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Tesla is heading into multi-billion-dollar iceberg of its own making

242 points by ndsipa_pomu 1y ago

croes 1y ago
> It’s unclear why would Tesla sell a subcription to something that doesn’t even exist, but it is not helping build confidence with customers. Money
gchokov 1y ago
My EU Car was produced in Germany, in May 2024, with HW3. Already largely obsolete.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  Well, you did buy a smart fridge with wheels, not sure what anyone expects when doing such purchase decision.
  - davedx 1y ago
    Consumers shouldn't need to do extended due diligence on the history of whether a company told the truth or not about what it's selling you over the last 15 years before making a purchase decision. There are, in fact, laws about this kind of thing
    - paulcole 1y ago
      But wouldn’t you feel like an idiot if you didn’t do due diligence and were conned? I don’t particularly like saying, “well the law was supposed to protect me…” in a case where my idiotic decision was completely preventable.
      - scott_w 1y ago
        You say this as though it's trivial to just see that Tesla is a scam. There's multiple decades of fawning articles and reviews of Tesla to the point where the average person can't be blamed for assuming they're a reputable company. But of course, blaming the victim is much easier because it lets the person doing the blaming pretend they're morally and intellectually superior in some way.
        friendzis 1y ago
        > You say this as though it's trivial to just see that Tesla is a scam. You don't need any particularly deep due diligence to see that, in fact, not living under a rock is more than enough. > There's multiple decades of fawning articles and reviews of Tesla to the point where the average person can't be blamed for assuming they're a reputable company. There's multiple decades of articles highlighting, in various levels of detail, how exactly bad Tesla is and Teslas are. Checking for bad reviews and deciding how applicable they are to you in particular is part of rudimentary check Sorry, but knowingly and deliberately buying a Tesla vehicle is entirely on the customer and they get in some sense even more than what they had ordered. Similarly, if you buy a ${brand-you-don't-like} you have no right to complain about ${common-problem}, because that's the state vehicles leave the factory.
        scott_w 1y ago
        > You don't need any particularly deep due diligence to see that, in fact, not living under a rock is more than enough. From May 2025: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/05/05/us-consumers-dont-trust-tesla-anymore-study-says/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/05/05/us-consumers-dont-trust... OP bought their Tesla in 2024, so customer sentiment was actually favourable to Tesla at that point. In March 2024, brand loyalty was really high according to Experian: https://inspiramarketing.com/when-a-brand-becomes-its-own-worst-enemy-teslas-reputation-reckoning/ https://inspiramarketing.com/when-a-brand-becomes-its-own-wo... In 2019, customer satisfaction was also high: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-customers-say-they-would-buy-it-again-2019-11?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-customers-say-... In 2020, they had an NPS of 97: https://customergauge.com/benchmarks/companies/tesla_motors https://customergauge.com/benchmarks/companies/tesla_motors > Sorry, but knowingly and deliberately buying a Tesla vehicle is entirely on the customer and they get in some sense even more than what they had ordered. Clearly, the customers were not knowingly and deliberately buying bad cars because the evidence available to the average person told them the exact opposite thing. EDIT: Strikethrough below, it was a result of a bad search but the principle above still stands. Hell, even on Hacker News, the bad news only seems to have started appearing 3 years ago, and I know for a fact your average consumer isn't browsing tech sites to form their opinion for their next car purchase.
    - blibble 1y ago
      why not? a car is the largest purchase most people will make (after property) people should do more due diligence on it than e.g. on a new phone purchase
      - Loughla 1y ago
        There's a difference between doing research into a car and doing research into whether or not a company is lying to me.
        blibble 1y ago
        why not? I certainly looked into whether the company that built my house was prudent and known for not scamming people
        fnordsensei 1y ago
        Information, power, and insight asymmetry between an individual and a company. That’s why there are consumer protection laws in many countries; to even the scales, not to favor individuals. With no hand on the scales, asymmetry is the default.
        blibble 1y ago
        I 100% agree companies shouldn't be outright allowed to scam people but if you're not at least reading the wikipedia page on a car and its manufacturer company before buying it looking for common "issues", that's kinda your fault
    - JohnFen 1y ago
      Maybe they shouldn't need to, but they do. Due to regulatory capture and deregulation (at least in the US), the law provides very little protection against scumbag companies.
  - firecall 1y ago
    They expect what is promised. Consumer protections are a very real thing in the EU, UK, Australia and elsewhere! If you make promises about the features a product will deliver, then you are obligated to deliver those features. If not, the consumer is entitled to a refund.
    - 6510 1y ago
      You could wrap it in disclaimers of experimental technology. Just describe the exact content on the tin. It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days.
      - watwut 1y ago
        Consumer protections prevent such contracts. That is why companies acustomed to "defraud as much as you want, just keep it legally plausibe" hate them so much.
      - friendzis 1y ago
        > It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days. IANAL, but if it was "fine" that would still fall quite firmly under "gambling"
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - JohnFen 1y ago
        > It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days. No, it doesn't seem fine at all. That's scam territory.
      - piva00 1y ago
        This kind of legal loophole might be common in the USA but in the EU is much harder to weasel out of obligations from the spirit of the law with legalese. They can wrap as in many disclaimers as they want, if the law is clear that consumers had a presumption of delivery due to marketing promises which were unfulfilled they are on the hook for it. It's why many American companies constantly complain about EU regulations, they empower consumers which is "bad for business™" since fraud becomes much harder to wrap in loopholes.
- martini333 1y ago
  How? You still have exactly what you bought. You even got new features as OTA updates for free. What other car would not be as-bought after purchace?
  - bdcravens 1y ago
    > What other car would not be as-bought after purchace? The other cars that also have OTA updates? (Rivian, Polestar, and more, plus quite a few that provide less-extensive OTA like Hyundai, VW, etc)
    - martini333 1y ago
      ...what other car is not "Already largely obsolete" after purchance..?
Someone 1y ago
FRA: “As for HW3 owners who bought FSD, which basically turned out to be an interest free loan to Tesla for years, the automaker needs to offer free FSD transfer and a $10,000 discount on a car upgrade. While this might sound like a lot” It would add up to a lot of money for Tesla, but for customers? Some of these people paid $15.000 years ago for something that hasn’t been delivered, and now, they would be able to get $10,000 ‘back’, only if they commit to spending way more again, in the hope to eventually get what they bought years ago, or, more likely, in the hope of eventually being able to subscribe to get the features they already paid for years ago.
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  Yeah, sounds completely backwards, how could anyone accept that? "Yeah, sure, you lied to me about it before, but for my next purchase I'll get it slightly cheaper, sounds great"
  - cjrp 1y ago
    I think it would work for the fully-indoctrinated customers, but what % of their total base is that? 5%?
    - boringg 1y ago
      I think it is much higher for tesla.
      - LightBug1 1y ago
        At this stage, I imagine them mostly wearing red gag balls ... Why else would you put up with this nonsense? If nothing else, Musk is a Svengali extraordinaire ...
      - cjrp 1y ago
        Hmm I'm not so sure, admittedly based on anecdata. In the UK I know 10+ people who drive Teslas, and none of them are fanboys in any way. It was just the cheapest EV with decent range when they bought it.
aelaguiz 1y ago
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- kokanee 1y ago
  You're neglecting the fact that the affected customers paid for FSD and never got it.
- honeybadger1 1y ago
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  - VoidWhisperer 1y ago
    What platform are you talking about in this case? If anyone here is a conman, it is Musk - given that he literally had people pay a subscription for something that never materialized, repeatedly promising 'oh it'll be here soon' - that is literally the textbook definition of a conman - 'a person who tricks other people in order to get their money'[0] [0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/con%20man https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/con%20man
    - honeybadger1 1y ago
      Fred is quite literally only known for producing a platform that provides analytics on MMA fighting for the purpose of assisting gambling addicts at making a better gambling prediction, his second venture is writing negative opinion pieces about Tesla and focusing on the character persona that is Elon Musk. The ventures of Elon Musk have quite litreally proven he's a maker, not a conman. He has also won every lawsuit brought against him where half-truths are used in the public eye, but the moment it's in court the whole truth prevails, in almost every case. He has a lot of enemies, ones he has made on his own, and those that envy what he has accomplished with the people that he has inspired to do the work. He is to some, an easy shortcut to fame because he is constantly putting himself in the public eye and welcoming risks. He has my respect, even with all his delays and set backs, he always seems to deliver eventually and that is not the same as conman with smoke and mirrors behind the curtain.
