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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

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?
  - nunez 4y ago
    they have a guy who leads a company that made reusable rockets profitable and electric vehicles sexy. I have no problem believing that people strongly believed in Tesla cracking L5 autonomy within that year. Also, remember that self-driving cars were all the rage then too. Hype was at its peak then, I think.
  - gary_0 4y ago
    > what secret sauce have they got that no one else has? A large fleet of networked cars that were built from the ground up to provide real-world data (including cameras and human driver inputs) for AI training. Honestly I kind of wonder if Tesla's software team (or overall technical approach) wasn't very badly mismanaged since they seem to have thrown away a huge head start. Or maybe autonomous car AI is just really hard.
    - sidibe 4y ago
      > Honestly I kind of wonder if Tesla's software team (or overall technical approach) wasn't very badly mismanaged since they seem to have thrown away a huge head start. Keep in mind they are likely spending 10x or less than Waymo on FSD, so a lot less employees/researchers, have been around a lot less time and have decided not to use the sensors and ground truth data that Waymo relies on. Just having lots of data isn't necessarily very useful, or we'd see the pure FSD trying to get their sensors on everybody's cars.
      - gary_0 4y ago
        Where are you getting "10x or less" from? Googling says Waymo burns about $1 billion/year, and Tesla's 2022 R&D budget was $3 billion.
mrWiz 4y ago
At the minimum, it's not "fraud, plain and simple" because there are people that currently use it and are happy with it. I don't think that happy customers necessarily mean that it's not fraudulent. FSD provides some value and has been seriously misrepresented by Tesla. The fact that some people are happy with the value they get from it does not diminish Tesla's misrepresentation.
cycomanic 4y ago
> At the minimum, it's not "fraud, plain and simple" because there are people that currently use it and are happy with it. Just because there are people who use it and are happy with it doesn't mean it's not fraud. There likely are people who are being sold fake products (unbeknown to them) and are still happy with those products, they were still sold to them under a fake premise. Regarding subscribers, sure there are people who are happy to pay $200/month for driving assist (I mean people pay significant premium for other makers driving assist technology), however I suspect there are a significant number of people where the promise of "autopilot" was a deciding factor to buy a Tesla over another car. So it is likely not just fraud, but also unfair competition.

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?
- nunez 4y ago
  they have a guy who leads a company that made reusable rockets profitable and electric vehicles sexy. I have no problem believing that people strongly believed in Tesla cracking L5 autonomy within that year. Also, remember that self-driving cars were all the rage then too. Hype was at its peak then, I think.
- gary_0 4y ago
  > what secret sauce have they got that no one else has? A large fleet of networked cars that were built from the ground up to provide real-world data (including cameras and human driver inputs) for AI training. Honestly I kind of wonder if Tesla's software team (or overall technical approach) wasn't very badly mismanaged since they seem to have thrown away a huge head start. Or maybe autonomous car AI is just really hard.
  - sidibe 4y ago
    > Honestly I kind of wonder if Tesla's software team (or overall technical approach) wasn't very badly mismanaged since they seem to have thrown away a huge head start. Keep in mind they are likely spending 10x or less than Waymo on FSD, so a lot less employees/researchers, have been around a lot less time and have decided not to use the sensors and ground truth data that Waymo relies on. Just having lots of data isn't necessarily very useful, or we'd see the pure FSD trying to get their sensors on everybody's cars.
    - gary_0 4y ago
      Where are you getting "10x or less" from? Googling says Waymo burns about $1 billion/year, and Tesla's 2022 R&D budget was $3 billion.

mrWiz 4y ago

At the minimum, it's not "fraud, plain and simple" because there are people that currently use it and are happy with it. I don't think that happy customers necessarily mean that it's not fraudulent. FSD provides some value and has been seriously misrepresented by Tesla. The fact that some people are happy with the value they get from it does not diminish Tesla's misrepresentation.

cycomanic 4y ago

> At the minimum, it's not "fraud, plain and simple" because there are people that currently use it and are happy with it. Just because there are people who use it and are happy with it doesn't mean it's not fraud. There likely are people who are being sold fake products (unbeknown to them) and are still happy with those products, they were still sold to them under a fake premise. Regarding subscribers, sure there are people who are happy to pay $200/month for driving assist (I mean people pay significant premium for other makers driving assist technology), however I suspect there are a significant number of people where the promise of "autopilot" was a deciding factor to buy a Tesla over another car. So it is likely not just fraud, but also unfair competition.