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

https://electrek.co/2025/10/20/tesla-heading-into-multi-billion-dollar-iceberg-of-own-making/

by ndsipa_pomu • 9 months ago

242 331 9 months ago

Someone• 9 months 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.

CaptainOfCoit11• 9 months 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"

cjrp3• 9 months ago

I think it would work for the fully-indoctrinated customers, but what % of their total base is that? 5%?

orochimaaru• 9 months ago

Unless it’s in the purchase agreement, the wording on “fsd” may skirt the ethically questionable but legally acceptable line.

If the “fsd” wording is present in the purchase agreement, then Tesla owners have a class action lawsuit.

estearum2• 9 months ago

Fine print in contracts can't override and totally negate specific offers made in marketing or the sales process.

If they said "$x gets you y", ran ads saying "$x gets you y", held press conferences saying "$x gets you y", then gave you an invoice showing you pay "$x for y", a backing contract saying "$x does not get you y" will not stand up in court.

So in addition to not being legally okay, it's obviously not "ethically questionable." Taking people's money and not delivering value you promised to them in exchange is bad.

JumpCrisscross12• 9 months ago

the wording on “fsd” may skirt the ethically questionable but legally acceptable line

Under U.S. federal law, perhaps.

That's where "Tesla’s current FSD expansion in international markets" gains salience. I doubt courts in "China and now Australia and New Zealand," or states with strong lemon laws [1], will let a manufacturer off the hook on a just-kidding clause.

[1] https://www.autosafety.org/in-new-lemonlaw-rankings-illinois...

mrtksn2• 9 months ago

It’s a cult, in cults people don’t demand refunds from the messiah. IRL they ask what else I can contribute to the church to fix that because it mist be their fault that the prophesies didn’t come true. In the end it’s not a problem if parties choose not to make a problem if it.

In recent years the leader of a cult in Turkey known for being filthy rich died and when cult split the new factions summoned the believers to re-do their inauguration ritual, which involves money collecting, since the old one expired within the death of the leader. And they went and did that, because although its not the members that are rich they still benefit from being in the community and the business connections.

Tesla has a similar thing, they are on a mission and many make money from being part of the community as they collect referrals, make content and sell accessories. Even if not doing any of that they ysually have Tesla shares and even if that’s not the case they want to keep the value of their vehicle high. Also in comes with the emotional baggage of having told everyone how their tesla drives autonomously etc.

IAmBroom2• 9 months ago

Elon has eroded, even exploded, a lot of that cult. I've seen multiple Teslas in the wild with apologetic "I bought this before I knew he was crazy" bumperstickers.

gipp• 9 months ago

That probably describes some corners of Tesla's market, but 99% of people buying Teslas and FSD are doing it because it is (was?) a cool car with a potentially cool feature. You're letting the wildly unrepresentative sample of "loud people on the Internet" distort your perception of the world at large.

drcongo• 9 months ago

$15k?! I've got a bridge they could buy for just $10k.

NickC253• 9 months ago

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.

Sounds like fraud.

Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again? The guy can't help himself but lie and make deliberately misleading half-truth (at best) statements in investor meetings and presentations. Textbook fraud.

An ethical steward of capital he is not. We've gone through 4+ US presidential administrations with him as the CEO, and not once has he been effectively taken to task let alone held accountable for his bullshit.

code_for_monkey2• 9 months ago

America is run by sham companies with con man ceos. Look at the president! He is one. The federal government does the kind of crypto pump and dumps you'd expect to see being run on snapchat. Of course no one is holding Musk's feet to the fire.

danans3• 9 months ago

Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again? The guy can't help himself but lie and make deliberately misleading half-truth (at best) statements in investor meetings and presentations.

Perhaps you just answered your own question. But are you sure he's the only big tech CEO who does it, or does he just do it the best?

immibis3• 9 months ago

Because it's about, and always has been about, and always will be about, power and personal connection, not following the rules. Following the rules is one avenue to power - if the rules are enforced as written. But there are others, like bribing whoever is meant to enforce the rules and then breaking them. Another is to abuse rules, like setting up a string of companies that go bankrupt like crumple zones.

sporkxrocket• 9 months ago

We created Sarbanes-Oxley after Enron and made it very difficult to go IPO, yet somehow TSLA is allowed to engage in blatant and obvious fraud. Musk lies in every shareholder meeting and is rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars. I can't think of another case of financial fraud at this scale that is allowed to go completely unchecked.

JumpCrisscross12• 9 months ago

Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again?

