This, I think, will be an eternal disagreement to which a lot of different view come down to. I know some on TMC see Tesla as an outright fraud, while others see Tesla did nothing wrong but was, say, caught up in the events (e.g. the MobilEye breakup). One's views will be dramatically different depending on where one is on this scale deep down, because so much of the rest of the opinion flows from that.
As you know I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't think Tesla is a fraud, but I do think some of the things they have done are where a reasonable person "knew better or should have known better". The P85HD HP, the P90DL performance limiters (both court cases in different jurisdictions), AP2 EAP "December, 2016" and FSD "3-6 months" announcements are on this list. At the very least, they should have known better than to do it like this. Some might add the promised Model S lighted sun-visors on the list, few remember that Tesla actually promised to retrofit those to all Model S's - arguably to keep anyone from waiting to buy a car because of that back in the day.
I think it would be naive to assume that doesn't factor into Tesla's/Elon's communications. Quarterly financial results are obviously very important for Tesla and a lot of their communications and demand levers at least seem to be geared towards keeping the cars moving right now.
Now, this, this I can believe to an extent. I believe Elon believes he can deliver FSD to AP2 - and intends to eventually - or at least believed it when he made the announcement. But even then he is not immune to being caught in the web of past promises. It isn't like Tesla could easily walk back on the FSD promise for AP2 now, so it circles back to "what they reasonably knew or should have known" before communicating IMO... Several AP1 promises were moved to AP2 hardware (traffic lights, elements of smart summon etc.), P85D HP promises moved onto P85DL, P90DL and when P90DL V1 and maybe V2 had issues reaching its specs, the promises were finally fulfilled on P90DL V3, P100D etc. - which of course does not help a guy with AP1 or P85D or P90DL V1... and then when P90DL etc. had warranty issues, Tesla scaled even that P90DL V3 performance back retroactively... (Later that change was mostly rolled back due to pressure from a judge.)
And, unfortunately after three years of Tesla ownership, that picture is not always as pretty as I would like. I would like nothing more than for Tesla to fix that part about them for the future. My suggestion that they only sell and announce what is ready today remains - they could ship the hardware just as fast in my idea, just not pre-announce its capabilities (let alone charge a price) before it is confirmed and software ships... and avoid hubris in announced specs at all costs.