scrollop 1y ago
As expected, based on it's actions and promises, over it's history. There is a good choice of EVs from various manufacturers.
- speedgoose 1y ago
  In some markets, it means having to spend more or purchasing a worse car. Tesla offers some very good value cars, and 0% interest rate for 3 years. It almost makes you want to forget about the CEO.
  - anonymars 1y ago
    Also, how does the charging situation compare outside of the Tesla ecosystem? (Assuming you can't charge it at home) Tesla really makes charging about as seamless as can be. It integrates into the navigation system (the car will automatically add charging stops, pre-warm the battery, tell you how many spots are open, etc.), integrates the payment, etc. I've rented a Tesla. The most annoying thing about it was the goofy unlock (tapping a key card at the right spot on the door pillar) but I'm very wary of renting any other EV and having to dick around with finding the right charge place, determining if it has the right connection, will it charge fast enough, can I just pay by card or do I need some stupid app, etc.
    - coldpie 1y ago
      > Tesla really makes charging about as seamless as can be. It integrates into the navigation system (the car will automatically add charging stops, pre-warm the battery, tell you how many spots are open, etc.), integrates the payment, etc. Other cars have all that, too, yeah. I got a 2025 Ioniq 5 and it does all that, and it's also not restricted to just one charging company's chargers. The payment integration stuff exists, but it requires support from the charging company obviously, and IMO that's kind of a mis-feature anyway, so I never bothered to set it up. > can I just pay by card or do I need some stupid app In my experience, almost all chargers just use a card. 100% of the ones I've used in regular gas stations on freeway exits just use a card. Once in a blue moon you run into a stupid app one, but it's usually an older charger that was installed in a city center in the early days of EV charging. The apps seem to be mostly disappearing, thank god. Ironically I'm pretty sure Tesla's chargers require a stupid app for non-Tesla cars, but I've never used one, so not certain. > determining if it has the right connection Yeah, the adapters are clunky. It's just gonna take time to phase out CCS. Hopefully that's a solved problem in 10 years as everyone switches over to NACS. I did use a native NACS non-Tesla charger with my native NACS non-Telsa car once on a recent road trip. The future is... almost here!
CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
> Tesla needs to offer all HW3 owners a $5,000 loyalty discount, that goes on top of all other incentive program, when upgrading to a new car. Is it just me, or does that seem backwards? If I purchased something with a specific feature, or promised future feature, and 5 years later it's still nowhere to be seen, I don't want a coupon for "my next purchase", why would I buy from the same place after they already lied to me before? The only acceptable solution would be to get back the extra money spent for that feature.
- chronci739 1y ago
  > why would I buy from the same place after they already lied to me before? You are smarter than the repeat Tesla buyer.
- baggachipz 1y ago
  The only sane offer would be to give me my money back. They know how much I gave them, now give it back since you didn't deliver and I no longer have the car. Isn't it enough that I gave them an interest-free loan for all those years?
  - fukka42 1y ago
    They should obviously pay interest, too.
    - baggachipz 1y ago
      In an ideal world. Instead, I expect a class action settlement and me receiving a check for $25.
- brandonagr2 1y ago
  Nowhere to be seen if your head is in the sand. There are robotaxi pilot programs running in two cities, FSD 14 is actively rolling out to customers, and my car drove me to work this morning on v13. I don't see any lies
skywhopper 1y ago
The time to address this productively was when “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving” were announced. Tesla and Musk have been misleading customers for a decade now, and the FTC and other regulatory agencies have done next to nothing about it. I’m not expecting a serious crackdown at this point, but I’m also constantly shocked at the folks who still buy into this fever dream.
- jgalt212 1y ago
  Fool me once, fool me n times...
- CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
  According to the article, it seems like Tesla didn't land in hot water until they started to push the same scam outside of the US (article is mostly about Australia I think), but seems like regulators might be getting some balls to do the same in the US soon as far as I can tell.
  - baggachipz 1y ago
    > seems like regulators might be getting some balls to do the same in the US soon You must be new here. Kidding aside, the only reason they would do anything would be if Tesla doesn't sufficiently kiss the king's ring, which they did to the tune of $250 million quite recently. More payments will likely be required, but it's a cost of doing "business" these days.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > More payments will likely be required, but it's a cost of doing "business" these days A "multi-billion-dollar iceberg" is literally referenced in the headline. Like, yes, if Tesla pays back all HW2 and HW3 FSD buyers their purchase plus interest, they should be fine.
ec109685 1y ago
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- infecto 1y ago
  Not sure why this is downvoted. Yes it requires human monitoring. I use it on a daily basis though for my commuter with zero interventions on highways. I choose to drive my HW3 Tesla for road trips and is a lot less exhausting paying attention than it is driving. By all means not a defense of the general Tesla grift and how many years of failed promises it took to get here but what’s here now is pretty decent.
  - blinding-streak 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - infecto 1y ago
      Your comment is neither respectful or helpful but I come to expect it here especially around topics that people have struggles with. I never said I find it exhausting to drive on highways. I can drive just fine, even have my Iron Butt for 1k miles. What I did say is that I find using the current state of FSD a joy on road trips. FSD works really well on highways. You are fatigued a lot slower than without. Anecdote of myself and anger other folks I know.
sidcool 1y ago
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layer8 1y ago
The whole FSD promise was such a scam from the start (or self-delusion on Tesla’s part, if you want to be charitable) that it would be nice to see them feel real consequences from it.
Havoc 1y ago
> It’s unclear why would Tesla sell a subcription to something that doesn’t even exist No I’d say it’s pretty clear
- firtoz 1y ago
  Can you please enlighten those of us who are watching from a distance?
  - WJW 1y ago
    Money?
  - throwaway984393 1y ago
    [dead]
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    I mean, they were selling something which didn't exist as a one-off payment for about the last decade, so I'm not sure why selling it on a subscription basis is inherently any weirder. They clearly have the sort of customer base who like paying for non-existent things, so why not?
  - hiddencost 1y ago
    One of the most notorious liars in history was heavily leveraged and needed the stock to do well, to avoid bankruptcy, so he lied repeatedly for years?
  - hypeatei 1y ago
    There are a lot of "true believers" in the Tesla customer base so it's an easy way to collect money without doing much. The same mindset applies to the stock: it's not really based on any fundamentals, just vibes and Elon's personality.
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    When you get paid for not doing anything, you get paid, but you don't have to do anything.
FlyingSnake 1y ago
For a minute I thought this is an moon-shot to stop climate change by building real icebergs.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  That's hilarious.
KaiserPro 1y ago
Ok, so I imagine that the fine print of the $5k FSD addon has something like "This is a beta and may or may not delivered in full" or something similar. I can't imagine that they made it easy enough for someone to take them to court for non-delivery of FSD, which we knew wasn't going to be possible.
_hark 1y ago
They really should have just marketed the software "as-is" to whatever extent that is allowed by law. I guess they didn't because deployed automobile software is probably not allowed to be considered experimental. Still, comms that framed it like: "This software purchase upgrades your car with state-of-the-art autonomy capabilities from our AI team, as we approach full self-driving" would have been more honest, still exciting to consumers, and avoided over-promising.
- friendzis 1y ago
  > and avoided over-promising Stonk is the product and is literally built on over-promising.
panick21 1y ago
AI and focus on Self-Driving has been the biggest failure and blindspot for Tesla (Musk). So much of the strategy evolved around that, its a big reason why I pulled my investment. I invested because they were growing fast, had a pretty good product and had very high marin despite massive investment charging, service and verticial integration. And their next generation product should have been a reusable platform that could delvier a basic van, basic suv and basic pickup, all from the same assembly line. After that focus on a cheaper smaller electric car. I thought it made a lot of sense to focus on a well functioning Level 2 System that they owned themselves. Make highway driving, start-stop traffic and such easy as possible. Make the car helpful and easy to use. But then Tesla started focusing on making complex navigation and remote summening a feature when tons of basic stuff didn't work very well yet. For example, automated parking, 360 view, detection of features like shadows and such. Why not focus specifically on the actual dangrous problem looking around blind corners and installing a sensor suit that can help humans with the problem. Promsing Full Self Driving with existing hardware and selling that when they had not proven that it could work was idioitc and I always felt like it was a liability. They should have been sued over this a while ago. Initially Tesla messaging was save, nice software, fun to drive and green, and it then became half baked software, don't drive it and risky. When it came out that Musk said they should build a cheaper next generation car, because Self-Driving would collapse the car market by 80% I knew the company had completely lost its way.
