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At minimum, I can't see anything other than Tesla being forced to refund FSD purchases. It's fraud, plain and simple. But whether it's due to the embarrassment

At minimum, I can't see anything other than Tesla being forced to refund FSD purchases. It's fraud, plain and simple. But whether it's due to the embarrassment of being swindled or being drunk on the Kool-Aid, the amount of Tesla owners I know that tell me they are happy for paying up to $15k for what is essentially cruise control, and who honestly believe 'real FSD is only a year away' is shocking.

consumer451 4y ago
> At minimum, I can't see anything other than Tesla being forced to refund FSD purchases. Hmm, 285,000 [0] sales of FSD * say $8,000 [1] to be conservative = $2,280,000,000 That's more than I expected. [0] https://electrek.co/2022/12/29/tesla-people-bought-full-self-driving-north-america/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/29/tesla-people-bought-full-self... [1] https://www.notateslaapp.com/tesla-reference/958/tesla-fsd-price-increase-history https://www.notateslaapp.com/tesla-reference/958/tesla-fsd-p...
- danso 4y ago
  With ~3 million Teslas sold worldwide, 285K FSD was much fewer than I had thought. As someone currently not interested in buying a Tesla, I assumed most of the people in its target market are attracted to the FSD claims (reputationally, consumer-facing self-driving seems to be where Tesla is perceived to be the outright leader) and are able to afford it at its FOMO buy-now pricing.
  - bhauer 4y ago
    FSD take rate has always been quite low, even when it was available for a much lower price than today.
  - neither_color 4y ago
    A lot of Tesla drivers aren't "car people" but they're excited by the tech in the car besides FSD. I have zero interest in FSD and would never have gotten a BMW or Mercedes but still got a Tesla. I was ok with a Nissan before Tesla because premium ICE cars were just cars with added bells and whistles + marketing. If I had to get a new EV that isn't Tesla it would be a Rivian, Ford, or KIA because they all offer something unique that isn't just a retrofitted faux-premium ICE car. I don't care about leather seats or wooden accents or impressing anyone. For regular car folks who aren't into luxury Teslas introduce you to a whole new way of interacting and interfacing with your car such as the app control, sentry mode streaming, at-home charging, driver profiles, full touch UI, etc. Plus it smokes cars that try to block you from merging. Tesla delivered something that all of the MBAs combined from the other legacy car companies couldn't.
    - zippergz 4y ago
      It's so funny, and this is not a criticism at all, how big the divide in the two market segments are. I'm basically the polar opposite of you. I don't want a lot of technology in my car, I don't want big touch screens, apps, automatic software updates or any of that. I want a car that feels nice (not to impress anyone, but because I'm sitting my butt in that seat for potentially hours every day, touching the controls thousands of times, etc. and the cheapness of the Tesla materials is very noticeable to me in that context) and just happens to have an electric drivetrain. Unfortunately most of the manufacturers think it's better to try to be "innovative" by turning the car into an android phone on wheels instead of letting it be enough to innovate with the source of power. I'm fine with that stuff existing. Obviously people (including you) want it, and that's great. But I wish there were more options for people who don't want that.
      - kevinob11 4y ago
        Isn't that the Porsche? I get that the price makes that not an option for most (including me). Also maybe I'm just proving your point by saying that there is one option.
      - flandish 4y ago
