What action do you think Tesla should have taken in this case?
1. Not advertised AutoPilot worldwide as existing for a year before it did, so people buying the car expected AutoPilot
2. Not prematurely announced worldwide release of AutoPilot before it was actually ready to push out worldwide, so people expected AutoPilot outside of the US and it didn't arrive.
3. Not prematurely announced they had regulatory approval if they didn't, essentially forcing them to push the update worldwide or risk annoying non US owners even further.
But most importantly and far more crucially, they have now shown they have the ability to unilaterally modify our 7.0 car without our permission. *That* bothers me a lot. That's a lot of control Tesla has over something that we have paid good money for. What other features of OUR cars can they take away? Do we own our cars or have we merely licensed them in the eyes of Tesla?
Couple of disclaimers before I stray too far off topic:
1. I DON'T own TSLA shares. I have no intention of owning TSLA shares either long or short. I do trade futures and handsomely profit when shorting FWIW, but shorting individual shares is a mug's game which is why so much jawboning occurs.
1a. I DO own a P85D. It's fantastic.
2. If TSLA becomes bankrupt that will be sad as I will then own an unrepairable car which will progressively degrade its features since Tesla don't make their service manuals available outside of Massachusetts. I don't want them to go bankrupt but I'm realistic to know that a company can't run on negative cash flow forever before the money supply gets turned off.
3. Tesla will never go bankrupt? It's a software company that sells some proprietary hardware to run its software. How's VisiCalc? How's Lotus? Both were innovative in the spreadsheet field and both are long gone. I'm sure they were too famous to fail, too.
4. I am not a fanboi of Tesla. Tesla have done many things very well, but they have done many things very badly, too, and it is reasonable to criticise them for it.
I won't rant any more on this lest this post get moved to Snippiness, but just one last thought: Imagine the indignant outcry on TMC if they revoked AutoSteer in the US rather than HK...