- throwaway984393 1y ago
  [dead]
- riffraff 1y ago
  but the whole self driving shtick is what gave it the insane valuation, isn't it? "we're general motors, but better" is not the same as "we'll have self driving taxis that make money to our customers while they sleep". Musk's 2018 Pay Package had a lot of market cap-based targets[0]. [0] https://www.equilar.com/elon-musk-2018-tesla-pay-package-analysis https://www.equilar.com/elon-musk-2018-tesla-pay-package-ana...
  - 1y ago
t1234s 1y ago
I would think the hw3 to hw4 retrofit would be easy. just swap out the FSD computer under the front and swap out the cameras. I'm sure they could make a kit that is compatible with the existing camera harnesses (if they are different). Also they would need to make a way to retrofit the bumper cam housing on older models. If they offered this for sale for $8k including the FSD license for older hw3 teslas that don't have FSD it might offset some of the cost to bring up the people who already paid the $8k on HW3.
jimbo808 1y ago
This is kinda a hilarious coincidence, because I just watched a podcast with Andrej Karpathy, the guy who was running their autopilot program back when the sage "fully autonomous in one year" predictions kicked of their 15+ year long run (and counting). These days he's moved on to predicting 10 years for AGI and is, I shit you not, citing his 15 year track record of making accurate predictions (timestamped link below if you want have a laugh). https://youtu.be/lXUZvyajciY?si=3PyVM476W6k3n-DR&t=181 https://youtu.be/lXUZvyajciY?si=3PyVM476W6k3n-DR&t=181
- morkalork 1y ago
  So, tacking on the 15x multiplier from his Tesla FSD prediction: AGI in 150 years. Yeah that actually sounds about right!
- estearum 1y ago
  Do we know that Karpathy was the one making those predictions? Musk is absolutely notorious for throwing completely made up and detached-from-reality deadlines onto his teams, including making public obligations to such.
  - Fricken 1y ago
    Karpathy, the celebrity AI influencer with no relevant autonomous vehicle experience, was hired to make Elon's bad predictions look good. He was an active and willing component of the scam. I'm sure he was paid handsomely. Autopilot's first director, Sterling Anderson, was fired because he was not willing to go along with the scam.
- londons_explore 1y ago
  Every time Elon made an FSD prediction on stage live, you could see Andrej wincing in the background. You could tell Andrej was going along with what hiss boss said, but didn't believe it himself.
  - skeeter2020 1y ago
    I don't think that absolves him from any of the scorn though. In fact it might make his shortcoming even worse.
blinding-streak 1y ago
I have zero sympathy for any Tesla owner that believed anything from Elon's mouth. That's your own fault. Tesla has shown time and time again to be hostile to its own customers in a variety of ways.
- niek_pas 1y ago
  Thankfully, there are actually laws about this sort of stuff! So companies don't (necessarily/always) just get away with "you shouldn't have listened to us, this is your own fault."
  - bdcravens 1y ago
    Correct, but unless regulatory bodies proactively force Tesla to compensate, there at least has to be an effort from consumers to stand up, admit they were conned, and press the issue.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > there are least has to be an effort from consumers to stand up FTFA: "...thousands of Tesla owners have now joined a class action lawsuit in Australia over Tesla misleading customers with its self-driving promises. It adds to similar ongoing lawsuits in the US and China."
      - bdcravens 1y ago
        I was replying to a comment which seemed to imply that the law alone was adequate to prevent abuse of consumers.
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > the law alone Lawsuits.
        1y ago
bob1029 1y ago
I feel like Tesla would have been significantly more competitive with the non-EV market if they had gone in a completely opposite direction with regard to fancy technology. Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train and I'm much more interested. Make the car kind of ugly too. On purpose. I don't need a GPU farm inside my car. I'm not running a robotic taxi company. I just want to go get some groceries. I've worked on cars long enough to realize I don't want a chip using a leading edge semiconductor node in my vehicle somewhere. I live in a pretty nasty climate. A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. There's always something that starts to break once you cross into that 150F temperature level. I want semiconductors that were engineered to run in the basement of hell 24/7/365. 28nm and thicker sizes. I don't want 3nm gates in my car. There's no way these chips would last 10 years.
- zozbot234 1y ago
  > A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. AIUI, the car can run its cooling/AC system to keep itself cool, even when powered off. I'd imagine that this is actually a bigger concern for the battery's health and safety, not the chips. You're not supposed to let a battery get that hot.
  - bob1029 1y ago
    If a cooling system needs to be built just to keep the car from dying when no one is using it, then I would argue we have jumped the complexity shark and need to go back to the drawing board. I can walk away from my vehicle without worrying about it turning back into a pumpkin. Most consumers are looking for an experience approximating this.
    - philistine 1y ago
      If you're talking about a gas engine, you're missing the complexities because they've been with us for a century. If you don't change the oil regularly, the car breaks down. If you leave old gas in the tank for a year, the car won't start. If you don't change the filters, the car eventually breaks down. If you don't change the belt after its admittedly long life, the car breaks down. You swap all that for the need to keep the car's battery somewhat full to maintain a constant temperature in the battery bay. You don't do that, the car does it on its own. Just plug the car to recharge the battery somewhat frequently, dependent on your weather.
jqpabc123 1y ago
As far as Wall Street is concerned, none of this really matters. Tesla stock (P/E over 250) is priced as if Telsa is the largest auto manufacturer, the biggest robotaxi company, the dominant robot producer and the leading AI service provider. Meanhile; back in reality, none of this is even close to being true. Logic simply cannot explain it --- so the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort. One that Wall Street must have a stake in.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  > Logic simply cannot explain it --- so the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort. One that Wall Street must have a stake in. ... Wait, is your contention that every time the markets price something incorrectly, there must be a conspiracy? Tesla is a meme stock, one of hundreds, albeit the biggest. There's no need for a conspiracy; the markets are just actually not all that great at pricing, especially where there's significant retail involvement.
  - jqpabc123 1y ago
    Tesla is a meme stock, one of hundreds, albeit the biggest. Nothing about the valuation makes any sense and it hasn't for years. Tesla is no longer a startup. Market performance history is readily available from which one should be able to make rational judgments. Tesla only has about 10% of world wide *EV* sales. Yet it's market cap exceeds all major auto manufacturers *combined*. As you point out, it's the scale and magnitude of the disconnect from reality maintained over a long period of time that puts Tesla in a league of it's own.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  > the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort. I don't think you have to go to conspiracy theories to explain it. The fact that Wall Street has always been highly suggestible, fad-driven, and has a strong herd mentality is sufficient. Combine that with sunk cost fallacies and this is exactly the sort of behavior I'd expect.
  - jqpabc123 1y ago
Zufriedenheit 1y ago
Somebody sued Tesla at a UK consumer court because FSD was advertised as delivering fully automatic driving soon. It was based on Consumer Rights Act, which states that goods must match their advertised description. Tesla ended up paying back the full purchase price + interest and legal fees in return for him dropping the case. It seems Tesla lawyers know they are in a bad position with this. The company has just promised way to much to early. Which was totally unnecessary imo. The car were pretty cool products and would have sold well if they just called it driver assist system or something similar.
- cjrp 1y ago
  Maybe this is the next PPI/dieselgate/car finance campaign? "Did you buy a Tesla between 2015 and 2025? You could be owed £1000s"
- pjc50 1y ago
  UK small claims court is really effective. I've often wondered if any of the various PayPal problems cases have made it to there.
mystraline 1y ago
Pity that BYD is banned in this country, thanks to Biden, and now Turnip. But as for Musk, I always thought something was absolutely not right with him. I thought of him as a pandering populist with feudalistic tendencies. And I lost what little credibility with him back in 2015/6 with him screaming from Twitter about the flooded cave rescuer was a pedophile. I also remember him launching the first starlink SATs, without any permission. Flooded the LEO with thousands of space junk. I'm just waiting for a Kessler syndrome event. And come to find out, he also defrauded customers on FSD on teslas. Basically, stay as far away as you can from anything musk. It will come toppling down. And when it does, all the devices will come with it. (Think of when IoT companies shut down, and equipment is now landfill)
- aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
  > I'm just waiting for a Kessler syndrome event. That will thankfully never happen. LEO is a range, and Star-link is near the bottom of that range. Their satellites have a 5 year lifetime, because that's when the fuel needed to re-adjust their orbit runs out, and atmospheric drag pulls them down. A Kessler syndrome event in that orbital plane would resolve itself within a decade at most. > Pity that BYD is banned in this country BYD makes unreliably good EV's for the price. From a consumer perceptive it's a big loss. But i understand why we restrict their import if we want to keep that industry around ourselves (In particular lithium battery production). There is some truth to china using it as a leverage. That being said... the approach Biden and especially Trump took to supposedly help the local industry is ... a bit crude.
