I've just read through this entire thread. Rather than try to quote from and respond to individual comments, I'll just make some of my own. I know I'll be attacked for some of them, particularly the first one.
I ordered my P85D, without ever having seen a Model S in person, thinking it was coming with the lane-keeping feature we're talking about here. You can all beat me up for not doing enough research, for missing the disclaimers, etc., etc., tell me it's my own fault, and that's fine. I was brand new to Tesla when I heard about the D announcement and watched the video of it. There was a lot of new information coming at me fast. I tried to take it all in. If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a video worth? I watched several different videos of the test rides given at the launch event between the time I first became interested in the P85D and the time I ordered one a couple of weeks later. In those videos, the car was lane-keeping. If anyone in any of those videos said the car wouldn't be doing that at delivery, I missed it. (I'm pretty sure no one did.) I'm not suggesting that it is Tesla's fault I thought my P85D was coming with lane-keeping at the time I ordered it, and only discovered it wasn't as I read TMC and became more knowledgeable. What I am suggesting, though, is that I expect that there were a lot of other customers just like me. Tesla demo'd something that they apparently were not all that close to releasing. Disclaimers aside, and intentional or not, that was misleading.
Do I want Tesla to release lane-keeping before it's ready? Of course not. I don't think any reasonable person does. But I do want Tesla to do right by its customers when it lets them down. Disappointing us will sometimes be unavoidable. But Tesla has the means to ease that disappointment, and thus far I have seen none of that, in spite of being disappointed over and over and over again.
As an early adopter of the P85D, taking delivery in late December, I received a car that didn't get the advertised efficiency, with no explanation at the time. A few months later an update was released that gets the car close, but not to what was advertised. I apparently don't have the 691 horsepower I thought I would have. I didn't get either my front or rear Next Generation seats until five months after I paid for them. I was not given any choice in this matter, and was offered nothing in the way of compensation. To top it all off, the center console I thought I was purchasing along with my car Tesla decided not to make, after providing continuous updates about when it would be available. They then lied, saying they wouldn't be selling any in the finish I wanted (obeche matte) and went on to sell some, in limited supply, to people who had happened to sign up on a waiting list for them before I did. Why not, at the point they knew they did not have enough consoles to satisfy everyone who wanted one, opt to sell them to customers that they had disappointed in some way--say by having made them wait five months for seats they had paid for? If you're going to sell a console to everyone who wants one, then sure, sell them in the order people signed up on a list. But if only a limited number of people are going to get the consoles, in my opinion they shouldn't have gone to people who bought their cars before the console was even announced instead of to people who thought they were buying their car with the console. If you are going to disappoint people anyway, why not disappoint new people, and choose to use the receipt of a console as a means to relieve the disappointment over another matter with different customers? (Can you tell I'm still incredibly bitter about my piano black console, and the Frankenstein interior it created?)
I'm sure I'm going to get a lot of flak for the above, but the console situation, coupled with the other disappointments, really changed the way I feel about Tesla and my Model S. You could say the console situation was the straw that broke this camel's back.
Mistakes will happen. Delays are unavoidable. But small concessions can be made to ease the pain when these things happen. I have yet to see Tesla care enough about its customers to make any such concession.
I was one of the people who, along with wk057, have my name on that banner that hangs at Tesla headquarters thanking the Tesla employees, which was presented to them on the pizza party day. I sent a hand-written card that I understand Bonnie read. I meant the nice things I wrote on that card, and I really felt the sentiments that I expressed. I'd like to feel that way about Tesla and my Model S again, but I'm not sure I ever will.
Let's say thanks: Pizza for the factory employees - Page 28
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- raising peoples hopes....
