Edit: Elon mentioned in the last earnings call that if you are on AI3 hardware and bought FSD that they will have to upgrade you free of charge to AI4.
Edit 2: To clarify, FSD 13.x is only available with AI4 hardware.
Another thing is a lot of people don’t even keep cars longer than 8 years (and people who are buying new, $100k electric cars are more likely going to upgrade sooner than someone who’s buying a $30k civic.) they paid for FSD thinking it would be ready soon.
> It never worked and it never was going to work.
That is evidently false. If I had a longer commute it would work fine too. I have done ~2 hour road trips with it already.
You are bringing up a different point, which is that FSD arrived later than promised or at least implied (I don't know exactly how this was sold in 2017). That is self-evident at this point.
Unfortunately, that's because they were sued in court and lost when they tried to force people to buy the upgraded hardware in the past. Not because they stand behind their products.
The reality is we don't actually know how reliable these systems are, and Tesla has a long history of spreading misinformation about their own technology and obfuscating the facts. We don't even know how many cars crash while in FSD mode. We don't know how they crash, or why. None of this data is made publicly available, and of the data that is shared it is carefully curated, and we have no guarantee the data is not fudged. For example, are we certain that FSD does not disengage itself in dangerous circumstances to skew statistics in it's favor?
Trusting Tesla marketing on the topic of Tesla products is like trusting any kind of marketing. They have an incentive to sell the car, so they will lie, and they will cheat.
That is probably because you are unaware how far it has gotten. Irrespective of that, a driver still needs to be there and pay attention. As soon as you take your eyes of the road for a few seconds it will warn you very prominently.
I'm going on the record here to say that FSD will be a better driver than 99% of humans in the next 2 years. I may be wrong, but I don't think I will be.
AFAIK a retrofit from AI3 to AI4 isn't possible.