Because he founded a company that turned into PayPal, single-handedly launched the Western EV revolution and single-handedly secured American access to space. He's been a fuckup for the last few years. But he's "allowed" to be worth a lot because if he were doing what he's doing elsewhere, he'd facilitate a multi-trillion dollar wealth transfer from America to that place.

rapnie• 9 months ago

Saw a youtube video about the "grand achievements" of the Boring company in Las Vegas. If it were smell video, this project would smell like fraud.

danaris• 9 months ago

Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again?

Because the US abandoned a number of years ago the idea that the law should apply equally to everyone. At least since the Reagan years, and to an increasing degree recently, "Greed is Good" has become the economic motto, and net worth is treated as if it's synonymous with one's moral worth.

This is all part and parcel of the devaluation of ethics that has led to a corrupt president whose election has serious questions around it wantonly flouting the law and treating the country like his own personal playground.

ModernMech• 9 months ago

Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again? ... An ethical steward of capital he is not.

You answered your question! Capitalism does not optimize for ethical stewards, and has nothing at all to say about morality or ethics. If a scam is profitable, capitalism says "that's okay!". Doesn't matter if it's illegal, immoral, amoral, destroys the environment, or even decapitates people leaving their head bouncing down the highway.

That's why Elon Musk is allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars. The system optimized for it; fraud, deception, and lawbreaking is a competitive advantage under capitalism. Someone has to be worth the most, and under this system, that person is going to be whomever is the most eager to wield his considerable wealth and power to commit crimes and defraud people.

slowmovintarget• 9 months ago

The Star Citizen model.

smusamashah• 9 months ago

Last line immediately reminded of Star Citizen which was first announced in 2012 and people are still paying for the promises/hypes the company keeps making.

ethbr1• 9 months ago

They're still selling $2000s worth of bits that, they mostly promise, might someday exist and be useful.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=to1kDbR4L4I

PS: Bringing Star Citizen into a Tesla FSD discussion is too apt.

scrollop• 9 months ago

As expected, based on it's actions and promises, over it's history.

There is a good choice of EVs from various manufacturers.

speedgoose3• 9 months 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.

anonymars4• 9 months 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.

aDyslecticCrow5• 9 months ago

Unfortunately (or fortunately if you like cheap good cars) China has gotten ridiculously good at lithium batteries, and is rapidly eating the EV market. The traditional American and European brands are either sold to china, or falling behind.

Tesla lead the market for quite a while, but lost their way trying to become a software company instead of perfecting manufacturing. They don't heave a lead anymore, and trust for their brand is tanking. Between tesla and a chineese EV, i trust both about equally now.

bdcravens5• 9 months ago

Perhaps, but depending on the vehicle, you're giving up quite a bit:

Parking and proximity LIDAR/sensors

3d camera view

CarPlay/Android Auto

Lack of tactile controls (even Tesla has admitted removing the stalk was a mistake)

The ability to exit your vehicle if there's a power system failure

etc

CaptainOfCoit11• 9 months 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.

chronci7394• 9 months ago

why would I buy from the same place after they already lied to me before?

You are smarter than the repeat Tesla buyer.

baggachipz5• 9 months 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?

fukka423• 9 months ago

They should obviously pay interest, too.

brandonagr2• 9 months 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

CaptainOfCoit11• 9 months ago

So you're saying the submission article is just straight up lies, or why the difference in experience?

sjsdaiuasgdia• 9 months ago

Have they taken the "safety operator" out of the "robotaxis" yet?

Here's a handy compilation of Musk's self driving broken promises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

UltraSane3• 9 months ago

And no Tesla has EVER driven without a driver with Tesla assuming liability for crashes. And I don't think they ever will.

Waymo assumes liability for crashes. Tesla doesn't. That should tell you all you need to know.

skywhopper• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

Fool me once, fool me n times...

CaptainOfCoit11• 9 months 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.

baggachipz5• 9 months 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.

zozbot2343• 9 months ago

AIUI "Autopilot" and "Full Self Driving" were always just SAE Level 2, although arguably a more full-featured implementation of that SAE level than other automakers. Which means you must pay attention to the road at all times (i.e. you're still very much driving!) and the car provides enhanced cruise control and lane following.

stetrain3• 9 months ago

But FSD was promised to be Level 5, eventually, just as soon as Tesla can get regulatory approval. This has been the case since they started charging for the package back in 2016.

gchokov• 9 months ago

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

CaptainOfCoit11• 9 months ago

Well, you did buy a smart fridge with wheels, not sure what anyone expects when doing such purchase decision.

davedx• 9 months 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

firecall• 9 months 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.

martini3332• 9 months 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?

bdcravens5• 9 months 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)

layer8• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

Can you please enlighten those of us who are watching from a distance?

