Latest / Elon Musk Podcast / Tesla Never Delivered FSD - Now Drivers are MAD
Transcript
- 0:01Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk podcast.
- 0:05This is a show where we discuss. The critical.
- 0:07Crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and
- 0:12Neuralink, and I'm your host Will Walden.
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- 0:53Thank you so much. Tesla Motors has reintroduced
- 0:56its Full Self Driving Transfer program as a buying incentive
- 0:59this quarter. Now this is counter to CEO Elon
- 1:02Musk's previous assertion that such an offer would be a
- 1:06singular event. The program permits existing
- 1:09Tesla owners to transfer their FSD package to a new vehicle
- 1:13upon purchase, which should a feature that has been highly
- 1:16requested due to Tesla's unfulfilled promise of complete
- 1:20self driving capabilities. They've been promising this for
- 1:23years and have not delivered on FSD, and people bought into
- 1:28this. They paid about $15,000 for full
- 1:32self driving. It's never come to fruition, so
- 1:35people think that they should be able to transfer their full self
- 1:38driving license from one vehicle to another.
- 1:41Considering that Tesla never gave them what they bought,
- 1:45customers have long argued for the ability to transfer the FSD
- 1:48passage price at up to $15,000, especially since the promised
- 1:52autonomous driving features have yet to be fully realized by
- 1:55Tesla. The rest now is that if Tesla
- 1:57can eventually provide these features via in software update,
- 2:01owners should not lose their investment when upgrading their
- 2:04vehicle. Now despite the logical appeal
- 2:09of allowing FSD transfers to support customer investment in
- 2:13the technology, Tesla has historically been resistant to
- 2:17the idea. Companies eventual concession to
- 2:19allow transfers, but only for purchases made in the third
- 2:23quarter of 2023 was met with a Lunt of skepticism.
- 2:28Now Elon Musk said that the temporary nature of this
- 2:31opportunity. He said that he framed it as a
- 2:33one time amnesty for buyers to take advantage of during the
- 2:37specific quarter. This move was not seen as a
- 2:41customer friendly initiative, but as a strategic attempt to
- 2:44just boost sales for Tesla within the limited time frame by
- 2:47leveraging the company's failure to deliver on its FST promises.
- 2:51Now let me ask you a question. If you invested $15,000 for full
- 2:57self driving and they didn't deliver, would you be upset?
- 3:02It's kind of like buying a house and you put an investment of a
- 3:08couple $100,000 into this house and the real estate agent never
- 3:13shows up and give you the keys. You don't have a house, you
- 3:17don't have full self driving, so you spend a lot of money.
- 3:20I know it's a little bit different, but you spent a lot
- 3:22of money and you never got what was promised to you.
- 3:25Now, critics have accused Tesla of using the FSD transfer offer
- 3:28as a sales tactic rather than a genuine effort to do right by
- 3:31its customers. The skepticism was further
- 3:34fueled by the belief that, despite Musk's statements, the
- 3:36offer would likely reappear in the future.
- 3:38Sometime. And in line with these
- 3:40suspicions, Tesla announced the future of the FSD transfer
- 3:43option in February 2024, available until the end of this
- 3:47quarter to encourage new vehicle purchases.
- 3:51This decision contradicts Musk's earlier claims of the offer
- 3:54being a one off. Recently, Tesla expanded the FSD
- 3:58transfer offer to include all new Tesla vehicles, excluding
- 4:01the Cybertruck. This move is part of a broader
- 4:04strategy to stack incentives and boost sales, indicating a more
- 4:07flexible approach to FSD transferability than previously
- 4:11communicated. Tesla has also provided updates
- 4:14to long standing FSD adopters with older Model S and Model X
- 4:17vehicles, shedding light on the company's efforts to extend the
- 4:20latest FSD capabilities to these legacy models.
- 4:24The rapid pace of Tesla's tech advancements means that newer
- 4:29vehicle models often receive the latest updates first, leaving
- 4:33older models waiting for enhancements.
