Well, the way it works today if you have HW2.5 is that they’ll upgrade you to HW3 for “free” if you pay for the FSD upgrade. No dice if you just rent FSD. There aren’t any lawsuits so far, so I guess I’d expect that to continue. HW4 has no benefit outside of FSD.
I’d say the reverse, a lawsuit might be necessary to force a hardware upgrade for those who did pay. I know what Musk has recently said, and we all know how much to trust his promises.
What I’m worried will happen is Tesla will decide to put off upgrades until FSD is in a full release state, which could still be “decades away.” So those of us on older hardware versions will not get any of the interim improvements between now and a vaporware fully working FSD.
I really hope a lawsuit doesn’t happen, and Tesla does upgrades at some point, because I think the best case result of a successful lawsuit is simply refunds.
Tesla cars without FSD really don’t need an upgrade.
That all seems needlessly pessimistic. Tesla already upgraded me from HW2.5 to HW3 with zero hassle, and without me even requesting it (was part of an unrelated service appointment). Musk has stated twice now that they’ll upgrade past HW3 and there’s really zero reason to doubt that. A further upgrade won’t cost them much, especially given a future cost-optimized version. They have like $36B in the bank and they won’t miss $1B for upgrades.
That leaves only the timing. They’ll undoubtedly put things off as long as they can, but if HW3 gets too far behind HW4 in feature-set (unsupervised or not), that would invite a lawsuit. So I anticipate they’ll upgrade people as soon as HW3 completely runs out of steam, which may not be very far away. I give it two years at most.
in my 30+ years of business/commercial experience:
that is not how companies tick … hey, nobody’s gonna miss that $1.000.000.000 … we have 36 35 more of those
(just think of how companies fight a 1$/h minimum wage increase with teeth and claws)
IMHO: they will try to balance “customer’s hope vs. cost” … and tension the rubberband for as long as they can get away with it (we are so close to actual SD - and once we have it we will upgrade you - possibly Q4/2026 or thereabouts ).
Cars get destroyed over time, are being sold on, contract-parties die, etc… and the longer they run the clock on people, the more people will drop out of the pool and the cheaper it will get for them. That sounds way more like Musk, than … Shirley, we can give a billion away
Like I said, I expect them to wait as long as they reasonably can. Nevertheless, they’ve clearly stated now that HW3 is not sufficient, and if HW3 development gets too far behind HW4, that does invite a lawsuit, not to mention a loss of goodwill among early adopters. The cost will be written into the stock price by tomorrow.
You can tell me I’m an idiot if I haven’t been upgraded past HW3 two years from now. I also expect to have eyes-away driving by then.
I really hope you’re right.
The smart thing for Tesla to do is allow FSD transfers to new cars, and other stuff to get FSD obligations away from as many older cars as possible.
They’ve had a few FSD transfer grace periods so far and it wouldn’t surprise me if they do more. I’m not sure it’s really a benefit, though. A car, even an older one, is more valuable with FSD than without. And the upgrade itself is likely to be fairly cheap. I suspect the real cost is that you have to assign a team of engineers to a project which has no real long-term payoff. But once developed, they may as well upgrade any cars that come their way. At the least, they can offer trade-ins to buyers either with FSD or without, and upgrade depending on the selection.
unless I read you wrong, I would claim the contrary: do Not allow FSD transfer … There are lots of people Who “upgrade” their cars every 3-4 years (leasing, looking at you!) … so once the original owner gets out of the original car deal, the claim on the books goes extinct.
Why would you kick forward/perpetuate an uncertain financial obligation by allowing transfers? doesnt make sense for tesla, and might be the main reason for them to not allow for it.
I have a 2018 Model 3 that, while still an excellent car, feels a bit long in the tooth compared to Tesla’s latest. I bought FSD for $3k, but it’s now worth $8k. So an FSD transfer becomes a nice incentive to upgrade.
The old car can then be sold as not FSD compliant, and they won’t ever have to upgrade it. I think it’s still worth an upgrade if the user demands it, but at the least it gets Tesla out of the unlimited obligation they have now.
I seriously doubt Tesla is concerned about getting sued by it’s fanbase.
And even if a small lawsuit was filed, volunteers would eagerly send enough money for other “services” to make up for it.
There are a lot of Tesla owners who are very disappointed with the company and its leadership. Do not confuse someone who owns one of their cars with a “fan”. I still think they make the best EVs on the market, but I would not hesitate to join a class action if I thought the cause was just.