WJW• 9 months ago

Money?

rsynnott2• 9 months 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• 9 months 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?

hypeatei3• 9 months 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__4• 9 months ago

When you get paid for not doing anything, you get paid, but you don't have to do anything.

code_for_monkey2• 9 months ago

Musk is a con man, he'd accept money for bus tickets to Mars.

FlyingSnake• 9 months ago

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

IAmBroom2• 9 months ago

That's hilarious.

KaiserPro• 9 months 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.

_hark2• 9 months 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.

friendzis4• 9 months ago

and avoided over-promising

Stonk is the product and is literally built on over-promising.

panick213• 9 months 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.

riffraff• 9 months 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-ana...

panick213• 9 months ago

Well people always assert that, but I don't think evidnece totally backs this up.

Tesla stock went to around 200-250$ when they showed substained profit, growth and margin. And since then it has hovered around that number. I don't believe this initial surge was primarly FSD inspired.

FSD was part of it, because from a financial perspective its really pure margin. I believed if they developed a good level 2 system they could improve their per-car profitability by a significant number. I don't think 20-30% uptake was a crazy suggestion, and that would have been fincially significant. I didn't need FSD and all the fancy promises to think it was good financially.

So I think that 200$ mark was optimistic but not totally crazy. People had been saying the stock was overvalued at 50$ when I bought in. So I wanted to hold around that value and just wanted to see what would happen (I had already pulled out enough to cover my investment).

But then the strategy became worse in all aspect and they didn't make progress as fast as possible. The stock did reflect that, not going up anymore.

Where it became truely irrational is in 2024, where it was clear that company was perfomring worse, and many of its strategies hand not worked as well as expected but somehow the stock massively rallied since then and is now at peak.

I'm not sure FSD explains this pattern very well. I think the political angle might matter more. But I really can't explain it at all. So I have long since liquidiated.

tim3334• 9 months ago

I think it was always part of the differentiation between Tesla and other car makers.

consumer4516• 9 months ago

I knew the company had completely lost its way.

For me, the biggest signal was when Tesla was suddenly all-in on BTC, and promised to build their own full node.

It made no sense.

olalonde• 9 months ago

Do you have a source for "promised to build their own full node"? As far as I recall, they just added BTC to the list of currencies they accept.

panick213• 9 months ago

I didn't really care because they were not 'all-in' it was never all that big of thing. But yeah it was defently stupid.

lawn• 9 months ago

Was that before or after they went all-in on Dogecoin?

t1234s• 9 months 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.

jimbo8086• 9 months 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

morkalork• 9 months ago

So, tacking on the 15x multiplier from his Tesla FSD prediction: AGI in 150 years.

Yeah that actually sounds about right!

estearum2• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

I don't think that absolves him from any of the scorn though. In fact it might make his shortcoming even worse.

pilingual• 9 months ago

https://youtu.be/FnFksQo-yEY?t=1357

chronci7394• 9 months ago

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

To be fair, if I’m being paid $10 million/year, I’ll make any damn prediction my boss tells me to make

maxerickson• 9 months ago

I mean, I probably would do too, but it doesn't exactly speak to the integrity of whatever is being said now.

dzhiurgis3• 9 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionable_cause

senordevnyc2• 9 months ago

I mean this question in good faith, and with all due respect to Karpathy: is there any reason to give this guy any credence beyond his ability to teach about LLMs? The only interesting industry experience of his that I'm aware of is leading Tesla's AI division during the period where they decided on this disastrous and dangerous vision-only approach that has resulted in multiple deaths. That alone makes me think he's not only incompetent but unethical. Am I missing something?

chronci7394• 9 months ago

during the period where they decided on this disastrous and dangerous vision-only approach that has resulted in multiple deaths

To be fair, it was a direct decision from Elon due to covid supply chain shortages of radar and ultrasonic sensors. Not from engineers (as is common at Elon companies)

But Andrej deserves some of the blame because he was too busy sucking on the $TSLA stock teat to say anything

tim3334• 9 months ago

If you see him interviewed he seems to know what he's talking about more than most.

_hark2• 9 months ago

I don't recall Andrej making "next year!" claims, it was always Elon. I found Andrej's talks from that time to be circumspect and precise in describing their ideas and approach, and not engaging in timeline speculation.