        I’m in a similar boat. I just want something as disconnected from what I do day to day as possible. I write code. I notice bugs. I don’t want an in dash embedded device with a poorly designed ui/x. I want something I can wrench on and when it breaks I can debug and fix. Currently in a 2015 wrangler. Auto trans, manual locks, manual windows, $90 marine radio with shit bluetooth. I’d get a cassette deck if I could bluetooth to it. Point being, where I am, the car is what I need and can deal with my roads and winters and doesn’t have an OTA updated dash-to-drivetrain link that can decide at any time heated seats or cruise control is 30 bucks a month.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    I think FSD was not available in many countries outside the US at least initially, due to regulations.
    - avgDev 4y ago
      Correct. FSD is not available in EU.
      - haliskerbas 4y ago
        Only in the US do we prop up a rich man buy allowing him to sell vaporware.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - nunez 4y ago
    My hypothesis is that most people won't buy it because most people would rather drive themselves, especially if you're paying $15k for that privilege, and that many people don't know that you can subscribe to FSD on a monthly basis (though there are upsells within the MCU to drive consumption there). This was a much more lucrative proposition as a $2k add-on, I think.
- nunez 4y ago
  It's going to be more complicated than that. They will absolutely try to mitigate by downselling to Enhanced Autopilot, which gets more usage (I think). Depending on when you purchased FSD, that will yield somewhere between a $0 and $9,000 refund. However, the Enhanced Autopilot option was removed in 2019 and came back last year. I think this was done to juice the sales count. If the DoJ agrees, then Tesla might have to honor EAP's 2019 purchase price. This would make the minimum refund something like $3500. Either way, this would be a blow to Tesla and will definitely worsen the layoffening.
bhauer 4y ago
People will pay $20K for sport brakes or $10K for an unusual paint color. Acting like you know better than actual customers of FSD whether the $8K, $10K, $12K, or $15K they spent on the software is reasonable for them is the height of arrogance. Also, characterizing the current FSD Beta system as "cruise control" is delusional.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  If I pay 20 thousand for pink and I get pink there’s no further argument.
  - bhauer 4y ago
    Yeah, and if you pay $15K today, you get FSD Beta. For some people, that is worth the price. Again, arguing that you know better about what other people do with their money is arrogant.
    - ryanwaggoner 4y ago
      EDIT: nvm
      - fallingknife 4y ago
        They are investigating, so it is not known whether or not they disagree yet. And even if they did, your argument would still be nothing but an appeal to authority.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - bhauer 4y ago
        This subthread is about the people who system16 criticized for being happy with purchasing FSD. The Justice Department is not acting on behalf of that group of satisfied customers.
chrisstanchak 4y ago
I take it you haven't driven it >the amount of Tesla owners I know that tell me they are happy Exactly
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- LynxInLA 4y ago
  I rented one for a few weeks in late 2021, and the experience completely turned me off of Tesla's FSD. During a 2 hour drive on an interstate on a clear, sunny day, FSD started steering into another vehicle 3 different times. One was a truck, and another was a wide load house being transported. I'll admit that is an odd case, but "don't accelerate straight into a house that is at windshield level" seems like a pretty simple ask. It did this multiple times and I had to temporarily disable the cruise control. It also failed miserably on curving state highways, to the point that I turned it off after about 20 minutes.
  - cjdoc29 4y ago
    I'm not refuting your general claim here, but the system you interacted with is Tesla's Autopilot, not FSD. They are two distinct systems for two distinct use cases (today). FSD is supposed to only work on city streets, and was in limited beta in 2021 (you had to explicitly enroll). Autopilot is what runs on freeways/interstates today, and can be used on the street (but is not meant for city streets). Autopilot, and it's Navigate on Autopilot system have been fantastic for me, but they are absolutely systems you need to monitor because they can do dumb things. It's not meant to be a hands-off driving system like the FSD system Tesla claims it will be one day.
