Fair AP2 Questions Tesla Inc. Should Answer

[Sir Guacamolaf]

I remember going through the very same gyrations with AP1. A lot of us were very, and reasonably so, frustrated at the incredible delays Tesla had when rolling out AP1. But looking at AP2 now,

• Tesla did not learn a thing from AP1 delayed rollout and the general bad blood that caused.
• It looks like it may be another 6-12 months before AP2 is equally good as AP1.
• Between AP2 and Model 3, I really don't think AP1 will get any love, neither will the sad situation of Tesla repairs and service center wait times.

Imagine Joe who bought AP2 in October 2016, versus Jill who buys an inventory/CPO/used AP2 in Dec 2017.
Both of them essentially have the same car.
Both of them will get the same fun/usage out of AP2, which IMO is a prime feature of the car.
But Jill will save $10-$20K of depreciation .. or .. if she bought new .. she would get an extra year on the road, and a car with fewer bugs.

And imagine if Joe bought into a 4 year lease. Joe will enjoy the full product for only 2 of those 4 years, while paying for a full 4 years.

And that is just not right!

Ask yourself this, lets say you buy a macbook pro, shelf life 3 years. And Apple delivered the laptop with only 500GB Hard disk, while you paid for 1TB. The 1TB is sent 12 months from now. Would you be cool with that?

Or to make it more fair,

Apple says, pay now, and in 3 months we will swap your 500G for 1TB - and you shrug and agree.
But instead of 3 months they take 12 months, is that ok?

 

[dmode]

I remember going through the very same gyrations with AP1. A lot of us were very, and reasonably so, frustrated at the incredible delays Tesla had when rolling out AP1. But looking at AP2 now,

• Tesla did not learn a thing from AP1 delayed rollout and the general bad blood that caused.
• It looks like it may be another 6-12 months before AP2 is equally good as AP1.
• Between AP2 and Model 3, I really don't think AP1 will get any love, neither will the sad situation of Tesla repairs and service center wait times.

Imagine Joe who bought AP2 in October 2016, versus Jill who buys an inventory/CPO/used AP2 in Dec 2017.
Both of them essentially have the same car.
Both of them will get the same fun/usage out of AP2, which IMO is a prime feature of the car.
But Jill will save $10-$20K of depreciation .. or .. if she bought new .. she would get an extra year on the road, and a car with fewer bugs.

And imagine if Joe bought into a 4 year lease. Joe will enjoy the full product for only 2 of those 4 years, while paying for a full 4 years.

And that is just not right!

Ask yourself this, lets say you buy a macbook pro, shelf life 3 years. And Apple delivered the laptop with only 500GB Hard disk, while you paid for 1TB. The 1TB is sent 12 months from now. Would you be cool with that?

Or to make it more fair,

Apple says, pay now, and in 3 months we will swap your 500G for 1TB - and you shrug and agree.
But instead of 3 months they take 12 months, is that ok?

Your comparison is inherently flawed. because

1. Apple has been around for 30 years and has $200bn in just cash. They make $75 bn in a quarter
2. Hard disk is a commoditized technology that any Joe can install
3. An appropriate comparison will be if the extra 500 GB was rolled out 200 gigs at a time

 

[AmpedRealtor]

I remember going through the very same gyrations with AP1. A lot of us were very, and reasonably so, frustrated at the incredible delays Tesla had when rolling out AP1. But looking at AP2 now,

• Tesla did not learn a thing from AP1 delayed rollout and the general bad blood that caused.
• It looks like it may be another 6-12 months before AP2 is equally good as AP1.
• Between AP2 and Model 3, I really don't think AP1 will get any love, neither will the sad situation of Tesla repairs and service center wait times.

Imagine Joe who bought AP2 in October 2016, versus Jill who buys an inventory/CPO/used AP2 in Dec 2017.
Both of them essentially have the same car.
Both of them will get the same fun/usage out of AP2, which IMO is a prime feature of the car.
But Jill will save $10-$20K of depreciation .. or .. if she bought new .. she would get an extra year on the road, and a car with fewer bugs.

And imagine if Joe bought into a 4 year lease. Joe will enjoy the full product for only 2 of those 4 years, while paying for a full 4 years.

And that is just not right!

Ask yourself this, lets say you buy a macbook pro, shelf life 3 years. And Apple delivered the laptop with only 500GB Hard disk, while you paid for 1TB. The 1TB is sent 12 months from now. Would you be cool with that?

Or to make it more fair,

Apple says, pay now, and in 3 months we will swap your 500G for 1TB - and you shrug and agree.
But instead of 3 months they take 12 months, is that ok?

