breser
AutoPilot Nostradamus
You know a lot of people keep saying they wished Tesla wouldn't have done this flashy demo. Well I'm in the other camp. Let me tell you why.
I got my first Model S on September 24th, 2014. A few days before I picked it up cars with the Autopilot hardware started showing up. Nobody knew much. Forum was accusing the person with the car of making things up. By the afternoon I picked up my car it was clear that it was real and that these cars had Speed Assist and Lane Departure Warnings. I was disappointed but didn't really feel I was missing out. These features alone didn't matter much to me.
On October 9th, 2014 Tesla had their D event. They did the flashy Autopilot demo. I realized this was going to be much more than the minor features we'd seen. That this hardware was going to be something they were going to iterate on and would drive a lot of software updates. Now I was upset and frustrated about having missed out on it by roughly 2 days. I posted a lot of whiny posts about that. People on this forum urged me to talk to Tesla about trading. So I sent an email complaining and never got a response at all.
When I saw this I told myself I'd pay up to $5k to have it retrofitted. But obviously retrofitting wasn't possible. So after a week of no response from Tesla I filled out the Value my Trade form on the website. Tesla contacted me. I got a value back and it was $4k less than I paid. After thinking about it for a while I decided to order an 85D with Autopilot.
Part of what made this work for me was that Washington had no sales tax on new Electric Vehicles at the time. So my losses were limited to what the difference between what I'd paid and what I was getting and the tint/paint protection I'd done. So despite only having the car for 2 months I traded it. Because I knew long term I'd be unhappy and would want to trade it. That the Sales Tax exception was expiring in July of 2015 and it was unlikely it would be renewed. So waiting just made me less likely to upgrade.
Had Tesla not done a flashy demo. I would haven't have an Autopilot car at all.
I got my first Model S on September 24th, 2014. A few days before I picked it up cars with the Autopilot hardware started showing up. Nobody knew much. Forum was accusing the person with the car of making things up. By the afternoon I picked up my car it was clear that it was real and that these cars had Speed Assist and Lane Departure Warnings. I was disappointed but didn't really feel I was missing out. These features alone didn't matter much to me.
On October 9th, 2014 Tesla had their D event. They did the flashy Autopilot demo. I realized this was going to be much more than the minor features we'd seen. That this hardware was going to be something they were going to iterate on and would drive a lot of software updates. Now I was upset and frustrated about having missed out on it by roughly 2 days. I posted a lot of whiny posts about that. People on this forum urged me to talk to Tesla about trading. So I sent an email complaining and never got a response at all.
When I saw this I told myself I'd pay up to $5k to have it retrofitted. But obviously retrofitting wasn't possible. So after a week of no response from Tesla I filled out the Value my Trade form on the website. Tesla contacted me. I got a value back and it was $4k less than I paid. After thinking about it for a while I decided to order an 85D with Autopilot.
Part of what made this work for me was that Washington had no sales tax on new Electric Vehicles at the time. So my losses were limited to what the difference between what I'd paid and what I was getting and the tint/paint protection I'd done. So despite only having the car for 2 months I traded it. Because I knew long term I'd be unhappy and would want to trade it. That the Sales Tax exception was expiring in July of 2015 and it was unlikely it would be renewed. So waiting just made me less likely to upgrade.
Had Tesla not done a flashy demo. I would haven't have an Autopilot car at all.