fallingknife 4y ago
I think that's a stretch. FSD is a product name. There seems to be no expectation or legal requirement that product names be literal descriptions of the functionality. So long as everybody knows what they are paying for is not an actual fully autonomous driving system, it wouldn't be fraud IMO. And I'm pretty sure everybody knows it, especially given the safety features that don't allow you to take your hands off the wheel. Would you call all of these "unbreakable wine glasses" fraud? https://www.amazon.com/s?k=unbreakable+wine+glasses https://www.amazon.com/s?k=unbreakable+wine+glasses I think we would all agree that not one of them is actually unbreakable. But if someone sued for fraud because they were able to break one, they would probably be laughed out of court.
- system16 4y ago
  If the wine glasses were sold with the promise that in one year I'd receive a solution to apply to them that would truly make them unbreakable? Yes, I would call it fraud.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    It is also possible that the wine glasses are unbreakable in the context of being used as a wine glass, i.e. they will not break if they fall from a the height where they would normally be used or stored, which is a reasonable assumption to make. Whereas for a "full" self driving car, Tesla obviously has not (and probably will not) deliver a car that can fully drive itself in the context of normal car usage.
- notahacker 4y ago
  It's an even bigger stretch to pretend that FSD is just some sort of jokey trademark and not something which the CEO has repeatedly insisted is the intended purpose of the feature and a forthcoming release to drivers who purchase that option, probably by $currentyear+1, something confirmed in only slightly more cautious terms by the product marketing pages. I imagine the vendors of unbreakable wine glasses would probably be in trouble if they charged $15k and argued that they'd receive over the air updates to Kevlar as soon as the regulatory approvals had gone through...
sixQuarks 4y ago
[flagged]
- JeremyBanks 4y ago
  Do you have the foggiest idea what “cruise control” systems are capable of these days?
  - tensor 4y ago
    Yes, nothing compared to FSD. Some are coming close to autopilot but that's about it.
  - sixQuarks 4y ago
    Do they make left turns at unprotected 4 lane roads?
- gamblor956 4y ago
  Based on the available data, it seems that FSD excels at causing car crashes. (https://www.autoevolution.com/news/the-tesla-model-s-that-caused-a-pileup-in-san-francisco-had-full-self-driving-engaged-208729.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/the-tesla-model-s-that-ca...)
loeg 4y ago
Anecdotal, but the only Tesla owner I've spoken to about it thinks the FSD thing is pretty fraudulent. Especially the earlier sales.
- tymekpavel 4y ago
  When I was buying a Tesla with autopilot back in 2015, the salesperson was telling me that autopilot would become FSD with only software updates. Honestly, it felt more like poor training of salespeople rather than outright fraud because the marketing material said different.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
losvedir 4y ago
I think it depends when you bought FSD, since how it has been described has changed over the years. At the minimum, it's not "fraud, plain and simple" because there are people that currently use it and are happy with it. And it's not just sunk cost fallacy because you can buy it as a subscription for $200/mo, which is much less of an investment, and you can cancel that at any time. I don't know if Tesla breaks out numbers of how many FSD subscribers there are, but I think that would be pretty interesting to know. Regardless, for something in development like FSD, I think the subscription model makes the most sense, since you know kinda what you're getting and if it's not worth it to you, you can cancel and then try again later after some updates. I kind of think they bumped the price to $15k just to switch more people to the subscription model.
- mrbungie 4y ago