The flaw in your ointment: Nobody forces you to pay Tesla for non-existent features.

The last time I checked, it is the customer who chooses to pay for options that don't currently exist and are only promised with a bunch of strings attached. So it's really on the customer. Those of us who have been following Tesla for a few years know better than to give Tesla money for something that's still in development, especially after how royally they screwed up the first Autopilot rollout. It doesn't look like they are doing much better now, and according to some, may be having a much more difficult time.

There's enough foolishness to go around.

 

[ElectricTundra]

Keep in mind that this is BETA software. Neither AP1 nor AP2 have been proclaimed as anything other than BETA or experimental. There is no claim that I am aware of that either of these are production or soon will be. BETA software has bugs and is rarely very reliable. Features come and go as developers work on them, often fixing one and breaking three others in the process.

Roadmaps for BETA software are rough guesstimates. The only way to have solid dates that can be realistically met is some major sandbagging — you think it will take your team 3 months so you say 12 months and caveat that with "if we don't run in to any problems". There are just too many unknowns with software development. Even simple lists of features get shuffled as you run in to major obstacles with two items and have a breakthrough in another.

We went through this w/ AP1. It was frustrating at times but we also had to keep in mind that we were getting capabilities far beyond those available from any other manufacturer and beyond anything MobileEye was doing at the time. Oh, and that it was BETA, not production. It took a year from hardware availability until the first bit of capability was available. The first release was rough and we had to wait a few more months for a more solid and realistically useable release. But we knew it'd get there. 15 months after I bought my S, while we were driving to Florida, we got that second release one night and our S drove us about 95% of the rest of the way.

Now we're going through it again. Musk could have said that it'd be available in 2020 like everyone else (though keep in mind that the only reason any of them are doing 2020 instead of 2030 is Musk) but fortunately for us and Tesla it's not 2020 but a live BETA program now! Is it really that big of an issue if we have to wait a few more months for BETA Feature A or BETA Feature B?

They are working hard to bring AP2 to AP1 parity and will quickly go beyond AP1. Chill. Relax. Have a bit of patience. Come enjoy a good Scotch with us. They'll get there.

 

[Sir Guacamolaf]

The flaw in your ointment: Nobody forces you to pay Tesla for non-existent features.

The last time I checked, it is the customer who chooses to pay for options that don't currently exist and are only promised with a bunch of strings attached. So it's really on the customer. Those of us who have been following Tesla for a few years know better than to give Tesla money for something that's still in development, especially after how royally they screwed up the first Autopilot rollout. It doesn't look like they are doing much better now, and according to some, may be having a much more difficult time.

There's enough foolishness to go around.

I never said that the onus was not on the customer. And I agree there is enough foolishness to go around, and Tesla is taking full advantage of it too. Is it trust, is it foolishness, or is it a bit of both?

Our experiences condition us to expect some things in life, .. steering wheels are usually round, sugar is sweet, and communicated timelines are usually met.

Tesla veterans like you know that sometimes in the Tesla world, sugar can be salt. You know better! But being a veteran, I am sure you also remember the long bitter thread about AP1 delays? Tell me, how is AP2 rollout better?

Every successive generation of Tesla owners are less forgiving than the last.
They have a very reasonable demand of getting what they paid for and not be beta testers.

And, they may be foolish, but they are not you!

 

[Jim Holder]

We went through this w/ AP1

The difference here is that Tesla divorced MobileEye who packed up and left with a lot of the technology that enabled AP1 to function in the first place.

So in effect Tesla is playing catch up with both hands tied behind their back and blindfolded.

If these assumptions are true I don't see a path forward for them in the very near future and there will never be even *close* parity with AP1.

But I'm new in these parts and learning the ropes as a new owner, so hopefully this is not true.

 

[whitex]

As a (relatively) long time Tesla customer, lack of communication is the norm. Things just show up when and if they show up. Elon's twitter feed has pretty much been where most of the communication takes place - one liners analyzed to death on forums by eager fans. Of course, any dates or time durations communicated are in Elon's home planet's time zone, and nobody knows how that correlates to Earth time. Welcome to Tesla ownership.

 

[rlawson4]

These are all reasonable questions. I am concerned that I have a 100D on order that will have less functionality than the 85D I will trade in. I think it was reasonable for me to expect that the 100D I will be receiving would be at least on par with the 85D I already have.

 

[hill]

Good points, but when I ordered mine it shows December 2016 and the sales rep said February the latest for parity with AP1......

HA !!
you believed him? kidding. Don't feel bad - we weren't even made aware, when we ordered back in November.
.

