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Comment by ricokatayama | Hacker News Reader

not a Tesla owner here, so can't explore how good is the old auto pilot, but I think that paying to have a better experience and unlock some new features is fine. Tesla is approaching new business models, like subscription and a modular take, making cars upgradables. Let's see how these perform.

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That's not really the issue here. Tesla has advertised that all the cars they sell have the hardware required for FSD. Now that they are offering a subscription to FSD, they are telling drivers on older hardware to pay $1500 to upgrade to get the hardware to support FSD, even though they told those drivers earlier that their existing hardware would be enough.

All drivers who actually purchased FSD at the time are getting upgrade free if needed.

Tesla never promised a rent option. And for that there is a one time fee for some cars

What Tesla promised in 2016 was 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":

https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now...

That wasn't true, was it.

It’s honestly hard to believe that anyone thought it was true at the time. Until full self-driving capability is achieved how could anyone possibly know what hardware is required for it?

Its called marketing, companies exaggerate claim all the time. As consumer, one should not believe in company marketing claim/promise or they'll be in trouble.

> companies exaggerate claim

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.

If that true then just sue them, anybody can sue anyone for any reason.

I don't see how that is relevant though. Tesla promised every car would have the required hardware for FSD, regardless of whether you paid for FSD upfront or not. The fact that you have to upgrade in order to subscribe to FSD shows that they were wrong about that. They should honor their commitment by upgrading everyone to hardware that is capable of FSD, since that's what they were promised at purchase time.

at the time that was true.

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.

> at the time that was true.

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.

> that’s the way of the world.

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

i justed to be bothered by every institution breaking their promises but then i realized i was naive.

the world is in constant flux. promises are more aspirational than true.

greatest lie of all is “i love you forever”

autopilot drives like a teenager who just got their license. It makes extremely rookie mistakes and often behaves in unpredictable ways, which is extremely unsafe. It loves to hang out in blind spots and cannot anticipate the most obvious intentions of other drivers.

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.

it changes lanes well and performs well on the highway in most conditions. i sometimes find it safer in heavy rain than my own driving.

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 sometimes find it safer in heavy rain than my own driving.

I think that says a little bit more about your driving that it does about Tesla.

Depending on conditions, and if there are no Botts’ Dots, lane markers can be pretty tough to see in a heavy rain. Computer vision with many eyes may one day beat us here.

A more charitable view is that an attentive driver with FSD is safer than a driver alone. After all, the F in FSD does not really stand for "fully autonomous", right?

You could also arguably say that FSD makes drivers attentive by threatening to end their lives multiple times during a commute.

It is not at all plausible that FSD-using cars threaten to kill their drivers more frequently than if FSD were off.

> 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.

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.

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