  Paying 30 dollars once for a Early Access Pass to an indie game in Steam makes a lot of sense. But paying 200/mo USD for practically being a crash test dummy in real driving conditions, I'm not so sure.
- jaxn 4y ago
  I placed my order on AI day in 2019 right after all of the claims were made. I took delivery June 1, 2019. When I ordered the car, I did so expecting it to be able to drive while I slept sometime during the life of the car. I have considered suing Tesla for failing to live up to the promises that prompted me to purchase the car. I had never purchased a new car before and wouldn't have except for the phantasmal claims of full-self driving. Refunding the $6k I paid for FSD seems insufficient to me.
  - thedrbrian 4y ago
    >When I ordered the car, I did so expecting it to be able to drive while I slept sometime during the life of the car. I have considered suing Tesla for failing to live up to the promises that prompted me to purchase the car. genuine question but , were you not the tiniest bit skeptical when only Tesla were able to promise FSD? like what secret sauce have they got that no one else has?
wefarrell 4y ago
I suspect that customers who bought FSD also hold Tesla stock and that's why there haven't been as many complaints.
nunez 4y ago
Autopilot/Navigate on Autopilot are actually really useful, especially during highway driving. Other lane-keeping systems do nothing but try to keep the car in the lane (and some do a poor job of even that). Autopilot is rock solid in this regard. Like "I now actually prefer road-tripping 700+ miles instead of flying" rock solid. (I never road-tripped in the past because driving long distances wipes me out. Not so with Autopilot.) Navigate on Autopilot is also super reliable in automatically changing lanes and exiting highways, and works on highways that SuperCruise and BlueCruise Hands-Free do not. Traffic Aware Cruise Control is rock-solid in detecting and acting upon traffic lights and speed limit signs, though some systems already do this. This used to require purchasing FSD (it was a $7,000 option when I purchased our Model 3), but now you just need Enhanced Autopilot to enable it (which is $6,000). I can easily see people asking for at least a downgrade to Enhanced Autopilot (a $9,000 difference), and I don't blame them. For example, my wife would NEVER use FSD Beta in its current state, but she loves Autopilot and uses it all of the time. Given that FSD is included in the final price of the car that is used for car registrations, I'm wondering how those refunds will work.
- warunsl 4y ago
  > Like "I now actually prefer road-tripping 700+ miles instead of flying" rock solid. I am completely uneducated on the state of EV charging right now. But for a 700+ miles, you would have to fully charge 2+ times? And how does it compare to a gas car given the availability of superchargers, excessive demands on long weekends, etc? Not trying to dismiss EV because of these factors, just genuinely curious of the compromise.
  - nunez 4y ago
    Gas cars have more refueling options, and refueling them is much faster. It takes about 45 minutes to refill our Model 3 at an average supercharger, of which there are many, but not as many as gas stations. However, gas stations tend to be very spartan. Maybe you'll be fueling up at Bucee's or Wawa or Publix or something like that, or maybe you'll be filling up at Rod's Country Store which is a murder house that happens to have gas. Superchargers are usually located at the back of malls (which are useless if closed, but very useful when they are not) or large stores. Sometimes they are right in the city center, which is great because you can walk around and explore while you charge. It forces a break, which is great during road trips. On a 700 mile road trip, we'd probably stop three times or so. However, Tesla Navigation is really really good at route planning with its superchargers. The nav can tell you when a charger is full or about to be full or if it has broken stalls or not. It will actually re-route you if a supercharging station fills up, if possible.
guywithahat 4y ago
To be fair, the beta is out and it seems to work shockingly well from what I can tell. Expecting it to be out of beta and working everywhere in a year seems reasonable