 

[ElectricTundra]

These are all reasonable questions. I am concerned that I have a 100D on order that will have less functionality than the 85D I will trade in. I think it was reasonable for me to expect that the 100D I will be receiving would be at least on par with the 85D I already have.

Your 100D will likely have fewer features working on the day that you take delivery, but it will have much greater potential. In 3 or 6 or 9 months your 100D will have similar and likely somewhat better features than your 85D. A bit after that your 100D will have much greater capability than your 85D and you'll wonder why you ever questioned making the switch. You'll have largely forgotten about the short bit of time that it was less than your 85D.

The only time I ever think about the year we waited for AP is when replying to threads like this. Otherwise I simply enjoy driving my car and look forward to more improvements to come. Same for AP2 X.

 

[bhzmark]

The general answer is, "as fast as we can get it out. We can't always give a specific timetable for every function because the development and testing process is inherently uncertain."

The specific most recent answer, in the recent earnings call, was AP1 parity in March.

"Safety is always our primary concern. So, really we could have released Tesla Vision and including (18:42) high speed, probably three months ago – I was driving at a high speed personally three months ago, but I think we want to just have an exhaustive testing process, vetting (18:57) process before enabling that throughout the fleet.

"So, we've been edging our way up there gradually. Now, longitudinal control, the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is at 80 miles an hour. And Autosteer is at 50 miles an hour, and I think we should be able to get, unless testing shows something different, we should be able to get them both to around the maybe 85 miles an hour next month [March] and be at parity with Hardware 1 (19:36). And then obviously things will only improve from there. "


Delayed gratification can be a challenge.

 

[Jim Holder]

the Traffic-Aware Cruise Control is at 80 miles an hour. And Autosteer is at 50 miles an hour, and I think we should be able to get, unless testing shows something different, we should be able to get them both to around the maybe 85 miles an hour next month [March] and be at parity with Hardware 1 (19:36).

Raising the speed limit on functions that barely work and are colossally inferior to stable technologies on the road from traditional ICE companies like Honda/MobileEye etc, gives nothing to owners like me that paid for AP with the assurance it would be fully baked and working end of last year (and continues to be constantly pushed off) anything other than increased liability.

They could uncap the speed to 100MPH and it would still be junk until they get their act together and either show that they have a handle on the situation post divorce from MobileEye or as many people here speculate (based on past experience) that Tesla is in over their heads and it will simply never work.

For me, I hope it does and I look forward to being pleasantly surprised!

 

[bhzmark]

Raising the speed limit on functions that barely work and are colossally inferior to stable technologies on the road from traditional ICE companies like Honda/MobileEye etc, gives nothing to owners like me that paid for AP with the assurance it would be fully baked and working end of last year (and continues to be constantly pushed off) anything other than increased liability.

They could uncap the speed to 100MPH and it would still be junk until they get their act together and either show that they have a handle on the situation post divorce from MobileEye or as many people here speculate (based on past experience) that Tesla is in over their heads and it will simply never work.

For me, I hope it does and I look forward to being pleasantly surprised!

Note that he used the word "both" referring to mere speed, and separately functional parity with AP1.

 

[Jim Holder]

Note that he used the word "both" referring to mere speed, and separately functional parity with AP1.

Let's hope! Best case scenario they enable all the cameras and the percision of AP2 on 8.1 blows everyone's mind.

 

[P100DHG.]

I'm not a software engineer or an engineer at all, I am a well accomplished DIYer and in all my years of DIYing I can say with expert knowledge that the following should just come out now. They are too easy to keep ignoring. It would be a nice carrot and they don't affect anything that could affect the safety of the driver or their passengers.

1. Auto Wipers
2. High Beam Dimming
3. Head light movement with steering
4. Lane departure
5. Blind Spot Detection (should always double check my looking over your shoulder regardless of this is enabled or not)

 

[Doubletap67]

I'm not a software engineer or an engineer at all, I am a well accomplished DIYer and in all my years of DIYing I can say with expert knowledge that the following should just come out now. They are too easy to keep ignoring. It would be a nice carrot and they don't affect anything that could affect the safety of the driver or their passengers.

1. Auto Wipers
2. High Beam Dimming
3. Head light movement with steering
4. Lane departure
5. Blind Spot Detection (should always double check my looking over your shoulder regardless of this is enabled or not)

There's no headlight steering hardware to enable, as far as I know. It's just some corner pointing LEDs that're turned on when the wheel is turned, and those are already working for me and have been since I got my car in December. Not nearly as effective as real adaptive headlights that I've had in previous cars.

It's incomprehensible that there are still no rain sensing wipers or working dimmable headlights.