Geee5• 9 months ago

He doesn't say that at all on the video. He refers to his experience in the industry in regards to other people making predictions. To be clear, he knows that FSD predictions were too optimistic, and that's why he says that AGI will take a decade at least. Almost everyone else in the industry is predicting AGI "soon", i.e. in 1 or 2 years.

dawnerd2• 9 months ago

But we still don’t have FSD despite whatever robotaxi is doing. We’re not getting AGI in a decade.

JKCalhoun3• 9 months ago

If anything he comes across as repentant.

ben_w5• 9 months ago

Almost everyone else in the industry is predicting AGI "soon", i.e. in 1 or 2 years.

I've not read any original quote from anyone saying that, either. Closest things I have seen were people doing a game of telephone with Altman's "thousands of days" ending up as that, and the 2027 paper which was predicated on the USA systematically deleting every obstacle rather than vibe-coding a tariff policy and having ICE mass-arrest people building relevant factories, and even then the authors indicated 2027 was on the optimistic side.

jimbo8086• 9 months ago

No serious person is predicting that. There are a few categories of person who are making those predictions:

- AI CEOs, who require hype to be able to keep hemorrhaging money long enough to... hemorrhage more money

- The poor AI researchers the AI CEOs drag into public to lie in support of their narrative

- People who are not close to the tech, but who are influential in poltiics, finance, podcasts, etc who are wholly convinced by the grifters above - they did a little bit of poking around and saw some smart looking regurgitated boilerplate

- Grifter influencers, entrepreneurs, etc who don't care, they just want to push AI doom or vibe coding dreams for clicks, or sell some shitty AI solutions to companies eager to get in on the hype

The people you don't hear from are the AI researchers who know most of this is bullshit, but they aren't going to go on the record publicly expressing that they don't believe in the tech they're working on, because they like to be employed (and for absurd amounts of money)

WhitneyLand• 9 months ago

Oh come on. How many of us have been an engineer on a project and had to watch an exec make promises we knew were not reality?

It also doesn’t necessarily mean he was a yes man. Often in these situations people spell out their confidence levels plainly and directly to such execs and it just bounces off.

I’m also seeing below people suggesting he could have publicly voiced his concerns, but that probably wasn’t even a legal option for multiple reasons.

auntienomen• 9 months ago

I watched the same video. Karpathy isn't predicting AGI in 10 years. He's saying we won't have AGI in less than 10 years -- contrary to what industry boosters are promising -- and that what we end up with won't be some sort of god-in-a-box.

blinding-streak• 9 months 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• 9 months 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."

bdcravens5• 9 months 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.

array_key_first2• 9 months ago

I don't know man, the US is very wishy washy with laws at the moment.

And all of this relies on Tesla customers going after Tesla. But people are poor, times are tough, ain't nobody got time for that.

And of the people that do got time for that, a lot of them bought Teslas because of the vision. Or something. Not sure if those people would sue.

delecti• 9 months ago

Maybe that applies to people who believe something he says today, but a decade ago Musk's history as a grifter wasn't nearly as apparent. And like the other reply says "you got tricked and it's your fault" doesn't apply to false advertising or fraud laws.

bob10292• 9 months 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.

zozbot2343• 9 months 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.

bob10292• 9 months 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.

bluGill7• 9 months ago

A car in stop and go traffic in Texas at the same time will need even more cooling, the car needs to be kept comfortable for the humans as well as what the batteries need, plus because the car is moving it has extra heat from turning motors.

As the others have pointed out all the major manufactures know the problems here, and ensure there isn't a problem.

hypeatei3• 9 months ago

Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train

Exactly. The minimalist interior is super unappealing to me. I want something that's not all based on one screen. It's not just bad from a usability perspective but also seems risky if there are any issues with the screen (climate controls are very important for visibility certain times of the year)

insane_dreamer3• 9 months ago

Except that the single-screen approach is cheaper to build than a bunch of buttons and dials. Not to mention much easier to keep updated OTA.

cheschire• 9 months ago

Making the car kind of ugly does not get the sales though. Many people that buy new cars cannot afford them. They need the car to be sexy looking in order to boost their pride so they can convince themselves they "deserve" this 8 year financial obligation.

I would absolutely go for a 2002 electric Acura Integra though...

estimator7292• 9 months ago

I don't think there's more than like five people on the planet who think the cybertruck is sexy

seanmcdirmid2• 9 months ago

In 2022, I had the ILX and upgraded to a BMW I4 EV. An electric Acura Integra, I would have been all over that in a heartbeat...but they just had an Acura SUV EV that was a GM Blazer knockoff. Honda has really been slipping in EVs, unfortunately.

