Canuck
Well-Known Member
Why? The self-driving Tesla tow truck picks it up, and takes it to the repair shop, while the loaner car makes its way to the restaurant for you.
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AP1 owners take heart
- Thread starter Sir Guacamolaf
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- Model S
Why? The self-driving Tesla tow truck picks it up, and takes it to the repair shop, while the loaner car makes its way to the restaurant for you.
If we were talking about a $200 cell phone purchase, I'd agree with you. But this is new territory. There isn't really any precedent for a $100,000 purchase becoming obsoleted a month later. Cars didn't really change very much from one year to the next. Maybe you got a cassette deck in 1990 and your neighbor got a CD player in 1991, but if you really cared about that, it was easy to upgrade. L5 autonomous capability is in an entirely different class. There will be *fundamental* things an AP2 car can do that an AP1 car cannot, and that dramatically devalues your pre-AP2 purchase.
Yes, life goes on, and you're right that people shouldn't obsess over it. (I've always said that whenever you're considering buying a car, if you can't afford two, you shouldn't buy one. Bad things happen, and you don't want it to break you.) But at the same time, if you sold all your TSLA stock at $147 a couple of months ago, it's unrealistic to say that you should simply be happy for all the people who held it.
lakerholic
Member
Remember when AP 1.0 was supposed to be able to read traffic lights and come to a stop when the light changed from green and resume again when the light again turned green?
I wonder what happened to that? Besides "delays". :/
I wonder what happened to that? Besides "delays". :/
lakerholic
Member
Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of disgruntled Tesla owners (are there any though??) sued Tesla over this. Summon is not as described, and, as I just posted, the ability for the car to read traffic lights never rolled out.
jgs
Active Member
Related, I was thinking about "full self-driving" today as I picked up my daughter at school. The traffic flows around her school are completely ill-conceived (to even say they were "conceived" is too polite, they just arose). Anyway, the only reason things work there at all is the aid of various volunteers directing people and local customs and mores regarding where and how you drive when doing pickup and dropoff. These are not documented in any statutes or ordinances (and sometimes violate same) and differ in at least some particulars from any other location's driving patterns. It's a bit of a stretch to imagine even a quite good self-driving vehicle would be able to figure out how to behave properly ("oh, obviously it's OK to straddle the yellow line here as long as the school safety patrol person is making eye contact"). More likely the car would say "whoa, all those drivers be cray-cray" and bail out -- drive safely and legally to some nearby place and call for instructions from its human.
I totally believe cars will be able to self-drive in well-behaved environments in the next few years. But many driving environments although manageable for humans are not well-behaved. It may be that we will ultimately resolve this by adapting the environment to the car and not vice-versa -- we've done it before, for example roads used to be shared equally by pedestrians (and wagons, donkeys, etc) but when cars came along we forced pedestrians off of them. But that will take some time; until there's a substantial fleet of self-driving cars out there people aren't going to rejigger their school's pickup procedures to cater to them.
(I pick up on foot so it's all moot to me anyway, thankfully.)
Same thing that happened to the promised SDK, promised 4 USB ports, promised on-ramp to off-ramp, promised summon meets you at the front door, promised etc. etc. etc.
jgs
Active Member
I snicker to myself every time I think about how my Tesla sales advisor kept repeating "underpromise and overdeliver" when I did my test drive and subsequently. I think something got spoonerized.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
Why wouldn't I be? I'd rather see people lose money and Tesla's stock tank? What a miserable SOB I'd be if I wished for that.
We clearly have different outlooks in life.
Right - that's fair and proves a lot -- it's akin to those polls at drudge and brietbart as to who won the debates -- but still people believe what they want to believe.
I can see it now. The unmanned Tesla gets involved in a collision in famously congested area. The confused other motorist, the bewildered cop, and the dejected Tesla sitting haplessly, sending alerts to the oblivious owner who's too consumed bloviating on how he punked the valet.
I took delivery about 2 months ago on a 60D. I paid $2500 for AP 1.0.
Regarding Enhanced Autopilot:
At the end of the day I am not sure I would pay another $2500 to make AP a bit better. To be blunt, Autopilot is nowhere near a self-driving system and anyone who thinks so hasn't used it. There is a big, big difference between a system you can use much of the time on high-quality highways with careful monitoring and a system you can use all the time.
Enhanced AP, at least the $2500 version, doesn't seem to be materially different from AP 1.0. I'm sure it will do a better job with lane changes (AP 1.0 is pretty garbage to be honest) and merging is cool. But it's still a system you have to monitor and manage, and at that point having to occasionally take over for merges and lane changes just isn't a huge deal to me.
To be blunt, I am not sure I would pay $2500 for AP 1.0 after experiencing it for an extended period of time. I really like traffic aware cruise control and it is a nice system to use in traffic, but if I could have paid $1000 for TACC instead of $2500 for AP 1.0 I probably would have saved the $1500.
Regarding Full Self-Driving:
I think that spending $3000 at delivery for the promise of "full self-driving" at some point in the indefinite future is somewhat silly. Tesla is exceptional at hyping things. They do eventually deliver most of what they promise, and they do make the best driver assistance system - by far - on the market, but full autonomy is extremely difficult from both a software and a regulatory standpoint.
Are you going to get full self-driving? Sure, for some definition of "full", and at some point. Maybe "full" means it only drives in clear weather, or during the day, or in certain states, or with expensive liability insurance.
I am going to bet that Tesla will be the company that brings us the furthest down the road to self-driving the fastest, and if you want to be the first to go down that road, by all means drop the $3000. But know that you might very well end up selling the vehicle before those features become available or are useful to you, either for regulatory reasons or because Tesla can't deliver them quickly enough.
