[fnordpiglet]

I bought it, but I bought it as a donation towards funding R&D in the space of autonomous driving. I’ve found FSD useless outside of highway driving, which adaptive cruise control does ok at. That has however changed in the last year and the FSD has improved dramatically over months to the point I can reasonably navigate door to door in a hostile and negligently adversarial driving environment like seattle without fear of imminent death. If I were evaluating it on “what could I have materially attained for the price of FSD” I don’t think I got a good deal. But again, I didn’t spend the money with that in mind. I bought it with the idea that $3b in consumer crowd funding of FSD will materially advance the end of human intermediated driving - which I think is akin to curing cancer.

[kilna]

I marvel that there are people who thought donating to the richest man in the world (or one of the richest men at the time) would result in something other than him just taking your money.

[jddj]

It's a backwards-looking explanation though in this instance, and so subject to explanations and recollections which frame the purchaser as not having been fooled but rather <something more noble>.

Not to say I live inside parent's head or anything of that sort, and they could be accurately remembering their intention and expectations at the time, but if I had to bet?

[fnordpiglet]

Elon Musk doesn’t receive all revenues from Tesla, nor does he personally own it. Money spent on a Tesla primarily goes into operating expenses. Money earned by Elon primarily comes from shareholders bidding up the value of his equity.

[steveBK123]

Honestly that was my thought in 2018~2019 when it was like $2000 to upgrade from EAP. Funding their R&D, fine, sure.

$15k this many years into it being "meh" feels almost criminal.

[cptskippy]

I think the price hikes reflect the public's waning interest in the hypothetical product.

[sorokod]

How do you know that revenue from so called FSD goes towards R&D?

[fnordpiglet]

It’s a good bet given their spend ratios.

https://electrek.co/2022/03/24/tesla-spends-most-rd-least-ad...

Also, typically in any company revenue and PNL is attributed to the feature accumulating it and investment follows. It seems like a fairly rational bet.

[sorokod]

The linked article compares ratios across companies, in this case it is more relevant I think, to look at how much of Tesla's revenue is spent on R&D.

According to statista.com:

2018 6.6%

2019 5.5%

2020 5%

2021 5%

This should give you an idea about your odds.