Tesla is offering a $1500 upgrade for early cars to support “full self-driving”

What’s happening here is that Tesla doesn’t want to give you a $1500 “chip” for $200. People who buy the 10k package still get the upgrade for free. People who just subscribe for a month don't. I don’t really see a way around this. If you want FSD then you pay for it. If you don’t want to pay 10k to have it for life then pay 1500 plus 200/mo. That’s essentially the terms being offered here.

The article suggests Tesla "forgot" about the promise due to high turnover. I find that hard to believe. I think they decided towards a "let's see what happens". Enough turmoil and they will pay up. Not that hard, just add a minimum subscription term to cover installation cost.

I understand that American regulation is company friendly so you can essentially promise and do whatever.<p>However, did Tesla not also sell in other areas, like in the EU? Were those claims absent?<p>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&#x27;t happen, you, the customer, can simply invoice your money back. It doesn&#x27;t seem like this would turn out well for Tesla.<p>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&#x27;t work as advertised, then the chances for the company to wiggle out of it are rather slim.

I have always wondered how adult, educated people could ever buy something like fsd packages where the hardware(the cheap part all things considered) is provided first and the software comes later, &quot;pending regulatory approval&quot;, especially seeing as how that would apply globally. It is like buying a laptop with nothing but the casing and the screen and AMD yet has to develop a chip, windows,Linux or iOS not developed yet.<p>Ok, the car is usable without it and it&#x27;s indirect funding of the feature, but still.

&gt; Eventually this package will offer full autonomy, but the software is not there yet<p>Based on videos I&#x27;ve watched, this is the understatement of the year. Tesla is nowhere near having full self driving software.<p>So this is more like &quot;pay $1500 for something you&#x27;ve already paid for, which we may not even be able to deliver&quot;.

I did a quick Google search cus I could&#x27;ve sworn Elon tweeted about full self driving hardware on all Tesla&#x27;s sold after a certain date. Found the official blog post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tesla.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-full-self-driving-hardware" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tesla.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now...</a><p>If there is a class action attorney reading the thread, happy to join...<p>I LOVE my model 3. I&#x27;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?!?

Given that Tesla already allows purchasers of FSD to upgrade their hardware for free, they are clearly aware that they promised every car would have the required hardware for FSD, and are honoring that for FSD purchasers. So I don&#x27;t see why they shouldn&#x27;t do the same for subscribers.<p>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.

At first this looks rather shady, but upon closer look may technically not be. If I&#x27;ve understood the timeline right:<p>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.<p>2. In mid-2019, Tesla started installing more powerful hardware on their new cars.<p>3. They have now started offering FSD <i>as a subscription service</i>. They do <i>not</i> offer the one-time $10k FSD product.<p>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.<p>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.<p>Legally, I&#x27;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.

This was discussed a while back on HN, when Tesla was discussing their new AI hardware in development - it made no sense for the old&#x2F;existing hardware in cars to be &quot;Full Self-Driving&quot; capable but where still developing new hardware unless &quot;Full Self driving&quot; wasn&#x27;t quite as Full as the new version could provide.

IMO - it sucks but as a software developer, I can say software is not free… it takes a lot of time and energy to both develop and maintain software…<p>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…<p>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

&gt;As part of this change in hardware, Tesla said that all owners with the old hardware could upgrade to the new hardware for free, provided they had paid for Full Self-Driving. Tesla has a blog describing the process for upgrading your computer to FSD Computer&#x2F;Hardware 3.0.<p>&gt;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.<p>&gt;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.<p>Article is poorly written, but it sounds like this only affects people who <i>didn’t</i> pay for FSD, and now want it. So the title is exactly wrong.

IDk anything about promises vs this but... the key point for me, here, is subscriptions.<p>Both software &amp; subscription based business models have proved <i>way</i> better than just selling stuff. Tesla&#x27;s business is increasingly proving that its in these businesses. If Tesla can normalize &gt;$200 software subscriptions, this changes the game.<p>For example, there is an interesting &amp; contested economic question about planned obsolescence in cars. Once a long lived product reaches maturity&#x2F;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.<p>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.<p>In any case, Henry Ford&#x27;s engineering ideal of simple, built-to-last cars lost out to GM&#x27;s annual design changes... demand based in fashion &amp; trivial novelty, rather than utility.<p>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&#x2F;10yrs. Between insurance, tax, biannual roadworthiness tax and such, the most economical way to own a car is a cheap, new one.<p>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&#x27;s fashion, like it or not. There&#x27;s technological improvements, at least during some periods. Any can work.<p>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&#x27;t had the incentives to. If the number of Teslas <i>on the road</i> 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.<p>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 <i>not</i> be the endpoint.<p>^<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;2&#x2F;27&#x2F;London_%281932%29_Ending_the_depression_through_planned_obsolescence.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;2&#x2F;27&#x2F;London_%...</a>

The subscription didn’t exist in 2016. If you buy full time FSD pack , hardware will be still free. Makes total scene. And I don’t understand people crying here about vapor ware, not real FSD etc … it’s optional. I personally bought it and I’m happy.

The article is totally misleading. Musk promised several times that who bought FSD , they’ll have free update. Package include both software and hardware. And that’s still the case

&gt; However, Tesla was founded in 2003, 18 years ago. It’s an enormous company with over 70,000 employees, making ~$10 billion in revenue every quarter, and it’s even part of the S&amp;P 500. It’s not a “startup” anymore. It doesn’t get to use that excuse when it does stupid stuff like this. It needs to grow up and stop lying to its customers. And we’re getting tired of having to say this.

Reminds me of the Intel 80486SX marketing strategy, but this time crippled hardware can be un-crippled on-demand.<p>This is something that we all have to get used to.<p>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.

Well made EV&#x27;s are cheap drive and need less maintenance than what people are used to. You can try to sneak in high margin services and add-ons.<p>No wonder Apple sees a promise in electric cars ;)

A Musk company doing something unethical? I am <i>shocked</i>, <i>SHOCKED!!</i> I tell you.

This is getting common. Airmail did the same not long ago…

not a Tesla owner here, so can&#x27;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&#x27;s see how these perform.