- 4:35This has been particularly true for FSD and Autopilot features,
- 4:39which are primarily developed for the more recent additions To
- 4:42test this fleete new computers, new architecture.
- 4:46They're going to get the latest software because of it.
- 4:48Think of your iPhone. The latest iPhone gets the
- 4:51latest update before all the other phones do.
- 4:55Now Musk acknowledge this issue, noting that while the upcoming
- 4:57Hardware 4 will offer improvements, the company's
- 5:00current focus remains on vehicles equipped with Hardware
- 5:023. This left some early adopters of
- 5:05FSD, particularly those with older Model S and also Model X
- 5:08vehicles, feeling overlooked. They spent a lot of money on
- 5:11these cars and they should be getting what they paid for.
- 5:14This frustration among these legacy vehicle owners stems from
- 5:19unmet promises regarding the vehicles potential for autonomy.
- 5:23Although Tesla has introduced hardware upgrade programs, they
- 5:26come at additional cost. With some owners are unwilling
- 5:29to pay, they should have full self driving.
- 5:31That's what they think with the current software that they were
- 5:34promised and the current hardware that they're using now.
- 5:37The sense of exclusion among these early FSD supporters was
- 5:40highlighted in a post by Tesla owner Anthony Spina, who
- 5:44expressed concerns over the lack of updates and communication
- 5:46regarding the deployment of the latest FSD versions to older
- 5:50models. Responding to these concerns,
- 5:52though, Tesla Vice President Rohan Patel conveyed the
- 5:56company's efforts to bring full self driving capabilities to
- 5:58older models. It might take a little bit of
- 5:59time though. Explain the challenges in
- 6:01validating the software for different hardware
- 6:04configurations reassured customers of the company's
- 6:06commitment to resolving all of these issues.
- 6:10Now. Patel's communication show that
- 6:12there's a lot of challenges here.
- 6:14Software with hardware, You don't just put a new version of
- 6:18software with older hardware. Or you could do the Apple root
- 6:22and make sure that it works with a bunch of versions before it.
- 6:26Now there's a small segment of Tesla's customer base that faces
- 6:30these challenges, and they possess different hardware from
- 6:33the majority of the users. He said that there's rigorous
- 6:37safety validation processes that each software update undergoes
- 6:41and they aim to manage expectations regarding the
- 6:43timelines for these updates at Tesla.
- 6:47Now, the follow up communication from Tesla's executive team
- 6:50acknowledged the patients required from legacy vehicle
- 6:52owners. It showed that the company's
- 6:54understanding of these frustrations and also Tesla
- 6:58reiterated the intense efforts made to extend the latest FSD
- 7:02features to all eligible vehicles, regardless of their
- 7:06hardware versions. They have to build different
- 7:08software for a different hardware.
- 7:09It's a big process. I know it is.
- 7:12I'm a software developer myself. If you have to develop for one
- 7:15sort of code base on a certain sort of hardware and then you
- 7:19switch the hardware, you might have to reroute, rewrite
- 7:22thousands of lines of code. Now the situation illustrates
- 7:26the complexities that test the faces.
- 7:28As a tech driven company in the auto industry, they want to
- 7:33rapidly innovate, but it could lead to disparities in customer
- 7:37experience based on vehicle age and hardware capabilities of
- 7:41older vehicles. And the reintroduction of the
- 7:44FSD transfer program along with the ongoing efforts to update
- 7:47legacy vehicles shows that Tesla's actually in this.
- 7:50They want to help and they have their efforts towards the older
- 7:55vehicles straight in line with the newer vehicles, but it's
- 7:59going to take them a little bit longer.
- 8:01They aim to balance the company's forward-looking
- 8:03technological advancements with the needs and expectations of
- 8:07its diverse customer base. Hey, thank you so much for
- 8:11listening today. I really do appreciate your
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