- jhgb 1y ago
  What do you mean by "without any permission"? Any sort of orbital launch in any country is subject to government permission.
mac-monet 1y ago
Altman, Amodai and Musk seem to have no problem outright lying about the capabilities they have or the potential of what they're working on, in order to drum up hype. It sounds cool in the moment but it gets so old so fast. And with real costs in this case.
fukka42 1y ago
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- epolanski 1y ago
  Politics aside I'd say it's more confusing why would they open their wallets based on future expectations. It's a car, not an early access videogame, where you're partially funding future development.
  - fukka42 1y ago
    Baffling as well. Posting this here because I can't edit the earlier comment: Amusing the HNers decided to flag this. The man Sieg Heiled on live television, twice. He funds fascist political parties all over the world. He is clearly a fascist and a Nazi. It is not political to say so, unless you believe murdering millions of Jewish people is okay.
maxdo 1y ago
Just to balance this article. HW3 owner. Car drives really good on FSD as for 5 years old car , it’s not even close to anything that was on the market , I still receive updates . Any short trip or long trip when I’m lazy I simply turn it on, and it works perfect 99% of the time. Both highway and local roads. When I’m in the gym and it’s raining or snowing , I press the button and car actually comes to me. It used to be broken now they fixed it. It recently also start to park itself after fsd route is over. How awesome is that for a 5 years old car ?? Why should I be upset ? Do I want free hardware ? Sure . Is $7k I paid a fair price ? Yeah . go check modern offering from any other company . They charge you comparable price for way less functionality. In the world where bmw tries to charge you every month for heated seats , I think it’s a fair price. Oh yeah , I live in New York , I use fsd almost daily for 5+ years . In this very busy setup 0 accidents . Which is rare even for an experienced human driver.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Why should I be upset ? You shouldn't. If you're happy, enjoy it and move on. Others being upset doesn't negate your right to be happy. Just as your experience doesn't negate someone being upset about feeling they were lied to. > I live in New York , I use fsd almost daily for 5+ years . In this very busy setup 0 accidents . Which is rare even for an experienced human driver FSD was sold as Waymo. Unsupervised. Tesla is unable to match that capability on its newest hardware so far.
- ramzez 1y ago
  here in the uk, I paid and we don't even have FSD yet
  - olelele 1y ago
    Because the UK has more reasonable traffic safety regulations?
- matthewdgreen 1y ago
  I'm a 2018 model year owner who also paid for FSD. The current FSD is not "fine" or "FSD" at all. It requires constant monitoring because one out of every 50-100 decisions will be problematic. Even the highway driving (autopilot), which was great initially, has recently degraded in quality: now it's much harder to get it to consistently stay in one lane or choose the speed I want to go. Tesla knows the current FSD isn't fine; if it was, they wouldn't be upgrading the hardware to handle bigger models. So there's nothing surprising about expecting Tesla to deliver the same hardware to people who already paid them for the product they're still trying to deliver. If you're satisfied not receiving the full product you paid for, that's fine, of course. Heck, you're free to write Tesla a donation check. But Tesla should deliver the product (or a refund) to those who aren't.
fred_is_fred 1y ago
"If you are a HW3 owner and still think that Tesla is going to retrofit your up to 10-years-old car with a computer that is going to make self-driving, you are being delusional." I think this is the target market. Delusional people.
michelb 1y ago
Good thing it's not a car company, so a reboot is easy.
theturtle 1y ago
[dead]
ajross 1y ago
Not to engage with the hyperbole angle here, but just to call out the spin in the headling: Tesla has shipped 8 million cars total. Maybe 70% of them (including mine) have the HW3 computer that the article claims won't do FSD. Of those, maybe 10% (I'm one) actually purchased the FSD product[1]. So figure like 500k cars actually affected. If the cost to Tesla of a HW4 upgrade is less than $2000 (it's likely *much* less, this isn't particularly fancy hardware and it requires no sensor or other upgrades, it's just a board swap), then we're looking at "sub-billion" and not "multi-billion-dollar iceberg". It's a $1.4T company. If everything falls out like Electrek[2] expects, it might rise to "Really very notable recall". Hardly a Titanic collision. [1] As opposed to renting it, for which there would be no remedy. You can't sue for a rental product that you claim doesn't do what you wanted. If you didn't want it, why did you pay for it? At most you get the first month's fee refunded. [2] Electrek has been expecting Tesla to fail for like seven years now.
ionwake 1y ago
I like Tesla but its def the new "never preorder ur game based on the latest viral video " vibe atm
Geee 1y ago
Are the cameras or other sensors different in HW4 vs. HW3? The compute unit might be quite easy to upgrade, but cameras probably aren't.
throwaway150919 1y ago
I feel like there is a bad sci-fi story here, where an Oligarch lies over and over and robs people blind. The revolution happens, and then instead of the guillotine, the Oligarch is beheaded by a chainsaw. The executioner will arrive in a Cybertruck.
- WA 1y ago
  The bad sci-fi story is that the Oligarch will get away with it, will die of old age peacefully while having scammed millions of people along the way and the average person foots the bill. No happy ending.
Workaccount2 1y ago
Electrek missed the boat Tesla is now a robotics company, and their car business is now a rounding error of their future potential. Their robotaxi business is also not really important either. See Tesla will now be building fully autonomous robots. This will allow Elon Stark to lock on to multi-trillion dollar revenues that are just around the corner once they dial in these last few bolts of the Optimus bot. Forget everything about the cars and the taxi. Those are outdated and irrelvant. Fill you head with visions of Tesla bots being everywhere all the time doing everything for you. By the end of 2026 there will be 100 million Tesla bots sold. So the stock is grossly undervalued. Go buy the stock please god buy the stock how the fuck is tesla ever going to fill the boots of a $1.5T company with collapsing revenue and the veil of empty promises slipping off.
- ml-anon 1y ago
  It’s sad we had to get to paragraph three to understand it was parody.
- dh2022 1y ago
  You should edit your post and add the sarcastic tag :) It is really good when I read it that way :)
  - Ylpertnodi 1y ago
    '/s' _not_ required.
rho4 1y ago
I really hope hacker news does not also turn into a Bash-Elon-Club like electrek.co (used to love that blog). But this comment section does not bode well.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  That's what happens when you promise again and again and don't deliver.
- array_key_first 1y ago
  Has it occured to you that maybe the reason Elon Musk is universally unliked is because he's unlikable? Someone people deserve to be hated. Elon is one of those people. From a business perspective and a human perspective. From a business and politics perspective, he's a con man. He stole your money. Mine too, with DOGE.
- UltraSane 1y ago
  Elon Musk is a very dishonest, misogynistic, neo-nazi grifter.
- rasz 1y ago
  electrek is not a Bash-Elon-Club, its 'I was a true believer but got scammed with fake roadsters worth half a $mil I will never see in my life' club.
mft_ 1y ago
Meanwhile in Europe, they've been selling FSD forever, and (until very recently?) there has been virtually no difference from the basic Autopilot package - and not the shiny FSD beta that we see on YouTube from other countries. I had a company Tesla (with "FSD") for a couple of years, and as much as a liked the car, I've been wondering when the European class action case will start...
- immibis 1y ago
  In Europe you should probably not do a class action - you should just sue Tesla, directly. They do things differently over there. In Germany (which is what I know) the lawyer and court costs are a fixed percentage of the amount of money you want refunded, the loser pays for all of that in the end, and deliberately misleading advertising is illegal. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. You should consult one.
jdross 1y ago
I'm a 2024 Tesla Model 3 owner and my car drives me everywhere nearly flawlessly, thousands of miles. For all this I pay something like $500 per month for the lease, including FSD. It's a miracle product to me, and the comments here about Tesla (not the ones about the story, which are reasonable!) are just so far removed from my personal experience with the product.
- ssbash 1y ago
  I have a 2025 Model 3 and feel the same way. I’ve used FSD a ton in Southern California and it’s fantastic. People just want to raise their pitchforks at Elon/Telsa without actually evaluating the product.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  I have a model 3 and have tried FSD several times (Tesla regularly offers free one-month trials), and I've only found it to work well for long highway inter-city drives. I'm generally an early adopter and was eager to try it. It did _not_ work well for urban driving -- at least not in our city -- it acted like a new, nervous driver. I felt uncomfortable the entire time. I convinced my wife to try it for a day and she hated it and will never touch it again. If you can't trust it 100% for urban driving, then FSD provides almost no benefit over more basic adaptive cruise control, early collision detection and lane departure warnings, etc. You still have to sit there and focus on the ride. The idea that I can now sit in the backseat and catch a nap or do some work or whatever, is still sci-fi at this point.
Friedduck 1y ago
It’s shocking that this hasn’t happened sooner. At its height the cost was over $10k and at that point Tesla had all but doomed its cars by removing sensors they deemed unnecessary. It’s also appropriate to point out: Waymo and others have been doing this for years. Tesla is a fraud.

