It's a hard thing, getting it all right. Tesla should be commended for the constant innovation, and that's one of the things that attracted all of us to these very pricey cars in the first place. That said, as many have mentioned previously: Tesla bungled the Autopilot rollout.
- They were scrambling to recover from the factory shutdown and delayed restart, and were scrambling to get cars delivered for Q3 end.
- They installed the new steering wheel with reversed stalks in a few cars WITHOUT the Autopilot and then started adding the sensors very shortly thereafter. This led some to believe they were getting or did get "new features" when in reality they didn't.
- Cars hit the ground with mysterious new partially-activated hardware, and personnel on the ground were either uninformed or (in my experience) told not to say anything but "nothing has been announced."
- Customers were not able to get information on presence/absence of this hardware on soon-to-be-delivered cars.
- Cars with Autopilot were interspersed with those without in the delivery centers, yet the differences were not acknowledged.
This point can be debated, but it feels as though TM was working very hard to maintain a frenetic pace of deliveries to please stockholders in this case, which ended up being at the expense of (new) customer service.
In contrast, the D announcement was better - TM announced new features, and when they would be available. Customers can immediately choose to order if they like. Existing order holders (next few months' worth of customers) are being allowed to change without losing deposits. Those who recently took delivery are left out, but it softens the blow some as nobody will have these new cars for a couple of months - at least you have the "latest" for a short while. Isn't that what everyone wants from their new whiz-bang tech purchase? To have the newest, hottest, "it" thing in their grubby little mitts for a bit? It'll be older tech soon enough, but we want to get a "little" time to enjoy having the state-of-the-art, right?
Perhaps TM should consider announcing new features 1-2x per year at relatively predictable times... especially if not able to retrofit. One of the things that has made the "no model year" concept a little easier to grasp is the relative upgradeability of older cars.
Call it what you want - TM has created a new model year, the "2015 Model S 2.0" with addition of the Autopilot (and AWD) features, along with the laundry list of minor updates discussed in the blog. Everyone else now has last year's model.
Now, that is a great post and highlights why the AutoPilot part went sour but the AWD part actually went OK.
I don't know if the 1-2x per year suggestion is something I'd vote for in particular, but I think it fits well in the pool of potential solutions that could help lessening the impact of such situation in the future. This is a difficult problem for any car manufacturer and car buyer, not just Tesla, but that doesn't mean there isn't great discussion to be had on how to improve. Clearly Tesla didn't do it in an optimal manner this time, especially considering the magnitude of standard features that were being added (basically a self-driving car).
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I wonder how these people will feel when Tesla rolls out autopilot sensor package version 2.0 that is also not a retrofit upgrade.
It depends on how well Tesla handles such a roll-out. Now, that doesn't mean everyone can be made happy always, but different solutions will produce different amounts of happy people. Some less, some more. I'm voting for solutions that produce more.
This wasn't one of those.
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Agreed. And "model years" is not a good way around this, which I know you are not suggesting but others are. I have read may recommendations and so far all recommendations I have read are seriously flawed. I just don't think there are any good solutions. No matter what, people will be upset when missing out on new features. Of course, mistakes were made with this rollout, and things could have been done better by Tesla, but solving those mistakes and doing things better won't change the fundamental problem at the core of this issue. At least that's how I see it.
You don't think there are any good solutions, yet you acknowledge mistakes were made. Why do you keep on insisting correcting those mistakes wouldn't have made any difference it beyond me. It seems like you are unable to see beyond the argument you made, even when you now acknowledge the mistakes. While the root challenge may be eternal (evolution of technology products), clearly different company policies have different results with regards to the number of happy or disgruntled customers. You make it sound like there is nothing a company could do better to make any real difference.
I find that extremely unlikely and if you were free of your predetermined point of view, I'd say you would find it unlikely too. It is just a very, very big argument to make - that nothing a particular company does on an issue could make any real difference - and common sense says there must be very limited number of things in the world where such an argument would fit, if there are any at all. Even if the solutions proposed seem flawed, claiming that there are none is just a very, very big claim to make. Especially so when even you admit there were mistakes made, so the execution as is wasn't in any way perfect either.
Basically you are saying Tesla's imperfect handling of this situation, with mistakes an all, still produced the best possible outcome that could be had in this world. That's how it reads to me. And it seems very, very unlikely to be objectively true. Feel free to correct me if I misread you or you've changed your mind.
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Tesla did make a mistake releasing the features early. If they had waited until the announcement you'd still run into someone who was called asking 'would you like to take delivery in a week instead of later this month?' They say yes and their car is produced the day before the announcement and they are angry.
Or Tesla announces they are making an announcement in a month and everyone cancels or delays their order until after the announcement. There will always be someone on the wrong side of an announcement
If there is a good way around this without resorting to model years I'd love to hear it.
There have been many good suggestions on this forum. Just because you ignored them or haven't read them, doesn't mean they haven't been there. There will, of course, always be someone on the wrong side of a technology upgrade, but many suggestions and even examples have been offered that can make a difference on the number of disgruntled people in such a case.
Even though being left on the wrong side of a technology upgrade can always sting, there is also the case of when that happens which affects how much it stings. If you get your brand new car without a major upgrade, while the guy taking delivery of his in the next lot (who ordered at the same time as you) does, it removes something from that experience. If on the other hand you have already had your car for a month or few, got to enjoy the delivery without such concerns, clearly the impact of something new happening is much less. So, time matters and thus solutions can be limited to those most impacted. For example, in this case Tesla new "old normal" and "new normal" deliveries were happening side by side - they could have offered something to those impacted in the form of information, a discount or, say, a discounted delivery refusal. Or they could offer retroactive discounts to those feeling slighted or vouchers for a center console or something.
This is why retail had price protection, returns policies, retroactive upgrades in some cases and all sorts of things to keep the customer happy through such changes. Surely there is a lot Tesla could do to innovate in this area, when they are introducing a very big standard feature upgrade such as basically self-driving car. They don't need to do this for every little thing of course, but this was a big thing and I'm sure they could have done something to acknowledge those most impacted. Gestures matter too.
