Firms will also have realized that there are indeed two parts to such pricing schemes, and that is not by accident. If the market can collude on disposable products now, it may be able to do it when everything is a fixed-/variable contract. Why? Well, it simply is profit maximizing, especially for those who have troves of customer data. Indeed, we know that it is only under uncertainty that firms may as well post a single price. Now that we can track all or customers, we surely want a combination of outright sales and variable cost subscriptions. That is, as long as people have heterogeneous preferences for things.
Instead of longer lasting cars, I simply expect cleverer and more extractive contracts to become the norm. Perhaps I am too pessimistic, perhaps what you say will come true to some degree. Perhaps we can turn Marx on his had... again. It's not profit that will continue to decline, it's consumer surplus - for many of the same ills.
This is something that we all have to get used to.
On a smaller scale, Spectum in NYC has 1 internet router where the WiFi functions can be disabled for a $5 discount on the monthly bill.
No wonder Apple sees a promise in electric cars ;)
Tesla never promised a rent option. And for that there is a one time fee for some cars
https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now...
That wasn't true, was it.
That's called false advertising.
> one should not believe in company marketing claim/promise
Or, better said, the companies leading with false claims will be in trouble as they lose the trust of consumers and may be subjected to lawsuits.
situation changed, ie., they came up with better solutions.
could they theoretically make the old hardware work? maybe not, but at one point they believed it.
that’s the way of the world.
The problem remained the same, either that was true yesterday and it still true today, or it wasn't true yesterday and it will never be true.
Keep your promises until it's inconvenient to do so ?
If they can't use the older hardware with their new software, they should upgrade the hardware for free since they promised the capability is there
the world is in constant flux. promises are more aspirational than true.
greatest lie of all is “i love you forever”
I really like traffic aware cruise control as one of the best adaptive cruise controls out there, but autopilot is a mess and I don't use it.
I haven't tried the full self driving beta since I wasn't about to give Tesla ten grand so the car can change its own lanes, but I can't imagine it's any better.
that being said its not safe to use without paying attention in bad traffic or erratic city driving. the problem is it doesnt drive as defensivable as a good human which is required in cities with aggressive drivers.
I think that says a little bit more about your driving that it does about Tesla.
So you admit you know nothing about the FSD beta (you think you will enter it by buying FSD) and then say you can't imagine it's any better? Please look for yourself. It's all over YouTube and comparing Autopilot to the FSD Beta is like comparing apples to oranges.