242 points by ndsipa_pomu 1y ago

> It’s unclear why would Tesla sell a subcription to something that doesn’t even exist, but it is not helping build confidence with customers. Money

gchokov 1y ago

My EU Car was produced in Germany, in May 2024, with HW3. Already largely obsolete.

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
Well, you did buy a smart fridge with wheels, not sure what anyone expects when doing such purchase decision.
- davedx 1y ago
  Consumers shouldn't need to do extended due diligence on the history of whether a company told the truth or not about what it's selling you over the last 15 years before making a purchase decision. There are, in fact, laws about this kind of thing
  - paulcole 1y ago
    But wouldn’t you feel like an idiot if you didn’t do due diligence and were conned? I don’t particularly like saying, “well the law was supposed to protect me…” in a case where my idiotic decision was completely preventable.
    - scott_w 1y ago
      You say this as though it's trivial to just see that Tesla is a scam. There's multiple decades of fawning articles and reviews of Tesla to the point where the average person can't be blamed for assuming they're a reputable company. But of course, blaming the victim is much easier because it lets the person doing the blaming pretend they're morally and intellectually superior in some way.
      - friendzis 1y ago
        > You say this as though it's trivial to just see that Tesla is a scam. You don't need any particularly deep due diligence to see that, in fact, not living under a rock is more than enough. > There's multiple decades of fawning articles and reviews of Tesla to the point where the average person can't be blamed for assuming they're a reputable company. There's multiple decades of articles highlighting, in various levels of detail, how exactly bad Tesla is and Teslas are. Checking for bad reviews and deciding how applicable they are to you in particular is part of rudimentary check Sorry, but knowingly and deliberately buying a Tesla vehicle is entirely on the customer and they get in some sense even more than what they had ordered. Similarly, if you buy a ${brand-you-don't-like} you have no right to complain about ${common-problem}, because that's the state vehicles leave the factory.
        scott_w 1y ago
        > You don't need any particularly deep due diligence to see that, in fact, not living under a rock is more than enough. From May 2025: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/05/05/us-consumers-dont-trust-tesla-anymore-study-says/ https://cleantechnica.com/2025/05/05/us-consumers-dont-trust... OP bought their Tesla in 2024, so customer sentiment was actually favourable to Tesla at that point. In March 2024, brand loyalty was really high according to Experian: https://inspiramarketing.com/when-a-brand-becomes-its-own-worst-enemy-teslas-reputation-reckoning/ https://inspiramarketing.com/when-a-brand-becomes-its-own-wo... In 2019, customer satisfaction was also high: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-customers-say-they-would-buy-it-again-2019-11?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-customers-say-... In 2020, they had an NPS of 97: https://customergauge.com/benchmarks/companies/tesla_motors https://customergauge.com/benchmarks/companies/tesla_motors > Sorry, but knowingly and deliberately buying a Tesla vehicle is entirely on the customer and they get in some sense even more than what they had ordered. Clearly, the customers were not knowingly and deliberately buying bad cars because the evidence available to the average person told them the exact opposite thing. EDIT: Strikethrough below, it was a result of a bad search but the principle above still stands. Hell, even on Hacker News, the bad news only seems to have started appearing 3 years ago, and I know for a fact your average consumer isn't browsing tech sites to form their opinion for their next car purchase.
  - blibble 1y ago
    why not? a car is the largest purchase most people will make (after property) people should do more due diligence on it than e.g. on a new phone purchase
    - Loughla 1y ago
      There's a difference between doing research into a car and doing research into whether or not a company is lying to me.
      - blibble 1y ago
        why not? I certainly looked into whether the company that built my house was prudent and known for not scamming people
        fnordsensei 1y ago
        Information, power, and insight asymmetry between an individual and a company. That’s why there are consumer protection laws in many countries; to even the scales, not to favor individuals. With no hand on the scales, asymmetry is the default.
        blibble 1y ago
        I 100% agree companies shouldn't be outright allowed to scam people but if you're not at least reading the wikipedia page on a car and its manufacturer company before buying it looking for common "issues", that's kinda your fault
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    Maybe they shouldn't need to, but they do. Due to regulatory capture and deregulation (at least in the US), the law provides very little protection against scumbag companies.
- firecall 1y ago
  They expect what is promised. Consumer protections are a very real thing in the EU, UK, Australia and elsewhere! If you make promises about the features a product will deliver, then you are obligated to deliver those features. If not, the consumer is entitled to a refund.
  - 6510 1y ago
    You could wrap it in disclaimers of experimental technology. Just describe the exact content on the tin. It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days.
    - watwut 1y ago
      Consumer protections prevent such contracts. That is why companies acustomed to "defraud as much as you want, just keep it legally plausibe" hate them so much.
    - friendzis 1y ago
      > It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days. IANAL, but if it was "fine" that would still fall quite firmly under "gambling"
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - JohnFen 1y ago
      > It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days. No, it doesn't seem fine at all. That's scam territory.
    - piva00 1y ago
      This kind of legal loophole might be common in the USA but in the EU is much harder to weasel out of obligations from the spirit of the law with legalese. They can wrap as in many disclaimers as they want, if the law is clear that consumers had a presumption of delivery due to marketing promises which were unfulfilled they are on the hook for it. It's why many American companies constantly complain about EU regulations, they empower consumers which is "bad for business™" since fraud becomes much harder to wrap in loopholes.
martini333 1y ago
How? You still have exactly what you bought. You even got new features as OTA updates for free. What other car would not be as-bought after purchace?
- bdcravens 1y ago
  > What other car would not be as-bought after purchace? The other cars that also have OTA updates? (Rivian, Polestar, and more, plus quite a few that provide less-extensive OTA like Hyundai, VW, etc)
  - martini333 1y ago
    ...what other car is not "Already largely obsolete" after purchance..?

Someone 1y ago

FRA: “As for HW3 owners who bought FSD, which basically turned out to be an interest free loan to Tesla for years, the automaker needs to offer free FSD transfer and a $10,000 discount on a car upgrade. While this might sound like a lot” It would add up to a lot of money for Tesla, but for customers? Some of these people paid $15.000 years ago for something that hasn’t been delivered, and now, they would be able to get $10,000 ‘back’, only if they commit to spending way more again, in the hope to eventually get what they bought years ago, or, more likely, in the hope of eventually being able to subscribe to get the features they already paid for years ago.

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
Yeah, sounds completely backwards, how could anyone accept that? "Yeah, sure, you lied to me about it before, but for my next purchase I'll get it slightly cheaper, sounds great"
- cjrp 1y ago
  I think it would work for the fully-indoctrinated customers, but what % of their total base is that? 5%?
  - boringg 1y ago
    I think it is much higher for tesla.
    - LightBug1 1y ago
      At this stage, I imagine them mostly wearing red gag balls ... Why else would you put up with this nonsense? If nothing else, Musk is a Svengali extraordinaire ...
    - cjrp 1y ago
      Hmm I'm not so sure, admittedly based on anecdata. In the UK I know 10+ people who drive Teslas, and none of them are fanboys in any way. It was just the cheapest EV with decent range when they bought it.

aelaguiz 1y ago

[flagged]

kokanee 1y ago
You're neglecting the fact that the affected customers paid for FSD and never got it.
honeybadger1 1y ago
[flagged]
- VoidWhisperer 1y ago
  What platform are you talking about in this case? If anyone here is a conman, it is Musk - given that he literally had people pay a subscription for something that never materialized, repeatedly promising 'oh it'll be here soon' - that is literally the textbook definition of a conman - 'a person who tricks other people in order to get their money'[0] [0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/con%20man https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/con%20man
  - honeybadger1 1y ago
    Fred is quite literally only known for producing a platform that provides analytics on MMA fighting for the purpose of assisting gambling addicts at making a better gambling prediction, his second venture is writing negative opinion pieces about Tesla and focusing on the character persona that is Elon Musk. The ventures of Elon Musk have quite litreally proven he's a maker, not a conman. He has also won every lawsuit brought against him where half-truths are used in the public eye, but the moment it's in court the whole truth prevails, in almost every case. He has a lot of enemies, ones he has made on his own, and those that envy what he has accomplished with the people that he has inspired to do the work. He is to some, an easy shortcut to fame because he is constantly putting himself in the public eye and welcoming risks. He has my respect, even with all his delays and set backs, he always seems to deliver eventually and that is not the same as conman with smoke and mirrors behind the curtain.

scrollop 1y ago

As expected, based on it's actions and promises, over it's history. There is a good choice of EVs from various manufacturers.

