This is really frustrating as someone who bought a Tesla just for the FSD. This means the Oct 2016 FSD video was a scam and won't come to fruition this decade.
I'm predicting that they are temporarily eliminating this while they work on the HW3 suite. If they kept offering FSD, that would be more AP computers they'd have to replace for "free". They already know the 2.5 computer isn't good enough for what they want, so why give away the new hardware for free when they can just bring FSD back later for a higher price to make up for the difference.
Even if the computers are good enough, they don't have the software to make it work. Realistically they're still many years away from software that could legitimately deliver Level 4 autonomous driving on every road in the US.
The video wasn't a scam, but maybe it was misleading. Telsa is very far behind Waymo/Cruise (and even waymo hasn't fully solved the problem yet), they are constraining themselves to use less sensors and they have less AI expertise in house.
I expect that over the next few years, a lot of people are going to be disappointed as it becomes clear that full self-driving is going to remain something that's coming "soon" other than some pretty limited trials.
Not really, every car they manufacture (with or without FSD) always comes with the latest AP hardware they have. The FSD they were selling was just a software activation, they will probably start charging for it again later.
They have said that there is new hardware coming later for FSD and the existing cars sold with FSD would get hardware upgrades. I take that to mean that the FSD will not run on current hardware.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but having FSD as an unfulfilled feature is a liability on your balance sheet. I once worked at a place that had to return hundreds of thousands of dollars in account credits (to be used for future services) in prep for a merger.
Yes, that video was a scam. The car took a hardcoded route and they simply kept trying over and over again for a take where the driver didn't have to take over. It's estimated they needed over 100 attempts to get usable self-driving footage.
Now they're removing FSD from the website in response to DoJ pressure.
This is one of the stronger conclusions by, of all things, $TSLAQ Twitter. The conclusion is derived from the fact that Elon's plane made two very recent visits to D.C., that none of the actual salespeople were prepared, and that there is precedent of companies under investigation to pre-comply with DoJ requests to drastically reduce charges under settlement.
Most of these $TSLAQ people are, of course, short-sellers, so take it with a fair bit of salt.
> What does the Department of Justice have to do with anything?
While I haven't heard anything about the DoJ related to the self-driving feature, how they might be involved is pretty obvious:
The DoJ prosecutes federal crimes, including, reportedly, a recent criminal referral from the SEC.
While the trigger for that was Musk's tweets, federal criminal investigations aren't narrowly restricted to the conduct which triggered them; Tesla has made representations, regarding the self-driving feature to investors as well as consumers; to the extent those representations did not fully accurately represent Tesla’s knowledge, and materially impacts Telsa’s expected costs and outlook, that's a potentially criminal securities fraud.