As an AP1 car owner I feel more cheated that I have no upgrade path to AP2 for my car. Many people may not agree with me but I find AP1 to be insufficient enough that I rarely use it, and if so more out of curiosity than utility.
Since I'm not using it anyway I would much rather have AP2 and know that I'm at least on the path to a fully featured system.
I think it all comes down to what your expectations are, and timing plays a huge role in this.
When I bought my car I was happy to get TACC let alone everything else that followed. This was way back in the middle of 2015 which doesn't seem like a long time ago, but it is in the technology centric circles.
I was a pretty happy camper even though it was just TACC without lane keeping, summons, or any park assist stuff. Sure like a lot of my peers I complained on here about how long the lane keeping element of AP was taking. But, it wasn't of the "cheated" variety of complaining, but more of impatience.
Maybe part of that happiness was the excitement of what comes next. Where I knew that any day it would be christmas, and we'd get all sorts of new and exciting features.
Part of the excitement was also the newness of it all. We didn't really know how this would impact our driving, or what psychological elements would come into play with a Level II car. It was like a giant experiment that I was a part of. A story I could tell my future robot kids about.
The ownership experience was as much about the adventure as it was about the car itself.
Now I feel a bit of sadness as that journey is coming to a close, and we only have one or two more significant enhancements coming to AP1.
The reality is also different these days since it's being watched like a hawk, and it feels like there is less freedom to innovate. There is a lot more handholding to it all now days.
I don't feel a whole lot of jealousy towards AP2 quite yet. I think a lot that has to do with just how far it needs to come to reach parity since Tesla had to basically start from scratch. For an AP2 owner the next 6 months isn't going to be easy. Whether they like it or not they're essentially beta testers. Sure AP1 had some issues on occasion, but there is a big difference between having an established base like what MobileEye offered versus building all that from scratch. There were some beta elements of AP1, but the initial versions weren't nearly as bad the recent AP2 release (the false collision warnings, tacc slow downs and roughness, etc).
I think Tesla understands that so much of their value/future is riding on software that they hired a very Software orientated guy from Apple. So I do expect the Tesla code to get a lot better over the next year or so. It's going be a bit of a battle for the next 6 months where AP2 owners are going to be submitting all sorts of bug reports. Probably won't be exactly what they thought they were signing up for.
But, after 6 months or so it's going to start getting really exciting for AP2 owners as EAP features start to roll on top of a more proven out base.
There are still a lot of unknowns though. We don't really know if the AP2 hardware/software will reach a level where it really makes a sizable difference over AP1. Does it really make a difference if you still have to hold the steering wheel? or if you have to be concerned that summons will screw up once out of 100 times?
So I'm going to sit on the sidelines while this whole thing plays out. Much like a lot of things in life it's all about the timing of when to jump in. Having AP1 while on the sidelines isn't bad at all.
It's gong to be a long journey from AP1 to something really useful, and that might not be AP2.