speedgoose 1y ago
In some markets, it means having to spend more or purchasing a worse car. Tesla offers some very good value cars, and 0% interest rate for 3 years. It almost makes you want to forget about the CEO.
- anonymars 1y ago
  Also, how does the charging situation compare outside of the Tesla ecosystem? (Assuming you can't charge it at home) Tesla really makes charging about as seamless as can be. It integrates into the navigation system (the car will automatically add charging stops, pre-warm the battery, tell you how many spots are open, etc.), integrates the payment, etc. I've rented a Tesla. The most annoying thing about it was the goofy unlock (tapping a key card at the right spot on the door pillar) but I'm very wary of renting any other EV and having to dick around with finding the right charge place, determining if it has the right connection, will it charge fast enough, can I just pay by card or do I need some stupid app, etc.
  - coldpie 1y ago
    > Tesla really makes charging about as seamless as can be. It integrates into the navigation system (the car will automatically add charging stops, pre-warm the battery, tell you how many spots are open, etc.), integrates the payment, etc. Other cars have all that, too, yeah. I got a 2025 Ioniq 5 and it does all that, and it's also not restricted to just one charging company's chargers. The payment integration stuff exists, but it requires support from the charging company obviously, and IMO that's kind of a mis-feature anyway, so I never bothered to set it up. > can I just pay by card or do I need some stupid app In my experience, almost all chargers just use a card. 100% of the ones I've used in regular gas stations on freeway exits just use a card. Once in a blue moon you run into a stupid app one, but it's usually an older charger that was installed in a city center in the early days of EV charging. The apps seem to be mostly disappearing, thank god. Ironically I'm pretty sure Tesla's chargers require a stupid app for non-Tesla cars, but I've never used one, so not certain. > determining if it has the right connection Yeah, the adapters are clunky. It's just gonna take time to phase out CCS. Hopefully that's a solved problem in 10 years as everyone switches over to NACS. I did use a native NACS non-Tesla charger with my native NACS non-Telsa car once on a recent road trip. The future is... almost here!

CaptainOfCoit 1y ago

> Tesla needs to offer all HW3 owners a $5,000 loyalty discount, that goes on top of all other incentive program, when upgrading to a new car. Is it just me, or does that seem backwards? If I purchased something with a specific feature, or promised future feature, and 5 years later it's still nowhere to be seen, I don't want a coupon for "my next purchase", why would I buy from the same place after they already lied to me before? The only acceptable solution would be to get back the extra money spent for that feature.

chronci739 1y ago
> why would I buy from the same place after they already lied to me before? You are smarter than the repeat Tesla buyer.
baggachipz 1y ago
The only sane offer would be to give me my money back. They know how much I gave them, now give it back since you didn't deliver and I no longer have the car. Isn't it enough that I gave them an interest-free loan for all those years?
- fukka42 1y ago
  They should obviously pay interest, too.
  - baggachipz 1y ago
    In an ideal world. Instead, I expect a class action settlement and me receiving a check for $25.
brandonagr2 1y ago
Nowhere to be seen if your head is in the sand. There are robotaxi pilot programs running in two cities, FSD 14 is actively rolling out to customers, and my car drove me to work this morning on v13. I don't see any lies

skywhopper 1y ago

The time to address this productively was when “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving” were announced. Tesla and Musk have been misleading customers for a decade now, and the FTC and other regulatory agencies have done next to nothing about it. I’m not expecting a serious crackdown at this point, but I’m also constantly shocked at the folks who still buy into this fever dream.

jgalt212 1y ago
Fool me once, fool me n times...
CaptainOfCoit 1y ago
According to the article, it seems like Tesla didn't land in hot water until they started to push the same scam outside of the US (article is mostly about Australia I think), but seems like regulators might be getting some balls to do the same in the US soon as far as I can tell.
- baggachipz 1y ago
  > seems like regulators might be getting some balls to do the same in the US soon You must be new here. Kidding aside, the only reason they would do anything would be if Tesla doesn't sufficiently kiss the king's ring, which they did to the tune of $250 million quite recently. More payments will likely be required, but it's a cost of doing "business" these days.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > More payments will likely be required, but it's a cost of doing "business" these days A "multi-billion-dollar iceberg" is literally referenced in the headline. Like, yes, if Tesla pays back all HW2 and HW3 FSD buyers their purchase plus interest, they should be fine.

ec109685 1y ago

[flagged]

infecto 1y ago
Not sure why this is downvoted. Yes it requires human monitoring. I use it on a daily basis though for my commuter with zero interventions on highways. I choose to drive my HW3 Tesla for road trips and is a lot less exhausting paying attention than it is driving. By all means not a defense of the general Tesla grift and how many years of failed promises it took to get here but what’s here now is pretty decent.
- blinding-streak 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - infecto 1y ago
    Your comment is neither respectful or helpful but I come to expect it here especially around topics that people have struggles with. I never said I find it exhausting to drive on highways. I can drive just fine, even have my Iron Butt for 1k miles. What I did say is that I find using the current state of FSD a joy on road trips. FSD works really well on highways. You are fatigued a lot slower than without. Anecdote of myself and anger other folks I know.

sidcool 1y ago

[flagged]

layer8 1y ago

The whole FSD promise was such a scam from the start (or self-delusion on Tesla’s part, if you want to be charitable) that it would be nice to see them feel real consequences from it.

Havoc 1y ago

> It’s unclear why would Tesla sell a subcription to something that doesn’t even exist No I’d say it’s pretty clear

firtoz 1y ago
Can you please enlighten those of us who are watching from a distance?
- WJW 1y ago
  Money?
- throwaway984393 1y ago
  [dead]
- rsynnott 1y ago
  I mean, they were selling something which didn't exist as a one-off payment for about the last decade, so I'm not sure why selling it on a subscription basis is inherently any weirder. They clearly have the sort of customer base who like paying for non-existent things, so why not?
- hiddencost 1y ago
  One of the most notorious liars in history was heavily leveraged and needed the stock to do well, to avoid bankruptcy, so he lied repeatedly for years?
- hypeatei 1y ago
  There are a lot of "true believers" in the Tesla customer base so it's an easy way to collect money without doing much. The same mindset applies to the stock: it's not really based on any fundamentals, just vibes and Elon's personality.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  When you get paid for not doing anything, you get paid, but you don't have to do anything.

FlyingSnake 1y ago

For a minute I thought this is an moon-shot to stop climate change by building real icebergs.

IAmBroom 1y ago
That's hilarious.

KaiserPro 1y ago

Ok, so I imagine that the fine print of the $5k FSD addon has something like "This is a beta and may or may not delivered in full" or something similar. I can't imagine that they made it easy enough for someone to take them to court for non-delivery of FSD, which we knew wasn't going to be possible.

_hark 1y ago

They really should have just marketed the software "as-is" to whatever extent that is allowed by law. I guess they didn't because deployed automobile software is probably not allowed to be considered experimental. Still, comms that framed it like: "This software purchase upgrades your car with state-of-the-art autonomy capabilities from our AI team, as we approach full self-driving" would have been more honest, still exciting to consumers, and avoided over-promising.

friendzis 1y ago
> and avoided over-promising Stonk is the product and is literally built on over-promising.

panick21 1y ago

AI and focus on Self-Driving has been the biggest failure and blindspot for Tesla (Musk). So much of the strategy evolved around that, its a big reason why I pulled my investment. I invested because they were growing fast, had a pretty good product and had very high marin despite massive investment charging, service and verticial integration. And their next generation product should have been a reusable platform that could delvier a basic van, basic suv and basic pickup, all from the same assembly line. After that focus on a cheaper smaller electric car. I thought it made a lot of sense to focus on a well functioning Level 2 System that they owned themselves. Make highway driving, start-stop traffic and such easy as possible. Make the car helpful and easy to use. But then Tesla started focusing on making complex navigation and remote summening a feature when tons of basic stuff didn't work very well yet. For example, automated parking, 360 view, detection of features like shadows and such. Why not focus specifically on the actual dangrous problem looking around blind corners and installing a sensor suit that can help humans with the problem. Promsing Full Self Driving with existing hardware and selling that when they had not proven that it could work was idioitc and I always felt like it was a liability. They should have been sued over this a while ago. Initially Tesla messaging was save, nice software, fun to drive and green, and it then became half baked software, don't drive it and risky. When it came out that Musk said they should build a cheaper next generation car, because Self-Driving would collapse the car market by 80% I knew the company had completely lost its way.

