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Since the fall of 2016, Tesla's website has said: > "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driv

Since the fall of 2016, Tesla's website has said: > "All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." Yet the original "HW1" computer was replaced by "HW2", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 2.5", which was replaced by "FSD Computer 3". If you want to activate the Full Self-Driving package today on a Tesla you just bought in early 2019, they'll tell you that your "FSD Computer 2.5" is not capable enough for even today's level 2 autonomy features, you first have to replace it with "FSD Computer 3". And if your car's a bit older, but still sold as "has the hardware needed for full self-driving", you have to pay $1000 for that upgrade before you can pay for the "full self-driving" that isn't self-driving. How many times does Tesla have to claim the hardware is good enough, but then change their minds a year later, before any reasonable person stops believing them?

simondotau 5y ago
Had the GP quoted Elon saying this in fall 2016 then you would have an entirely valid point. But the GP did not do this. The GP dated the quote as being made in 2020, when all new cars did in fact contain HW3.
- dangrossman 5y ago
  The quote is not "all Tesla cars have HW3", it's "all Tesla cars right now have everything necessary for self-driving". He said that same thing about HW2 and about HW2.5. There are no self-driving Tesla robotaxis running any computer version. It was as wrong to say it in 2020 as it was in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Maybe at next month's "Tesla AI Day" (not to be confused with 2019's "Tesla Autonomy Day") he'll debut HW4 which will definitely be the one that turns your car into a robotaxi.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    You appear to be misquoting. Can you please cite this 2020 quote verbatim and in context? If you can, and the context is consistent with what you have inferred, I will retract everything and offer my most generous and profuse apology.
    - dangrossman 5y ago
      The quote is from further up this thread we're in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28002731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28002731 It's verbatim from Elon Musk on Autonomy Day 2019, per this article: https://www.engadget.com/2019-04-22-tesla-elon-musk-self-driving-robo-taxi.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-04-22-tesla-elon-musk-self-dri... This is the same event where he promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020.
      - simondotau 5y ago
        > It's verbatim from Elon Musk on Autonomy Day 2019 No, that was NOT a verbatim quote. Here is the exact quote with me adding emphasis on the critical (but oft omitted) qualifier: "All Teslas being produced right now have this computer. We switched over from the Nvidia solution for S and X about a month ago, and we switched over the Model 3 about ten days ago. All cars being produced have the all the hardware necessary, compute and otherwise, for full self-driving. I'll say that again. All Tesla cars being produced right now have everything necessary for full self-driving. All you need to do is improve the software." https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5663 https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5663 > This is the same event where he promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020. That is, in my opinion, not a contextually correct reading of what Elon said. Within the context of the speech it's clear (to me) that for him, "robotaxi" is used as shorthand for "vehicles with the hardware capable of being a robotaxi." Obviously I cannot prove this, and I recognise that responsibility ultimately lies with Elon to be clear. I do agree Elon did say multiple sentences that are absolutely misleading when read in isolation, but his actual words in context (and with some recognition that this is a forward looking statement made with optimism) were far less egregiously wrong than the snipped quote implies on its own. You can watch him say it in context and make up your own mind: https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=11612 https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=11612
        dangrossman 5y ago
        The additional context around the same quote doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. They said the exact same thing about their previous computer systems, then just 1-2 years later would replace those computer systems because they were in fact not capable enough for self-driving. There's still no self-driving robotaxis on HW3 over two years later, when they promised it would exist in 2020. Same thing with the robotaxi quotes. Elon was very clear on autonomy day and the days surrounding it. The promise was not shorthand for "vehicles capable of being a robotaxi", it was Tesla vehicles, and I quote again, "operating robotaxis next year with no one in them", and "I feel very confident predicting that there will be autonomous robotaxis from Tesla next year — not in all jurisdictions because we won’t have regulatory approval everywhere.". You don't need regulatory approval for hardware alone. In another investor presentation Elon Musk made in 2019, per a reporter covering it, they were promising the Tesla Network to allow Tesla owners to send their functioning robotaxis out to pick people up for money would launch in 2020. > Starting next year, owners will be able to flip a switch inside the Tesla app, and send out their car to pick up and drop off passengers autonomously, earning an estimated 65 cents per mile in fares. By Tesla’s estimates, owners might be able to earn $30,000 in gross revenue from their cars per year, or more than $300,000 in revenue over the 11-year lifespan of their car.
javierluraschi 5y ago
Replacing hardware does not make old hardware incapable of FSD. To give you an example, ImageNet for image classification required for many years a descent computer and GPU to run inference. Today, an improved version called MobileNet, runs in phones with no GPU from advancements in AI training with half-precision and why not. So, how can we be so sure that FSD can't EVER be ported back to HW1?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That's some pretty impressive goal post moving there. It doesn't matter whether it can't ever be ported back. It doesn't work today, and that's all there is to it. Musk lied. And it isn't the first time he does so either.
  - javierluraschi 5y ago
    That's a bit harsh. Many technology products have delays, it sucks, makes customers unhappy, but is not uncommon and is not considered lying, not in my book at least. Windows Vista was delayed for many many years [1]. They actually promised a full database replacement to their file system that it never really shipped, etc. This is not to criticize them, but just to say that when ambitious goals are set, it's often the case that delays happen. You can definitely make the case that maybe it's better to release products Apple-style and just unveil them when they are ready, that would be a fair point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista
    - javierluraschi 5y ago
      Although, most V1 software is released early, as an MVP (Most Viable Product), get a lot of feedback and iterate. So it's a very reasonable approach to release FSD incrementally and get early adoption and early feedback. Again, it's a pretty hard problem to solve; so even if they fail, lots of respect from me to their team for getting this far.
      - 5y ago

simondotau 5y ago

Had the GP quoted Elon saying this in fall 2016 then you would have an entirely valid point. But the GP did not do this. The GP dated the quote as being made in 2020, when all new cars did in fact contain HW3.

