I suppose at the end of the day, I don't really understand what all the consternation is about
It's super simple.
Tesla showed a video in 2016 that had a car drive between two locations, in traffic, with a disclaimer that the driver was not needed at all. Car even parked itself in a busy parking lot.
They then said the cars they were now selling were capable of this in hardware even if you didn't pay for the SW, but you could also buy the SW now. If you didn't buy it with the car, it was much more expensive to buy later, so, ahem, you should really buy now.
Then they said getting the FSD features in SW was 6 months away.
It's now 2022, and the car doesn't do anywhere near what they described. For many 2016-2018 owners, it doesn't do any of this at all because the HW is not compatible. But they already have your money, and they offer no refunds.
You don't get why selling something for thousands of dollars, showing a video of it working, and telling people they won't need hardware upgrades would be annoying when the reality is that 6 years later, you have absolutely nothing for that purchase, and Tesla keeps saying "we're working on it, but we offer no refunds, please keep waiting."?
When I drive my car home from work this afternoon, I will experience about 95% magic and 5% WTF. Pretty f---ing cool if you ask me.
Even that is a bit of F-U, I got mine attitude. What percentage of people that have bought FSD have been "let" into the beta program? Where did Tesla ever advertise that FSD required meeting an arbitrary safety score threshold? You can't even pay $6K more than EAP on a brand new Tesla today and be guaranteed you will get FSD in any timeline. It's not a product you can buy, it's a gamble you can make, but it's sold as if it's a product.
That's the only issue. Tesla can develop "self driving" all they want, and we all hope they do and do amazing. The only issue is that they charge for it now, for a completely undefined feature set and delivery date, and put all the risk on those customers as they offer no refunds, even when the only issue is Tesla's complete non-delivery of anything after 6 years.
as well as HW4 on the way,
Oh yeah, and this too. HW2 was "all the HW needed for FSD." But HW2.5, and HW3 later, we're all excited for HW4....
How are you gonna feel when Tesla tells you HW4 is a $4K upgrade to your car to keep getting feature updates? Don't think they won't, they met their city streets autosteer feature set, they are done with you, just like they are done with the MCU1 and HW2/2.5 cars even though they promised those owners more and delivered way less.