throwaway984393 1y ago
[dead]
riffraff 1y ago
but the whole self driving shtick is what gave it the insane valuation, isn't it? "we're general motors, but better" is not the same as "we'll have self driving taxis that make money to our customers while they sleep". Musk's 2018 Pay Package had a lot of market cap-based targets[0]. [0] https://www.equilar.com/elon-musk-2018-tesla-pay-package-analysis https://www.equilar.com/elon-musk-2018-tesla-pay-package-ana...
- 1y ago

t1234s 1y ago

I would think the hw3 to hw4 retrofit would be easy. just swap out the FSD computer under the front and swap out the cameras. I'm sure they could make a kit that is compatible with the existing camera harnesses (if they are different). Also they would need to make a way to retrofit the bumper cam housing on older models. If they offered this for sale for $8k including the FSD license for older hw3 teslas that don't have FSD it might offset some of the cost to bring up the people who already paid the $8k on HW3.

jimbo808 1y ago

This is kinda a hilarious coincidence, because I just watched a podcast with Andrej Karpathy, the guy who was running their autopilot program back when the sage "fully autonomous in one year" predictions kicked of their 15+ year long run (and counting). These days he's moved on to predicting 10 years for AGI and is, I shit you not, citing his 15 year track record of making accurate predictions (timestamped link below if you want have a laugh). https://youtu.be/lXUZvyajciY?si=3PyVM476W6k3n-DR&t=181 https://youtu.be/lXUZvyajciY?si=3PyVM476W6k3n-DR&t=181

morkalork 1y ago
So, tacking on the 15x multiplier from his Tesla FSD prediction: AGI in 150 years. Yeah that actually sounds about right!
estearum 1y ago
Do we know that Karpathy was the one making those predictions? Musk is absolutely notorious for throwing completely made up and detached-from-reality deadlines onto his teams, including making public obligations to such.
- Fricken 1y ago
  Karpathy, the celebrity AI influencer with no relevant autonomous vehicle experience, was hired to make Elon's bad predictions look good. He was an active and willing component of the scam. I'm sure he was paid handsomely. Autopilot's first director, Sterling Anderson, was fired because he was not willing to go along with the scam.
londons_explore 1y ago
Every time Elon made an FSD prediction on stage live, you could see Andrej wincing in the background. You could tell Andrej was going along with what hiss boss said, but didn't believe it himself.
- skeeter2020 1y ago
  I don't think that absolves him from any of the scorn though. In fact it might make his shortcoming even worse.

blinding-streak 1y ago

I have zero sympathy for any Tesla owner that believed anything from Elon's mouth. That's your own fault. Tesla has shown time and time again to be hostile to its own customers in a variety of ways.

niek_pas 1y ago
Thankfully, there are actually laws about this sort of stuff! So companies don't (necessarily/always) just get away with "you shouldn't have listened to us, this is your own fault."
- bdcravens 1y ago
  Correct, but unless regulatory bodies proactively force Tesla to compensate, there at least has to be an effort from consumers to stand up, admit they were conned, and press the issue.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > there are least has to be an effort from consumers to stand up FTFA: "...thousands of Tesla owners have now joined a class action lawsuit in Australia over Tesla misleading customers with its self-driving promises. It adds to similar ongoing lawsuits in the US and China."
    - bdcravens 1y ago
      I was replying to a comment which seemed to imply that the law alone was adequate to prevent abuse of consumers.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > the law alone Lawsuits.
        1y ago

bob1029 1y ago

I feel like Tesla would have been significantly more competitive with the non-EV market if they had gone in a completely opposite direction with regard to fancy technology. Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train and I'm much more interested. Make the car kind of ugly too. On purpose. I don't need a GPU farm inside my car. I'm not running a robotic taxi company. I just want to go get some groceries. I've worked on cars long enough to realize I don't want a chip using a leading edge semiconductor node in my vehicle somewhere. I live in a pretty nasty climate. A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. There's always something that starts to break once you cross into that 150F temperature level. I want semiconductors that were engineered to run in the basement of hell 24/7/365. 28nm and thicker sizes. I don't want 3nm gates in my car. There's no way these chips would last 10 years.

zozbot234 1y ago
> A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. AIUI, the car can run its cooling/AC system to keep itself cool, even when powered off. I'd imagine that this is actually a bigger concern for the battery's health and safety, not the chips. You're not supposed to let a battery get that hot.
- bob1029 1y ago
  If a cooling system needs to be built just to keep the car from dying when no one is using it, then I would argue we have jumped the complexity shark and need to go back to the drawing board. I can walk away from my vehicle without worrying about it turning back into a pumpkin. Most consumers are looking for an experience approximating this.
  - philistine 1y ago
    If you're talking about a gas engine, you're missing the complexities because they've been with us for a century. If you don't change the oil regularly, the car breaks down. If you leave old gas in the tank for a year, the car won't start. If you don't change the filters, the car eventually breaks down. If you don't change the belt after its admittedly long life, the car breaks down. You swap all that for the need to keep the car's battery somewhat full to maintain a constant temperature in the battery bay. You don't do that, the car does it on its own. Just plug the car to recharge the battery somewhat frequently, dependent on your weather.

jqpabc123 1y ago

As far as Wall Street is concerned, none of this really matters. Tesla stock (P/E over 250) is priced as if Telsa is the largest auto manufacturer, the biggest robotaxi company, the dominant robot producer and the leading AI service provider. Meanhile; back in reality, none of this is even close to being true. Logic simply cannot explain it --- so the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort. One that Wall Street must have a stake in.

rsynnott 1y ago
> Logic simply cannot explain it --- so the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort. One that Wall Street must have a stake in. ... Wait, is your contention that every time the markets price something incorrectly, there must be a conspiracy? Tesla is a meme stock, one of hundreds, albeit the biggest. There's no need for a conspiracy; the markets are just actually not all that great at pricing, especially where there's significant retail involvement.
- jqpabc123 1y ago
  Tesla is a meme stock, one of hundreds, albeit the biggest. Nothing about the valuation makes any sense and it hasn't for years. Tesla is no longer a startup. Market performance history is readily available from which one should be able to make rational judgments. Tesla only has about 10% of world wide *EV* sales. Yet it's market cap exceeds all major auto manufacturers *combined*. As you point out, it's the scale and magnitude of the disconnect from reality maintained over a long period of time that puts Tesla in a league of it's own.
JohnFen 1y ago
> the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort. I don't think you have to go to conspiracy theories to explain it. The fact that Wall Street has always been highly suggestible, fad-driven, and has a strong herd mentality is sufficient. Combine that with sunk cost fallacies and this is exactly the sort of behavior I'd expect.
- jqpabc123 1y ago

Zufriedenheit 1y ago

Somebody sued Tesla at a UK consumer court because FSD was advertised as delivering fully automatic driving soon. It was based on Consumer Rights Act, which states that goods must match their advertised description. Tesla ended up paying back the full purchase price + interest and legal fees in return for him dropping the case. It seems Tesla lawyers know they are in a bad position with this. The company has just promised way to much to early. Which was totally unnecessary imo. The car were pretty cool products and would have sold well if they just called it driver assist system or something similar.

cjrp 1y ago
Maybe this is the next PPI/dieselgate/car finance campaign? "Did you buy a Tesla between 2015 and 2025? You could be owed £1000s"
pjc50 1y ago
UK small claims court is really effective. I've often wondered if any of the various PayPal problems cases have made it to there.

mystraline 1y ago

Pity that BYD is banned in this country, thanks to Biden, and now Turnip. But as for Musk, I always thought something was absolutely not right with him. I thought of him as a pandering populist with feudalistic tendencies. And I lost what little credibility with him back in 2015/6 with him screaming from Twitter about the flooded cave rescuer was a pedophile. I also remember him launching the first starlink SATs, without any permission. Flooded the LEO with thousands of space junk. I'm just waiting for a Kessler syndrome event. And come to find out, he also defrauded customers on FSD on teslas. Basically, stay as far away as you can from anything musk. It will come toppling down. And when it does, all the devices will come with it. (Think of when IoT companies shut down, and equipment is now landfill)

aDyslecticCrow 1y ago
> I'm just waiting for a Kessler syndrome event. That will thankfully never happen. LEO is a range, and Star-link is near the bottom of that range. Their satellites have a 5 year lifetime, because that's when the fuel needed to re-adjust their orbit runs out, and atmospheric drag pulls them down. A Kessler syndrome event in that orbital plane would resolve itself within a decade at most. > Pity that BYD is banned in this country BYD makes unreliably good EV's for the price. From a consumer perceptive it's a big loss. But i understand why we restrict their import if we want to keep that industry around ourselves (In particular lithium battery production). There is some truth to china using it as a leverage. That being said... the approach Biden and especially Trump took to supposedly help the local industry is ... a bit crude.
jhgb 1y ago
What do you mean by "without any permission"? Any sort of orbital launch in any country is subject to government permission.