__MatrixMan__4• 9 months ago

Back when those decisions were made, I bet they thought full automation was right around the corner and robotic taxis would make more sense than individual vehicle ownership.

I think they're caught flat footed because here we are a decade later and the consumer's opinion still matters.

bluGill7• 9 months ago

I have long thought the idea of robotic taxis didn't make any sense for most people. Where people already get a taxi of course it makes sense. There are a few people who don't drive much who it also makes sense for. However for the vast majority owning a car will always make more sense.

Most people are traveling during rush hour - there isn't much opportunity to share cars with them, and where there is it means cars traveling empty from the city to the suburbs in the morning. (and the opposite at 5pm).

When you own your own car you can "leave your golf clubs in the trunk in case a chance to play a round happens in the middle of the day". You can run errands over lunch. You store other things in the car that you don't need everyday. None of these are a big deal (many people take transit and thus cannot do that), but it is enough that when the economics are not a clear win you will want to own a car.

runako2• 9 months ago

I bet they thought full automation was right around the corner

I will bet that none of the engineers on the automation team over the age of 35 thought that. Only the young & naive or non-technical people would have believed that.

LeifCarrotson• 9 months ago

Check out Slate:

https://www.slate.auto/en

https://images.ctfassets.net/20dhmw20vttc/3FXvexNHHbtaijk1Ur...

Worried about infotainment and AI processors? It doesn't even have a radio. See those things on the door cards by your knees? They interface with an advanced window regulator and associated torque-sensing motion control system that uses evaporative liquid cooling to prevent failure due to overheating.

You could buy three for the price of a Tesla.

rocmcd• 9 months ago

You could buy three for the price of a Tesla.

Except you could actually buy a Tesla today, which is not something you can do for a Slate. Also they don't even have expected delivery dates or official pricing yet, so who knows when they will be available or what the actual price will be.

I would love for Slate to become a thing, but at this point it looks like vaporware.

vscode-rest2• 9 months ago

They won’t be able to sell in USA without a backup camera, curious what their plan is there.

yakz• 9 months ago

You can't buy it at all, yet.

Also, with the way these kinds of things have gone in the past:

- It's not certain that you'll ever be able to buy it. - If you can buy it, it'll probably be closer to $40k than $25k with no add-ons. - It's not certain that you'll ever actually be able to buy it with no add-ons. - Orders that include all of the most expensive add-ons will be heavily prioritized, so even if you can order it without add-ons, the queue could be months or years long. - The ones that you can actually get in a reasonable amount of time will be closer to $50k than $25k.

bickfordb• 9 months ago

The problem was they needed to pretend be a technology company (with FSD, and now robots) to juice the stock price/earnings multiple. If they were simply a car maker with EV motors, the stock would have a much lower multiple.

padjo3• 9 months ago

I don’t think they _needed_ to do that. They chose to do that. It’s been fairly successful in the short to medium term but the jury is still out on what happens if/when the market acknowledges that they are in fact just a car company.

constantcrying• 9 months ago

The one reason which made Teslas growth possible was that it was seen as a technologically superior car company. Great software is part of that.

There were actually many companies which tried small basic "urban" electric vehicles. You never heard of them.

Customers will not care about the cars people on here want. Customers want highly integrated software. Law makers are also demanding increasing software complexity.

A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible.

Toyota, Ford and VW have proving grounds in Arizona, because engineers know that cars get very hot. This is part of standard vehicles testing.

bluGill7• 9 months ago

People say that, but then they look at their real options and discover they could buy the bare bones model - or for a similar price they can get a several year old model with all the luxury items. They rarely buy those basic models because even though they don't need the luxury they want at least one and so the used car with everything is what they buy.

It isn't hard to make crank cars, but it will cost you a million dollars (likely 10, but lets go with 1 million) to build all the needed jigs to make them, so if there are only 1000 people who buy crank windows that means the cost of cranks is $1000/car. You can skip the jigs, but now the cost to manually make the cranks is $400/car, meanwhile because everyone else wants electric windows the cost per car is about $100. Those costs are why an option-free car would have to cost more than a luxury model.

stetrain3• 9 months ago

People get the cause and effect of fancy EVs backwards.

To build an EV you have to spend $10-$20k on the battery pack that goes into it. They're getting cheaper, but that is a gradual process.

So your Toyota Camry / Honda Accord EV competitor is going to need to be priced starting at $40k to have a chance of breaking even.

