Tesla confirms 285,000 people bought Full Self-Driving
electrek.co
electrek.co
But who would pay for an undelivered feature on a leased car?
Both were through Kickstarter, so I knew up front that there was some risk.
(Although, at least with Star Citizen, I suspect there's a reasonable argument that I'm owed a refund. IMHO Chris Roberts hasn't acted in good faith with our transaction.)
If not presumably they could argue that they never received what they subscribed to.
There's a separate $6,000 "Enhanced Autopilot" upgrade option that covers the first five features ("Navigate on Autopilot" ... "Smart Summon").
That's all the detail I get. I presume that at least auto park and summon are unlocked immediately, because those worked on my previous leased Model S without being in a beta. The the first feature "Navigate on Autopilot", which is in both options, sounds like has to be an over-sell. How that doesn't imply autosteering is beyond me.
>"I paid $3K US, well before the FSD cost skyrocketed. While taking a cross-country drive in my 2018 Model 3 last August through October, with multiple terrifying phantom braking and autosteer (avoiding nonexistent objects in the roadway) incidents, I tried to get my beta removed, but was told it is not possible. “Just turn it off on your screen”, but that completely removed autopilot and adaptive cruise, so I found all I could do was turn off one action, but phantom braking and autosteer failures continued."
Can anyone confirm if this is still the case? Is there any kind of warning Tesla gives when ordering this package that it's impossible to remove once enabled? What would be the technical reason it couldn't be disabled once enabled? This seems awful.
>"Enhanced Autopilot(EA) was announced later in 2016 as an extra-cost option that used a new hardware suite developed by Tesla; the key distinguishing feature for EA, "Navigate on Autopilot", which uses the new hardware suite to guide the vehicle on controlled-access roads, from on-ramp to off-ramp, was delayed until 2018. At the same time that EA was introduced, Tesla also offered Full Self-Driving(FSD) as an upgrade option to EA in 2016, which would extend machine-guided driving capabilities to local roads.[21] FSD beta testing started in October 2020."[1]
At the end of the day, you still don’t have the feature you paid for, you’ve paid to be part of a (very risky) beta test. I don’t think that’s how most people buying FSD planned on this going.
As a ratio of spend, it turns out I did.
You did end up paying for Tesla to figure out how to build the product that didn’t exist when sold. (all of which should’ve become a useable product “next year” by the way)
The fact you’re ok with that doesn’t mean everyone else is. It doesn’t mean it was marketed ethically.
I’m not even saying you were swindled. I think teslas seem like nice cars. You’re just making the wrong argument.
They sold everyone a snickers. Just because you’re happy to have nougat and a little Carmel doesn’t change the fact you’re missing peanuts and chocolate.
For Tesla to fail to figure out how to build the product that didn't and doesn't exist and never will on the cars they sold it for
As a non-Tesla driver forced to drive alongside many Teslas on my regular commute (I drive past Hawthorne, i.e., SpaceX), my experience is that FSD/AP has actually gotten worse. Phantom breaking, extreme tailgating, veering across double-yellow lines, right turns that narrowly miss pedestrians...
My coworker has a Tesla and he refuses to engage AP or FSD anymore. He had multiple interventions/disengagements during every drive (in his words: every few miles) and the last one involved his Tesla veering into the opposite lane because it mistook a drainage groove in the road for a lane marker.
Seattle is a wonderful planned city with very predictable roads, and very safe drivers.
I want to see how a tesla navigated Boston. That’s a city that wasn’t planned, has much more aggressive drivers, and inclement weather much more often.
It varies a bit by neighborhood, but for the most part Avenues run north/south and streets run east west. Makes it very easy to navigate. Much of the city also uses numbered names, for avenues. If you’re trying to get to 22nd ave and you’re on 17th, you know you need to travel west - along a street (any street) and you should reach it.
On a larger level, the city planners have done a great job wrt gradual density increases in the city, and consistent up zoning along transit corridors. They’ve done a good job at promoting biking and alternative transit by building out a useful set of bike paths (if imperfect). I think the link expansions missed the mark, cost too much, and will take too long to build, but that doesn’t impact driving experience. I think the city should have dumped a ton of street cars (like in SLU and cap hill) across the city instead.
Boston, by comparison, is based on animal trails, and the grid is not consistent within a neighborhood, and is non existent across neighborhoods. The street names give you almost no insight into where you’re going.
Compare the cities here: https://geoffboeing.com/2018/07/comparing-city-street-orient...
Oh and as far as drivers go, Boston drivers are way way more aggressive. I won’t claim they’re worse at driving or break more laws, but they’re used to way more traffic, and they’re way more aggressive.
Nice.
$15k this many years into it being "meh" feels almost criminal.
https://electrek.co/2022/03/24/tesla-spends-most-rd-least-ad...
Also, typically in any company revenue and PNL is attributed to the feature accumulating it and investment follows. It seems like a fairly rational bet.
According to statista.com:
2018 6.6%
2019 5.5%
2020 5%
2021 5%
This should give you an idea about your odds.
Not to say I live inside parent's head or anything of that sort, and they could be accurately remembering their intention and expectations at the time, but if I had to bet?
I bought it at $7k, knowing full well that I’d never likely see true FSD, but the features it added were worth it to me like navigation on autopilot, and lane changes on the highway. We figured that just those two were enough to spring for it, given we commuted a lot and did road trips a lot. So it was nice to have it take over every once in a while.
At $7k, it was pricey but not very out of line with other car companies upgrade packages.
I think the ROI really depends therefore on what price point it was got at (someone who got it at $3k probably likes it a lot more than someone who spent 10k), and what they were expecting out of it.
I think true FSD is a smoke and mirrors trick that Tesla will not achieve with their current sensor loadout.
According to this article, 285,000 people have purchased it.
Yet "Full Self-Driving" is nowhere near delivering anything like it's promise, many say it is not worth the price [2], and this failure is currently under several federal investigations.
It's been 2263 days since the "FSD" introduction. That amounts to 125.9 FSD sales per day, or about 12.5/ hour (in 10 hour work days), or one sale every 4.8 minutes.
P. T. Barnum is credited with saying: "There's a sucker born every minute"
Tesla is doing an excellent job of validating* P. T. Barnum's claim.
[0] https://www.consumerreports.org/autonomous-driving/timeline-...
[1] https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/does-full-self-driving-f...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/07/business/tesla-fsd-price-incr...
[*] while one sale per 4.8 minutes is greater than 1/min, we do need to consider that most suckers cannot afford, and are not in the market for, a premium car such as a Tesla.
And an excellent job of showing how useless the FTC is.
If you don't like driving a car, go by bus.