I hope they are thinking ahead like that. They should be designing a computer that is fully backward compatible, so it can use the HW4 cameras and harness or the 2.5/3 setup. (Perhaps separate the camera and computer parts, like a USB hub…) They do have the strange issue going on with the HW4.1 (or whatever they designate it) new computers that are dying. Without knowing exactly what is happening I can’t say anything other than that the computer team is experiencing some kind of trouble.
Right now, FSD is tied to the car, so if I sell my 2018, the next owner will be asking for a computer upgrade. If I transfer my FSD to a new car, then the old computer liability on the 2018 car goes away. Some people might say that is costing Tesla $8000, but that is making the assumption I’d buy FSD again. Also, if it’s going to cost $8000 to get new FSD, I’m much more likely to look at other cars (if I’d even consider another Tesla right now, but that is a discussion for another thread).
To push this back to this thread’s topic, even if still on Tesla, Musk announced unsupervised full self driving robotaxis launching in Austin in June. If that actually happens, it will be interesting to see how they compare to Waymo.
Finally got v12.6.3. A significant improvement! Took it on a route that previous versions had struggled with, and almost all the problems were gone. Lane handling in general is far superior to previous versions–it always felt like it got into the proper lane well in advance of when it needed to, and felt very natural. A particular turn lane that it somehow didn’t even recognize before is now handled fine.
Low-speed maneuvering is an improvement but still not perfect. In fact it did just fine until the very end, entering my condo complex, where it got very wiggly trying to figure out where to turn. It’s not that complicated a setup but there is a divided entrance that ramps up as you go in.
One previous issue is… half fixed. There’s a turn lane next to a light rail track with two lines, and between them a “keep clear”. Previous versions stopped at the second line, which was not only dangerous (if there was a train coming), but also was too far past the traffic sensor (so the light would never be activated). The new version stops about halfway past the first line, which is still wrong but at least won’t get hit by the train and does activate the sensor.
Haven’t tried highway driving yet. Hopefully that sees a similar level of improvement.
I just got it, and have so far only done a school dropoff, which reveals several new annoyances. Three steps forward, two steps back, I guess.
What is with the speed setting? It defaults to, and recommends, a 40% offset? In a very awkwardly worded explanation, I think a 40% speed offset means that the car will drive up to 140% of the posted speed limit. It tried to go 55 on the 40mph street. Does that mean it’s going to try and go 90 on the freeway? I guess I’ll find out.
Second step back is hiding the max speed indicator. The car used to show current speed, speed limit, and max speed, now the max speed is sometimes there, and sometimes it vanishes.
All of this means it handles school zones extremely poorly, and makes it hard to know what the car is doing. So 40 becomes 25 in the school zone. I crank down the max speed to 25, the car slows down. Then I stop at an intersection, and the car accelerates to 35, because the set speed reset at the intersection, so I quickly have to crank it back down. So I guess along with all of the other things to pay attention to when driving I also need to watch for the little “max speed” indicator to appear to show it changed. Better keep an eye on it, because it won’t stay on the screen long.
The car can see flashing school zone signs, because it shows me the flashing yellow light on the screen. It can see speed limit signs, It should put this together.
Does it / did it ever handle conditional speed limit signs? E.g. one saying “55 day 45 night”? Around here the school zone signs say something like “Speed limit 25 when flashing”, “Speed limit 25 when children are present” or “Speed limit 25 8am-9am 2pm-3pm”. In the case of the “when flashing” signs, the amber lights in question are often not mounted on or near the signs. A human (or extra smart AI) needs to make the tie-in between a flashing light labeled “school zone” and a conditional speed limit sign 100 feet away.
Have those sorts of signs ever been processed automatically and accurately? I’m not trying to bicker, just genuinely curious.
The 140% of posted speed limit sounds like what I’d call “Florida mode”. Other than in active school zones that would generally set your max to about our local speed of traffic.
The 140% is the theoretical max kind of. On the highway it will never ever go over 85mph*. On surface streets it will top off at some point.
*there’s a “hack” where you can set the car to kph in which case the max is 140 kph or 87mph.
No, which is one of the big reasons I get annoyed with FSD(s). We have signs that say “25mph, unless otherwise posted”, so the car will read “25”, and slow down from the actual speed limit of 30 or 40. One particular stretch I travel the actual speed limit is 30. The car thinks it’s 35, then it thinks it’s 25 when it sees the “otherwise posted” sign, then it finally switches back to 30. I’m already upsetting enough other drivers by going 33 when they want to go 40 (f- them, it’s a residential neighborhood), then I randomly slow down to 25.