consumer451 4y ago

> At minimum, I can't see anything other than Tesla being forced to refund FSD purchases. Hmm, 285,000 [0] sales of FSD * say $8,000 [1] to be conservative = $2,280,000,000 That's more than I expected. [0] https://electrek.co/2022/12/29/tesla-people-bought-full-self-driving-north-america/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/29/tesla-people-bought-full-self... [1] https://www.notateslaapp.com/tesla-reference/958/tesla-fsd-price-increase-history https://www.notateslaapp.com/tesla-reference/958/tesla-fsd-p...

danso 4y ago
With ~3 million Teslas sold worldwide, 285K FSD was much fewer than I had thought. As someone currently not interested in buying a Tesla, I assumed most of the people in its target market are attracted to the FSD claims (reputationally, consumer-facing self-driving seems to be where Tesla is perceived to be the outright leader) and are able to afford it at its FOMO buy-now pricing.
- bhauer 4y ago
  FSD take rate has always been quite low, even when it was available for a much lower price than today.
- neither_color 4y ago
  A lot of Tesla drivers aren't "car people" but they're excited by the tech in the car besides FSD. I have zero interest in FSD and would never have gotten a BMW or Mercedes but still got a Tesla. I was ok with a Nissan before Tesla because premium ICE cars were just cars with added bells and whistles + marketing. If I had to get a new EV that isn't Tesla it would be a Rivian, Ford, or KIA because they all offer something unique that isn't just a retrofitted faux-premium ICE car. I don't care about leather seats or wooden accents or impressing anyone. For regular car folks who aren't into luxury Teslas introduce you to a whole new way of interacting and interfacing with your car such as the app control, sentry mode streaming, at-home charging, driver profiles, full touch UI, etc. Plus it smokes cars that try to block you from merging. Tesla delivered something that all of the MBAs combined from the other legacy car companies couldn't.
  - zippergz 4y ago
    It's so funny, and this is not a criticism at all, how big the divide in the two market segments are. I'm basically the polar opposite of you. I don't want a lot of technology in my car, I don't want big touch screens, apps, automatic software updates or any of that. I want a car that feels nice (not to impress anyone, but because I'm sitting my butt in that seat for potentially hours every day, touching the controls thousands of times, etc. and the cheapness of the Tesla materials is very noticeable to me in that context) and just happens to have an electric drivetrain. Unfortunately most of the manufacturers think it's better to try to be "innovative" by turning the car into an android phone on wheels instead of letting it be enough to innovate with the source of power. I'm fine with that stuff existing. Obviously people (including you) want it, and that's great. But I wish there were more options for people who don't want that.
    - kevinob11 4y ago
      Isn't that the Porsche? I get that the price makes that not an option for most (including me). Also maybe I'm just proving your point by saying that there is one option.
    - flandish 4y ago
      I’m in a similar boat. I just want something as disconnected from what I do day to day as possible. I write code. I notice bugs. I don’t want an in dash embedded device with a poorly designed ui/x. I want something I can wrench on and when it breaks I can debug and fix. Currently in a 2015 wrangler. Auto trans, manual locks, manual windows, $90 marine radio with shit bluetooth. I’d get a cassette deck if I could bluetooth to it. Point being, where I am, the car is what I need and can deal with my roads and winters and doesn’t have an OTA updated dash-to-drivetrain link that can decide at any time heated seats or cruise control is 30 bucks a month.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I think FSD was not available in many countries outside the US at least initially, due to regulations.
  - avgDev 4y ago
    Correct. FSD is not available in EU.
    - haliskerbas 4y ago
      Only in the US do we prop up a rich man buy allowing him to sell vaporware.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- nunez 4y ago
  My hypothesis is that most people won't buy it because most people would rather drive themselves, especially if you're paying $15k for that privilege, and that many people don't know that you can subscribe to FSD on a monthly basis (though there are upsells within the MCU to drive consumption there). This was a much more lucrative proposition as a $2k add-on, I think.
nunez 4y ago
It's going to be more complicated than that. They will absolutely try to mitigate by downselling to Enhanced Autopilot, which gets more usage (I think). Depending on when you purchased FSD, that will yield somewhere between a $0 and $9,000 refund. However, the Enhanced Autopilot option was removed in 2019 and came back last year. I think this was done to juice the sales count. If the DoJ agrees, then Tesla might have to honor EAP's 2019 purchase price. This would make the minimum refund something like $3500. Either way, this would be a blow to Tesla and will definitely worsen the layoffening.

bhauer 4y ago

People will pay $20K for sport brakes or $10K for an unusual paint color. Acting like you know better than actual customers of FSD whether the $8K, $10K, $12K, or $15K they spent on the software is reasonable for them is the height of arrogance. Also, characterizing the current FSD Beta system as "cruise control" is delusional.

ramraj07 4y ago
If I pay 20 thousand for pink and I get pink there’s no further argument.
- bhauer 4y ago
  Yeah, and if you pay $15K today, you get FSD Beta. For some people, that is worth the price. Again, arguing that you know better about what other people do with their money is arrogant.
  - ryanwaggoner 4y ago
    EDIT: nvm
    - fallingknife 4y ago
      They are investigating, so it is not known whether or not they disagree yet. And even if they did, your argument would still be nothing but an appeal to authority.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - bhauer 4y ago
      This subthread is about the people who system16 criticized for being happy with purchasing FSD. The Justice Department is not acting on behalf of that group of satisfied customers.

chrisstanchak 4y ago

I take it you haven't driven it >the amount of Tesla owners I know that tell me they are happy Exactly