I have a Model 3 reservation as well, and I absolutely see the possibility of trading or selling my Model S and buying a Model 3 with AP 2.0. Or maybe I'll get another Model S - by that point, maybe there will be a S100D with 350 miles of range, or an updated touchscreen with a non-obsolete CPU, or lots of other little tweaks. But I'm not going to sweat having paid $2500 less to get a car 2 months earlier with more functionality for the next 3 months (until enhanced AP is turned on) and nearly as good functionality for at least the next year.
The real winners were probably people who ordered with AP 1.0 and end up getting enhanced AP, assuming they don't have to pay the $2500 extra.
Regarding Enhanced Autopilot:
At the end of the day I am not sure I would pay another $2500 to make AP a bit better. To be blunt, Autopilot is nowhere near a self-driving system and anyone who thinks so hasn't used it. There is a big, big difference between a system you can use much of the time on high-quality highways with careful monitoring and a system you can use all the time.
Enhanced AP, at least the $2500 version, doesn't seem to be materially different from AP 1.0. I'm sure it will do a better job with lane changes (AP 1.0 is pretty garbage to be honest) and merging is cool. But it's still a system you have to monitor and manage, and at that point having to occasionally take over for merges and lane changes just isn't a huge deal to me.
To be blunt, I am not sure I would pay $2500 for AP 1.0 after experiencing it for an extended period of time. I really like traffic aware cruise control and it is a nice system to use in traffic, but if I could have paid $1000 for TACC instead of $2500 for AP 1.0 I probably would have saved the $1500.
Regarding Full Self-Driving:
I think that spending $3000 at delivery for the promise of "full self-driving" at some point in the indefinite future is somewhat silly. Tesla is exceptional at hyping things. They do eventually deliver most of what they promise, and they do make the best driver assistance system - by far - on the market, but full autonomy is extremely difficult from both a software and a regulatory standpoint.
Are you going to get full self-driving? Sure, for some definition of "full", and at some point. Maybe "full" means it only drives in clear weather, or during the day, or in certain states, or with expensive liability insurance.
I am going to bet that Tesla will be the company that brings us the furthest down the road to self-driving the fastest, and if you want to be the first to go down that road, by all means drop the $3000. But know that you might very well end up selling the vehicle before those features become available or are useful to you, either for regulatory reasons or because Tesla can't deliver them quickly enough.
I have a Model 3 reservation as well, and I absolutely see the possibility of trading or selling my Model S and buying a Model 3 with AP 2.0. Or maybe I'll get another Model S - by that point, maybe there will be a S100D with 350 miles of range, or an updated touchscreen with a non-obsolete CPU, or lots of other little tweaks. But I'm not going to sweat having paid $2500 less to get a car 2 months earlier with more functionality for the next 3 months (until enhanced AP is turned on) and nearly as good functionality for at least the next year.
The real winners were probably people who ordered with AP 1.0 and end up getting enhanced AP, assuming they don't have to pay the $2500 extra.
For me it's about what was promised at the time I ordered my car. I certainly didn't believe full autonomy was possible with my car, but the AP description did have me believe a more intelligent summon as well as what others have said would be available. Is it considered false advertising?
We've had precedent for almost four years now, ever since the Model S was introduced, if I had waited a little longer to order in 2013 I could have gotten parking sensors and auto folding side mirrors. But I got what I paid for and am very happy with it, even though Tesla has improved the car every few months since then. If you keep waiting until you think the features are stable you'll never get to drive a Tesla. Just resign yourself to knowing that whatever car you get won't be the latest and greatest for very long, but it will still be as great as what you ordered.
tstafford
Active Member
Don't forget that the announcement for AP1.0 and the hardware release was followed by a lengthy period before V7.0 was released enabling AP1.0. My bet is there will be a long time b/w now and a meaningful functionality difference that would warrant a new car purchase (at least for me).
AP 1.0 is basically done. They will probably add some minor feature which doesn't really work that well (taking offramps). Elon said as much, he doesn't see much more to do with that hardware set.
It's stupid. It doesn't even really go backwards properly. None of the settings work right for distance when you back into your garage. Of course since I have to turn to get out of my driveway it would make me do an 5 point turn to get out of that situation anyway.
Another thing in a long list. Don't worry, there's some white knights circling right now to ready to come in and save Tesla in this thread.
Your comments didn't apply to ANYONE because no sane person looks at things in an absolutely black and white kind of way.
We weigh things a bit where we have simultaneous thoughts, and different perspectives on things at one time. Sometimes it's greed where were jealous of what the other guy has, and sometimes we give what we have to the other guy because it seemed only fair.
The perspective you presented was an important way to look at it, but you picked an extremely negative way of delivering it.
The perspective the OP presented was also a way of looking at it, and I saw it as someone trying to add some ground truth to it. I reacted by making a joke about it because things should be fun. I know materialistic things are silly, and don't mean anything in the great grand scheme of things like humor does. But, it doesn't mean I don't have passion about what I own, and about those moments when I'm on the top of the hill. Having AP updates every 3-6 months was fun, and I'll definitely miss that ride. So I certainly connected with what the OP said.
I could believe that one could train the car to do something it thought was non-standard in a situation like this where it is the same location every time. I worry more about the situation like a temporary street closure and a traffic cop essentially telling everyone to ignore all traffic rules and follow the wave of my hand. Yesterday you drove through this same intersection normally. Today you are expected to recognize "whoa, ignore everything except the wave of this particular human's hand". The next day when some pedestrian crossing in front of you randomly makes a similar hand gesture, "ignore that, go back to following traffic signals."