Around here at least, the school zone flashing lights have the speed limit posted directly below them. As I first noticed on Tuesday, when the police where doing a big school zone enforcement effort (f- people who go too fast in school zones), there is a sign that says “Entering school zone” below the 40mph normal speed limit sign. On the other side of the intersection, a few hundred feet away, is the flashing “25mph” school zone sign. I always slow for school zones, but that one would have caught me, like it did another driver, because it is so poorly signed. I’ve been driving that road for years, and doing school drop offs down it since November (end of bicycle season), and Tuesday was the first time I saw it.
On the 40mph street, I’d guess the median speed of traffic is around 48, and I feel safe from a popo and traffic perspective going 45. There are plenty of people who want to go 55, though. The limit is probably is set too low, because a “comfort speed” would be around 50, except for the frequent side road traffic.
“at some point” is the problem. All I knew is that it got to 43 (my usual set point) and was still accelerating. With no max limit display, I had no idea where it would stop. When rolled the dial to reduce the set speed, then I saw it was set to 55.
Sorry for the long speed limit, etc. rant. I do think this is on topic, because handling these vagaries are exactly the kind of thing self driving has to deal with to fit in with human drivers.
Were I cited for that I’d have fought the shit out of it. Including in the media. Not so much over the cost, points on my license, etc., but as a way to force the city to make the signage accurately reflect the actual situation. I halfway suspect the school zone boundaries were originally where the flashing lights are, but were later moved upstream to encompass that intersection. But the rest of the signage & lighting wasn’t moved*.
We have a traffic engineer on the boards but I’m drawing a blank on their moniker; else I’d page them here.
Thanks for the rest of the background. My far more primitive car has more quirks, but they’re generally of the nature of it giving up and leaving me to take over driving at IMO too-small and way too frequent provocations. Not it driving but stupidly in a way that’s hard to override which seems to be your problem.
The bit about the your max target disappearing while the car is still accelerating is wacky. WTF were they thinking?
On my car the HUD always shows the actual speed and the car’s (fairly accurate) opinion of the speed limit. It also shows the target speed … until the target is reached. Then the target speed disappears. So by osmosis I’ve learned that “no target” means “on target”. The target is always displayed as a tickmark on the speedo display with an adjacent number so it’s always visible down on the panel; just not up on the HUD.
I will say that after learning to use the auto systems I’ve paid more attention to the mechanics of how I drive in the last 5 months than I have in a long time.
One learning for me is that the task of highway driving and urban suburban driving is very different. What I’d optimally want in the way of both displays and behaviors is very different. The problem is there’s a rather fuzzy boundary between the one scenario and the other. I’d like auto-switching, but I’d also like to be able to override that. And Ideally “tune it” to my experiences.
I’d also like a pony, and I think both are equally likely. 
*There is apparently some controversy in the law in at least some states about whether a restrictive sign takes effect right where it is located or upstream at the distance a reasonable driver can first make out what it says.
The expanded ticket-writing potential of the latter standard is obvious.
I don’t have full self-driving on my Tesla, except when they give free trials, but I use the cruise control frequently. But the cruise control on a Tesla is just barely useable. It will randomly change the set speed without warning. I’m sure there’s some smarts in there, but whatever logic it has fails regularly on my routes. I suspect the engineers are all focused on the self driving and not working on the cruise control anymore.
I had always thought that traveling north, the school zone started north of the intersection, but traveling south it ended south of the intersection, because the “end” sign is much more visible. I think I even posted something recently about this weird, unbalanced school zone. The north/south road is also the boundary between school districts, so I thought maybe it had to do with different rules for setting up school zones.
Yeah, it switches between showing the max set speed and the FSD(s)'s modes of chill, standard, and in a hurry. Something that was never a static display before. It only showed the mode when you changed it. I’d be fine using the same screen real estate to show either max speed or mode, but mode is not what needs to be shown as the default. Of course it is a huge screen, and this is a tiny bit of text at the top; there is plenty of room to show both all the time.
It can change it because it reads a road sign, or it can change it because the map data says the speed limit changed. It is the map data one that really concerns me as it pertains to the topic of this thread. I cancel FSD(s) for map errors probably more often than for driving mistakes.
The highly mapped geofenced areas that Waymo and similar use might not be so much for lidar scanning of buildings and stuff, but just on the ground verification of speed limits, lanes, and similar.
All of the focus now is on the robotaxi which is supposed to debut in June in select cities. That’s if Elmo is to be believed. Regular cars with FSD will reap some of the rewards of course but there aren’t, to my knowledge, any more major updates planned this year.