FWIW-transition period vehicles can eventually land in the software update equivalent of “Radiator Springs” with infrequent and feature-deficient updates.
In 2017 I purchased an inventory HW 2.0 Model S with Enhanced AutoPilot. Added FSD during one of the “Need cash NOW!” sales. Upgraded to MCU 2 and FSD 3 when they were available.
Until 2022, the car received regular software updates. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the 2.1 camera upgrades. Each time I tried to schedule it, the request was rejected with, “Don’t bug us. We’ll let you know when we have some for you.”
This was when my car fell off the update train into Radiator Springs. There are few vehicles with FSD 3 computer but 2.0 cameras. It would be hard to justify the effort to improve and test software, so Tesla doesn’t. Every few months they scrape together some MCU2 features and push that out.
My cameras were finally upgraded last week. No notification from Tesla, I submitted a service request and it was accepted. No FSD Beta until the NHTSA fixes are implemented and distributed.
At least I have sharper dashcam footage, and I should be getting more frequent updates since I’m out of Radiator Springs for a few years.
Cars with FSD 4 processor and “classic” camera suite - everything shipped so far - will be succeeded by vehicles with a “full” camera suite that fills more of the FSD 4 ports in a year or two.
After that, FSD 4 classic camera suite vehicles will eventually be a small portion of the fleet. Then it will be hard to justify dedicating Dojo training capacity for “classic” FSD 4 and those cars’ capabilities will plateau.
Any time you purchase an item with rapidly-evolving technology you can be confident it will become outdated. Just as a surfer chooses a wave knowing that ride will end. Some see a stronger wave approaching and decide to wait for it, hoping for a longer ride.