mac-monet 1y ago

Altman, Amodai and Musk seem to have no problem outright lying about the capabilities they have or the potential of what they're working on, in order to drum up hype. It sounds cool in the moment but it gets so old so fast. And with real costs in this case.

fukka42 1y ago

[flagged]

epolanski 1y ago
Politics aside I'd say it's more confusing why would they open their wallets based on future expectations. It's a car, not an early access videogame, where you're partially funding future development.
- fukka42 1y ago
  Baffling as well. Posting this here because I can't edit the earlier comment: Amusing the HNers decided to flag this. The man Sieg Heiled on live television, twice. He funds fascist political parties all over the world. He is clearly a fascist and a Nazi. It is not political to say so, unless you believe murdering millions of Jewish people is okay.

maxdo 1y ago

Just to balance this article. HW3 owner. Car drives really good on FSD as for 5 years old car , it’s not even close to anything that was on the market , I still receive updates . Any short trip or long trip when I’m lazy I simply turn it on, and it works perfect 99% of the time. Both highway and local roads. When I’m in the gym and it’s raining or snowing , I press the button and car actually comes to me. It used to be broken now they fixed it. It recently also start to park itself after fsd route is over. How awesome is that for a 5 years old car ?? Why should I be upset ? Do I want free hardware ? Sure . Is $7k I paid a fair price ? Yeah . go check modern offering from any other company . They charge you comparable price for way less functionality. In the world where bmw tries to charge you every month for heated seats , I think it’s a fair price. Oh yeah , I live in New York , I use fsd almost daily for 5+ years . In this very busy setup 0 accidents . Which is rare even for an experienced human driver.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Why should I be upset ? You shouldn't. If you're happy, enjoy it and move on. Others being upset doesn't negate your right to be happy. Just as your experience doesn't negate someone being upset about feeling they were lied to. > I live in New York , I use fsd almost daily for 5+ years . In this very busy setup 0 accidents . Which is rare even for an experienced human driver FSD was sold as Waymo. Unsupervised. Tesla is unable to match that capability on its newest hardware so far.
ramzez 1y ago
here in the uk, I paid and we don't even have FSD yet
- olelele 1y ago
  Because the UK has more reasonable traffic safety regulations?
matthewdgreen 1y ago
I'm a 2018 model year owner who also paid for FSD. The current FSD is not "fine" or "FSD" at all. It requires constant monitoring because one out of every 50-100 decisions will be problematic. Even the highway driving (autopilot), which was great initially, has recently degraded in quality: now it's much harder to get it to consistently stay in one lane or choose the speed I want to go. Tesla knows the current FSD isn't fine; if it was, they wouldn't be upgrading the hardware to handle bigger models. So there's nothing surprising about expecting Tesla to deliver the same hardware to people who already paid them for the product they're still trying to deliver. If you're satisfied not receiving the full product you paid for, that's fine, of course. Heck, you're free to write Tesla a donation check. But Tesla should deliver the product (or a refund) to those who aren't.

fred_is_fred 1y ago

"If you are a HW3 owner and still think that Tesla is going to retrofit your up to 10-years-old car with a computer that is going to make self-driving, you are being delusional." I think this is the target market. Delusional people.

michelb 1y ago

Good thing it's not a car company, so a reboot is easy.

theturtle 1y ago

[dead]

ajross 1y ago

Not to engage with the hyperbole angle here, but just to call out the spin in the headling: Tesla has shipped 8 million cars total. Maybe 70% of them (including mine) have the HW3 computer that the article claims won't do FSD. Of those, maybe 10% (I'm one) actually purchased the FSD product[1]. So figure like 500k cars actually affected. If the cost to Tesla of a HW4 upgrade is less than $2000 (it's likely *much* less, this isn't particularly fancy hardware and it requires no sensor or other upgrades, it's just a board swap), then we're looking at "sub-billion" and not "multi-billion-dollar iceberg". It's a $1.4T company. If everything falls out like Electrek[2] expects, it might rise to "Really very notable recall". Hardly a Titanic collision. [1] As opposed to renting it, for which there would be no remedy. You can't sue for a rental product that you claim doesn't do what you wanted. If you didn't want it, why did you pay for it? At most you get the first month's fee refunded. [2] Electrek has been expecting Tesla to fail for like seven years now.

ionwake 1y ago

I like Tesla but its def the new "never preorder ur game based on the latest viral video " vibe atm

Geee 1y ago

Are the cameras or other sensors different in HW4 vs. HW3? The compute unit might be quite easy to upgrade, but cameras probably aren't.

throwaway150919 1y ago

I feel like there is a bad sci-fi story here, where an Oligarch lies over and over and robs people blind. The revolution happens, and then instead of the guillotine, the Oligarch is beheaded by a chainsaw. The executioner will arrive in a Cybertruck.

WA 1y ago
The bad sci-fi story is that the Oligarch will get away with it, will die of old age peacefully while having scammed millions of people along the way and the average person foots the bill. No happy ending.

Workaccount2 1y ago

Electrek missed the boat Tesla is now a robotics company, and their car business is now a rounding error of their future potential. Their robotaxi business is also not really important either. See Tesla will now be building fully autonomous robots. This will allow Elon Stark to lock on to multi-trillion dollar revenues that are just around the corner once they dial in these last few bolts of the Optimus bot. Forget everything about the cars and the taxi. Those are outdated and irrelvant. Fill you head with visions of Tesla bots being everywhere all the time doing everything for you. By the end of 2026 there will be 100 million Tesla bots sold. So the stock is grossly undervalued. Go buy the stock please god buy the stock how the fuck is tesla ever going to fill the boots of a $1.5T company with collapsing revenue and the veil of empty promises slipping off.

ml-anon 1y ago
It’s sad we had to get to paragraph three to understand it was parody.
dh2022 1y ago
You should edit your post and add the sarcastic tag :) It is really good when I read it that way :)
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago
  '/s' _not_ required.

rho4 1y ago

I really hope hacker news does not also turn into a Bash-Elon-Club like electrek.co (used to love that blog). But this comment section does not bode well.

insane_dreamer 1y ago
That's what happens when you promise again and again and don't deliver.
array_key_first 1y ago
Has it occured to you that maybe the reason Elon Musk is universally unliked is because he's unlikable? Someone people deserve to be hated. Elon is one of those people. From a business perspective and a human perspective. From a business and politics perspective, he's a con man. He stole your money. Mine too, with DOGE.
UltraSane 1y ago
Elon Musk is a very dishonest, misogynistic, neo-nazi grifter.
rasz 1y ago
electrek is not a Bash-Elon-Club, its 'I was a true believer but got scammed with fake roadsters worth half a $mil I will never see in my life' club.

mft_ 1y ago

Meanwhile in Europe, they've been selling FSD forever, and (until very recently?) there has been virtually no difference from the basic Autopilot package - and not the shiny FSD beta that we see on YouTube from other countries. I had a company Tesla (with "FSD") for a couple of years, and as much as a liked the car, I've been wondering when the European class action case will start...

immibis 1y ago
In Europe you should probably not do a class action - you should just sue Tesla, directly. They do things differently over there. In Germany (which is what I know) the lawyer and court costs are a fixed percentage of the amount of money you want refunded, the loser pays for all of that in the end, and deliberately misleading advertising is illegal. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. You should consult one.

jdross 1y ago

I'm a 2024 Tesla Model 3 owner and my car drives me everywhere nearly flawlessly, thousands of miles. For all this I pay something like $500 per month for the lease, including FSD. It's a miracle product to me, and the comments here about Tesla (not the ones about the story, which are reasonable!) are just so far removed from my personal experience with the product.

ssbash 1y ago
I have a 2025 Model 3 and feel the same way. I’ve used FSD a ton in Southern California and it’s fantastic. People just want to raise their pitchforks at Elon/Telsa without actually evaluating the product.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
I have a model 3 and have tried FSD several times (Tesla regularly offers free one-month trials), and I've only found it to work well for long highway inter-city drives. I'm generally an early adopter and was eager to try it. It did _not_ work well for urban driving -- at least not in our city -- it acted like a new, nervous driver. I felt uncomfortable the entire time. I convinced my wife to try it for a day and she hated it and will never touch it again. If you can't trust it 100% for urban driving, then FSD provides almost no benefit over more basic adaptive cruise control, early collision detection and lane departure warnings, etc. You still have to sit there and focus on the ride. The idea that I can now sit in the backseat and catch a nap or do some work or whatever, is still sci-fi at this point.

Friedduck 1y ago

It’s shocking that this hasn’t happened sooner. At its height the cost was over $10k and at that point Tesla had all but doomed its cars by removing sensors they deemed unnecessary. It’s also appropriate to point out: Waymo and others have been doing this for years. Tesla is a fraud.