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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

As one who bought TSLA when it was in the low double digits, I thought for sure that we'd one day own a Tesla (we sure made enough off TSLA to justify one). But this situation is but one of many little duck bites that have now put us off the brand. Sure, a duck doesn't bite all that hard, but enough of those little nibbles can cause some harm. And so "pedo guy", "taking TSLA private", "no, FSD does not transfer to the next owner" (EDIT: bad example, apparently it does), "FSD for realsies this year", yada, yada, yada, and eventually it adds up to "I'm not validating that bullshit with a $75K purchase."

At the end of the day, given that Hyundai/Kia, VW, Ford, et. al, are all sold out of EVs for the year, we decided we'd just rather do without a new car than buy a Tesla. Hang in there, l'il 2011 Leaf; you've served us well so far.

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Tesla is such an odd company. They apparently have a great product, hardware and software. But the rest of the company is just an absolute shitshow

Like, a friend recently received delivery of a Tesla. They went to the dealer 4 times before they got the car. Each time it was "Your car is available, come pick it up" and then when they got there the car wasn't actually there. By the last time they demanded that the person at the dealership actually walked out to the car and physically touched it, verified it was actually the correct vehicle, before they would go out again

It's not hard to find those kinds of stories. It is not a luxury experience.

FSD does transfer to next owner with any private sale.

If you sell it to Tesla, they often remove FSD and resell without it; but that's no different than anyone else modifying a vehicle they own and then selling it in its new state.

My mistake, thanks for the correction; edited (leaving my error for prosperity, and so the replies make sense). I added another bullet point to make up for it. :-)

There are documented cases of Tesla selling a pre-owned vehicle that was purchased with an optional feature, listing that optional feature in the sale ad, and then disabling the feature after the person they sold the car to has taken possession.

That sucks. Got a link by chance?

That's definitely not a standard practice, but I can see how that would happen by mistake (e.g. forget to remove FSD from the spec sheet) and then be difficult to get fixed. It's near-impossible to reach the right human at Tesla, so when things fall through the cracks, it's a nightmare. I suspect that's the issue OP is quoting, too -- there's likely a reasonable person at Tesla who can and would help if they knew about this story.

Link to one story is here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32244975

Yep, here's the article about it.

https://electrek.co/2020/02/07/tesla-takes-away-autopilot-us...

> no, FSD does not transfer to the next owner

It does transfer to a new owner in private sales.

I think you are referring to the point that you can buy it for one Tesla, and it doesn’t transfer if you upgrade to a new Tesla.

I have a model y, and I will say that all of the “little duck bites” are vastly overrated for my use case. I can imagine someone for whom these duck bites may be an issue, but I am not one of them, and none of my friends who own teslas are either.

I imagine that you will enjoy your new Tesla immensely, and you will wonder what all of the negativity was/is about. Imho, it’s just contrarian yipping against something trendy.

> I imagine that you will enjoy your new Tesla immensely

And it better be a new Tesla, otherwise who knows what will happen with the features that were sold as is second hand. Tesla might just turn them off.

There are some places starting to provide upgraded battery packs for old Nissan Leafs. I hope that gets more widespread.

I'm on my second Leaf. Was eyeing an EV 6 but that's an unnecessary expense.

My family is in the exact same boat. It's a very strange decision by Tesla.

Also, not buying a new car (EV or not) is the most environmentally friendly choice you can make.

That doesn't sound true.

Every car I've had was used, I DO like that the ecological "cost" of the car is paid by the previous owner.

However if you buy a new car and drive it for its entire life (15 years) that seems similar to buying a used car. Especially if by doing so you put your old ICE car off the road.

Better of course if you can live with less cars and use public transport instead.

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