How do you get people to stomach $40k for a base Honda Accord but Electric? You add things that cost very little but make the car feel more premium. Power seats, big screens, LED interior lights, glass roof, a processor that can play video games, cameras and autonomy features, etc. don't cost that much in the big scheme of things. Some of them, like screens instead of physical controls, might even save money in production and assembly costs.

So you add ~$3k worth of "premium" features to the car, price it at $45k, and now the buyer feels like they are getting something worth the money.

seanmcdirmid2• 9 months ago

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.

People say there is a huge market for this, but I really doubt it. Yes, there is a market for old school, but it is a pretty small niche where investments in more expensive analog tech (compared to digital anyways) just isn't worth it.

jqpabc1233• 9 months 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.

rsynnott2• 9 months 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.

jqpabc1233• 9 months 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.

JohnFen3• 9 months 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.

jqpabc1233• 9 months ago

Combine that with sunk cost fallacies and this is exactly the sort of behavior I'd expect.

Sorry, fads and sunk cost fallacies can't explain why a majority of Wall Street "analysts" maintain a *buy* rating on a company with a PE of over 250 and a *declining* global market share --- while the companies eating Tesla's market share have a P/E of around 10.

bamboozled• 9 months ago

I came here to say something similar, no matter how bad the numbers, no matter how bad the cars, no matter bad the press, there will be absolutely no consequences for any of it.

We live in bizarre times. The older I get, the more I wonder why I try do things "properly" and honestly. I guess it's just a preference.

Zufriedenheit• 9 months 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.

cjrp3• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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)

aDyslecticCrow5• 9 months 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.

jhgb2• 9 months ago

What do you mean by "without any permission"? Any sort of orbital launch in any country is subject to government permission.

mac-monet• 9 months 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.

maxdo• 9 months 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.

JumpCrisscross12• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

here in the uk, I paid and we don't even have FSD yet

olelele• 9 months ago

Because the UK has more reasonable traffic safety regulations?

matthewdgreen2• 9 months 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.

vardump• 9 months ago

"Even the highway driving (autopilot), which was great initially, has recently degraded in quality"

Are you sure it's not a hardware or calibration issue? Disclaimer: I don't own a Tesla, but I'm just pointing out that it could also be a hardware issue.

dzhiurgis3• 9 months ago

What a load of lies.

stetrain3• 9 months ago

It can be best in the market and still not what was promised.

Tesla has gained part of their stock valuation and customer base over the years by promising Level 5 FSD. As in, you can sleep while the car drives you to work, or the car can go make money for you as a Robotaxi on the Tesla Network when you aren't using it.

They haven't delivered those things which they have been promising to customers since 2016.

runako2• 9 months ago

They charge you comparable price for way less functionality.

BYD's comparable offering is generally free/included in the car's price.

Separately, I can't believe we are still discussing a product called "Full Self Driving" that is not "full self driving." Paying big companies to lie to us is not a recipe for building a better world.

burnerthrow0082• 9 months ago

BYD does not offer a comparable offering in America.

rebolek• 9 months ago

We stopped building a better world long time ago. Now we're building better value for shareholders.

dzhiurgis3• 9 months ago

In China only.

dvrj101• 9 months ago

Article clearly mentions multiple lawsuits in multiple countries, by what common sense one guy's experience unrelated to fake promises made by company will balance the article.

JKCalhoun3• 9 months ago

and it works perfect 99% of the time

Ha ha, you're not really selling it for me.

croes2• 9 months ago

You do realize that even a Ponzi scheme has satisfied customers?

That balances nothing

beAbU• 9 months ago

99% is not good enough. Not even close.

Are you saying that for every ~1.5h of driving there is a minute where the car could go full an hero on you?

fred_is_fred• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

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

ajross• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

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

Geee5• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months ago

It’s sad we had to get to paragraph three to understand it was parody.

dh2022• 9 months ago

You should edit your post and add the sarcastic tag :) It is really good when I read it that way :)

Ylpertnodi• 9 months ago

'/s' _not_ required.

rho4• 9 months 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_dreamer3• 9 months ago

That's what happens when you promise again and again and don't deliver.

array_key_first2• 9 months 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.

UltraSane3• 9 months ago

Elon Musk is a very dishonest, misogynistic, neo-nazi grifter.

rasz• 9 months 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_• 9 months 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...

immibis3• 9 months 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• 9 months 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• 9 months 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_dreamer3• 9 months 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.

croes2• 9 months 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

Friedduck• 9 months 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.

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

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