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