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
LynxInLA 4y ago
I rented one for a few weeks in late 2021, and the experience completely turned me off of Tesla's FSD. During a 2 hour drive on an interstate on a clear, sunny day, FSD started steering into another vehicle 3 different times. One was a truck, and another was a wide load house being transported. I'll admit that is an odd case, but "don't accelerate straight into a house that is at windshield level" seems like a pretty simple ask. It did this multiple times and I had to temporarily disable the cruise control. It also failed miserably on curving state highways, to the point that I turned it off after about 20 minutes.
- cjdoc29 4y ago
  I'm not refuting your general claim here, but the system you interacted with is Tesla's Autopilot, not FSD. They are two distinct systems for two distinct use cases (today). FSD is supposed to only work on city streets, and was in limited beta in 2021 (you had to explicitly enroll). Autopilot is what runs on freeways/interstates today, and can be used on the street (but is not meant for city streets). Autopilot, and it's Navigate on Autopilot system have been fantastic for me, but they are absolutely systems you need to monitor because they can do dumb things. It's not meant to be a hands-off driving system like the FSD system Tesla claims it will be one day.

fallingknife 4y ago

I think that's a stretch. FSD is a product name. There seems to be no expectation or legal requirement that product names be literal descriptions of the functionality. So long as everybody knows what they are paying for is not an actual fully autonomous driving system, it wouldn't be fraud IMO. And I'm pretty sure everybody knows it, especially given the safety features that don't allow you to take your hands off the wheel. Would you call all of these "unbreakable wine glasses" fraud? https://www.amazon.com/s?k=unbreakable+wine+glasses https://www.amazon.com/s?k=unbreakable+wine+glasses I think we would all agree that not one of them is actually unbreakable. But if someone sued for fraud because they were able to break one, they would probably be laughed out of court.

system16 4y ago
If the wine glasses were sold with the promise that in one year I'd receive a solution to apply to them that would truly make them unbreakable? Yes, I would call it fraud.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It is also possible that the wine glasses are unbreakable in the context of being used as a wine glass, i.e. they will not break if they fall from a the height where they would normally be used or stored, which is a reasonable assumption to make. Whereas for a "full" self driving car, Tesla obviously has not (and probably will not) deliver a car that can fully drive itself in the context of normal car usage.
notahacker 4y ago
It's an even bigger stretch to pretend that FSD is just some sort of jokey trademark and not something which the CEO has repeatedly insisted is the intended purpose of the feature and a forthcoming release to drivers who purchase that option, probably by $currentyear+1, something confirmed in only slightly more cautious terms by the product marketing pages. I imagine the vendors of unbreakable wine glasses would probably be in trouble if they charged $15k and argued that they'd receive over the air updates to Kevlar as soon as the regulatory approvals had gone through...

sixQuarks 4y ago

[flagged]

JeremyBanks 4y ago
Do you have the foggiest idea what “cruise control” systems are capable of these days?
- tensor 4y ago
  Yes, nothing compared to FSD. Some are coming close to autopilot but that's about it.
- sixQuarks 4y ago
  Do they make left turns at unprotected 4 lane roads?
gamblor956 4y ago
Based on the available data, it seems that FSD excels at causing car crashes. (https://www.autoevolution.com/news/the-tesla-model-s-that-caused-a-pileup-in-san-francisco-had-full-self-driving-engaged-208729.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/the-tesla-model-s-that-ca...)

loeg 4y ago

Anecdotal, but the only Tesla owner I've spoken to about it thinks the FSD thing is pretty fraudulent. Especially the earlier sales.

tymekpavel 4y ago
When I was buying a Tesla with autopilot back in 2015, the salesperson was telling me that autopilot would become FSD with only software updates. Honestly, it felt more like poor training of salespeople rather than outright fraud because the marketing material said different.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

losvedir 4y ago

I think it depends when you bought FSD, since how it has been described has changed over the years. At the minimum, it's not "fraud, plain and simple" because there are people that currently use it and are happy with it. And it's not just sunk cost fallacy because you can buy it as a subscription for $200/mo, which is much less of an investment, and you can cancel that at any time. I don't know if Tesla breaks out numbers of how many FSD subscribers there are, but I think that would be pretty interesting to know. Regardless, for something in development like FSD, I think the subscription model makes the most sense, since you know kinda what you're getting and if it's not worth it to you, you can cancel and then try again later after some updates. I kind of think they bumped the price to $15k just to switch more people to the subscription model.