dangrossman 5y ago
The quote is not "all Tesla cars have HW3", it's "all Tesla cars right now have everything necessary for self-driving". He said that same thing about HW2 and about HW2.5. There are no self-driving Tesla robotaxis running any computer version. It was as wrong to say it in 2020 as it was in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Maybe at next month's "Tesla AI Day" (not to be confused with 2019's "Tesla Autonomy Day") he'll debut HW4 which will definitely be the one that turns your car into a robotaxi.
- simondotau 5y ago
  You appear to be misquoting. Can you please cite this 2020 quote verbatim and in context? If you can, and the context is consistent with what you have inferred, I will retract everything and offer my most generous and profuse apology.
  - dangrossman 5y ago
    The quote is from further up this thread we're in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28002731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28002731 It's verbatim from Elon Musk on Autonomy Day 2019, per this article: https://www.engadget.com/2019-04-22-tesla-elon-musk-self-driving-robo-taxi.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-04-22-tesla-elon-musk-self-dri... This is the same event where he promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020.
    - simondotau 5y ago
      > It's verbatim from Elon Musk on Autonomy Day 2019 No, that was NOT a verbatim quote. Here is the exact quote with me adding emphasis on the critical (but oft omitted) qualifier: "All Teslas being produced right now have this computer. We switched over from the Nvidia solution for S and X about a month ago, and we switched over the Model 3 about ten days ago. All cars being produced have the all the hardware necessary, compute and otherwise, for full self-driving. I'll say that again. All Tesla cars being produced right now have everything necessary for full self-driving. All you need to do is improve the software." https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5663 https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=5663 > This is the same event where he promised a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by 2020. That is, in my opinion, not a contextually correct reading of what Elon said. Within the context of the speech it's clear (to me) that for him, "robotaxi" is used as shorthand for "vehicles with the hardware capable of being a robotaxi." Obviously I cannot prove this, and I recognise that responsibility ultimately lies with Elon to be clear. I do agree Elon did say multiple sentences that are absolutely misleading when read in isolation, but his actual words in context (and with some recognition that this is a forward looking statement made with optimism) were far less egregiously wrong than the snipped quote implies on its own. You can watch him say it in context and make up your own mind: https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=11612 https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=11612
      - dangrossman 5y ago
        The additional context around the same quote doesn't change anything as far as I can tell. They said the exact same thing about their previous computer systems, then just 1-2 years later would replace those computer systems because they were in fact not capable enough for self-driving. There's still no self-driving robotaxis on HW3 over two years later, when they promised it would exist in 2020. Same thing with the robotaxi quotes. Elon was very clear on autonomy day and the days surrounding it. The promise was not shorthand for "vehicles capable of being a robotaxi", it was Tesla vehicles, and I quote again, "operating robotaxis next year with no one in them", and "I feel very confident predicting that there will be autonomous robotaxis from Tesla next year — not in all jurisdictions because we won’t have regulatory approval everywhere.". You don't need regulatory approval for hardware alone. In another investor presentation Elon Musk made in 2019, per a reporter covering it, they were promising the Tesla Network to allow Tesla owners to send their functioning robotaxis out to pick people up for money would launch in 2020. > Starting next year, owners will be able to flip a switch inside the Tesla app, and send out their car to pick up and drop off passengers autonomously, earning an estimated 65 cents per mile in fares. By Tesla’s estimates, owners might be able to earn $30,000 in gross revenue from their cars per year, or more than $300,000 in revenue over the 11-year lifespan of their car.

javierluraschi 5y ago

Replacing hardware does not make old hardware incapable of FSD. To give you an example, ImageNet for image classification required for many years a descent computer and GPU to run inference. Today, an improved version called MobileNet, runs in phones with no GPU from advancements in AI training with half-precision and why not. So, how can we be so sure that FSD can't EVER be ported back to HW1?

jacquesm 5y ago
That's some pretty impressive goal post moving there. It doesn't matter whether it can't ever be ported back. It doesn't work today, and that's all there is to it. Musk lied. And it isn't the first time he does so either.
- javierluraschi 5y ago
  That's a bit harsh. Many technology products have delays, it sucks, makes customers unhappy, but is not uncommon and is not considered lying, not in my book at least. Windows Vista was delayed for many many years [1]. They actually promised a full database replacement to their file system that it never really shipped, etc. This is not to criticize them, but just to say that when ambitious goals are set, it's often the case that delays happen. You can definitely make the case that maybe it's better to release products Apple-style and just unveil them when they are ready, that would be a fair point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Windows_Vista
  - javierluraschi 5y ago
    Although, most V1 software is released early, as an MVP (Most Viable Product), get a lot of feedback and iterate. So it's a very reasonable approach to release FSD incrementally and get early adoption and early feedback. Again, it's a pretty hard problem to solve; so even if they fail, lots of respect from me to their team for getting this far.
    - 5y ago