It's shocking to me that anyone would pay for this. Tesla has been selling fsd since 2014, and nearly a decade later they aren't that much closer.<p>Between the low reliability, low build quality, and scammy practices, Tesla has turned their lead into a vulnerability.<p>Once other manufacturers catch up to the battery range, Tesla will have their lunch eaten.<p>And I say this as someone who has owned a Tesla for over 8 years.
I recently rented a 2022 Model 3 from Hertz for 9 days. It didn't have the FSD option available, but it did have the preview of what the system would see. Based on that alone, I was alternately impressed and terrified of what the FSD experience would be like. It was mostly accurate in showing other vehicles, but some of their trajectories when turning in front of me looked like a really bad video game with weird orientations and jumpiness. People crossing the road were sometimes picked up and sometimes not. It showed the traffic lights, but didn't display any understanding of turn lane traffic lights. I had the warning for following too close enabled, and it mostly worked but it got confused going through a parking lot once. If this is meant as an advertisement for FSD, I'm not convinced.
For the price of one Tesla FSD, you could buy three Tern GSDs - an electric-powered bona fide car replacement that exists right now.<p><a href="https://www.ternbicycles.com/en/bikes/472/gsd" rel="nofollow">https://www.ternbicycles.com/en/bikes/472/gsd</a>
I wouldn’t have an issue with this if the upgrade went with the car, but the idea that it turns back off when the person whose driveway it lives in changes is too close to IAPs for me.<p>If it has an ongoing cost for Tesla, I’m happy to pay for a subscription and perhaps an activation fee. If it’s built-in to the vehicle and requires a configuration for how I like to drive, I’d love to pay an expensive, one-time setup fee to configure my specific vehicle and perhaps a (small) upgrade fee when major versions are released.<p>But this idea that Tesla wants to have the best of both worlds (massive fees that reoccur) while I get the worst of both worlds (massive fees for a value that I can’t sell/transfer) is one of the two big reasons I can’t see getting a Tesla (even though I would love to).
Paid 7k for mine, I enjoy it.<p>When I buy my next Tesla wouldn’t pay for it though.<p>The thing that would make it worth buying at this price is when I can send the car 200 miles away to like go pick up my parents or something. Anything short of not being in the car though is just a party trick.
People can buy this with their eyes wide open, or not. At this point, fsd has been scrutinized so much that absolutely noone can claim ignorance.<p>And people still buy it because it's the best money can buy right now. It's not perfect but it's there and getting better with every release.
It's not going to work. I happen to be friends with a top AI researcher and he laughs it off completely. "No way." He referred me to this:<p><a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-tesla-self-driving-technology-20190422-story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-tesla-self-dr...</a><p>"It's all hype," said Steven E. Shladover, a retired research engineer at the University of California, Berkeley who has been involved in efforts to create autonomous driving for 45 years. "The technology does not exist to do what he is claiming. He doesn't have it and neither does anybody else."<p>---<p>It's not close to working at all. Musk must know it.
Musk must be getting pretty desperate as his lawyers tell him he is going to have to follow through on the Twitter acquisition and his financial analysts are predicting the market will not be where he was hoping when it happens.
Why not? Everyone knows that when you’re running a scam and things get rough you don’t back down, you double down.<p>The guy just got a free $7500 courtesy of the tax payer for every car he sells.
This is ultimately why I believe Elon Musk isn't the right guy to lead Tesla anymore and hasn't been for a while.<p>Car companies live and die by attracting new customers but also by bringing back existing customers. Lots of car brands bend over backwards to keep you coming back. When you fail to deliver what you've promised or significantly raise prices without delivering value in return, you're not building a loyal customer base.<p>Between this kind of thing and the way Tesla handles service, it's very clear they don't really give a damn about you as a customer after you've handed over your money.
Unsurprisingly and once again, the Fools Self Driving (FSD) scam raises prices on their customers towards a product that is beyond broken and doesn't work.<p>It is gotten so bad that even the noble and devoted Telsa fans would do <i>anything</i> to defend this contraption, even if it meant risking the lives of their own children, they will still do it for Twitter points, or for their lord and saviour techno-king Elon to notice them.<p>Who is going to finally tell the Tesla FSD fans that the piped piper (Elon) has repeatedly over promised and scammed his own fans and customers using FSD to the same tune?