mrbungie 4y ago
Paying 30 dollars once for a Early Access Pass to an indie game in Steam makes a lot of sense. But paying 200/mo USD for practically being a crash test dummy in real driving conditions, I'm not so sure.
jaxn 4y ago
I placed my order on AI day in 2019 right after all of the claims were made. I took delivery June 1, 2019. When I ordered the car, I did so expecting it to be able to drive while I slept sometime during the life of the car. I have considered suing Tesla for failing to live up to the promises that prompted me to purchase the car. I had never purchased a new car before and wouldn't have except for the phantasmal claims of full-self driving. Refunding the $6k I paid for FSD seems insufficient to me.
- thedrbrian 4y ago
  >When I ordered the car, I did so expecting it to be able to drive while I slept sometime during the life of the car. I have considered suing Tesla for failing to live up to the promises that prompted me to purchase the car. genuine question but , were you not the tiniest bit skeptical when only Tesla were able to promise FSD? like what secret sauce have they got that no one else has?

wefarrell 4y ago

I suspect that customers who bought FSD also hold Tesla stock and that's why there haven't been as many complaints.

nunez 4y ago

Autopilot/Navigate on Autopilot are actually really useful, especially during highway driving. Other lane-keeping systems do nothing but try to keep the car in the lane (and some do a poor job of even that). Autopilot is rock solid in this regard. Like "I now actually prefer road-tripping 700+ miles instead of flying" rock solid. (I never road-tripped in the past because driving long distances wipes me out. Not so with Autopilot.) Navigate on Autopilot is also super reliable in automatically changing lanes and exiting highways, and works on highways that SuperCruise and BlueCruise Hands-Free do not. Traffic Aware Cruise Control is rock-solid in detecting and acting upon traffic lights and speed limit signs, though some systems already do this. This used to require purchasing FSD (it was a $7,000 option when I purchased our Model 3), but now you just need Enhanced Autopilot to enable it (which is $6,000). I can easily see people asking for at least a downgrade to Enhanced Autopilot (a $9,000 difference), and I don't blame them. For example, my wife would NEVER use FSD Beta in its current state, but she loves Autopilot and uses it all of the time. Given that FSD is included in the final price of the car that is used for car registrations, I'm wondering how those refunds will work.

warunsl 4y ago
> Like "I now actually prefer road-tripping 700+ miles instead of flying" rock solid. I am completely uneducated on the state of EV charging right now. But for a 700+ miles, you would have to fully charge 2+ times? And how does it compare to a gas car given the availability of superchargers, excessive demands on long weekends, etc? Not trying to dismiss EV because of these factors, just genuinely curious of the compromise.
- nunez 4y ago
  Gas cars have more refueling options, and refueling them is much faster. It takes about 45 minutes to refill our Model 3 at an average supercharger, of which there are many, but not as many as gas stations. However, gas stations tend to be very spartan. Maybe you'll be fueling up at Bucee's or Wawa or Publix or something like that, or maybe you'll be filling up at Rod's Country Store which is a murder house that happens to have gas. Superchargers are usually located at the back of malls (which are useless if closed, but very useful when they are not) or large stores. Sometimes they are right in the city center, which is great because you can walk around and explore while you charge. It forces a break, which is great during road trips. On a 700 mile road trip, we'd probably stop three times or so. However, Tesla Navigation is really really good at route planning with its superchargers. The nav can tell you when a charger is full or about to be full or if it has broken stalls or not. It will actually re-route you if a supercharging station fills up, if possible.

guywithahat 4y ago

To be fair, the beta is out and it seems to work shockingly well from what I can tell. Expecting it to be out of beta and working everywhere in a year seems reasonable