Getting back to the FSD question. It is my firm belief that two things regarding FSD will happen within a year.
1) FSD will be feature complete. That doesn't mean it will be legal in every jurisdiction. Nor does it mean that it will be perfect. As we've seen with other Tesla tech, it will be functional with driver diligence still required. But it will improve quickly.
2) The cost for said system will be at least twice what it is now. As these features become reality the demand will go through the roof.
Now, these of course are just my opinions but I have seen and heard too much, let alone my personal observations with my Model 3 over the last year, to not see these two things happening.
Order as you see fit, but it is my belief that FSD will NEVER be cheaper and it will come to fruition much sooner than many expect.
Dan
Thanks for the great post Dan. I'm leaning toward putting my pre-order in today or tomorrow. I agree with your opinion that by the time a MY pre-ordered now is actually delivered the price of FSD will be up to 10K or more.
I've given the Pre-Order Agreement a close read. It don't believe it says
explicitly that price increases to FSD coming after a pre-order payment is made will not increase the final price to purchase the car, but strongly implies that.
"Until your pre-order is matched to a vehicle, you may make changes to your Vehicle Configuration. If you make changes to your Vehicle Configuration, you
may be subject to potential price increases for any pricing adjustments made since your original Pre-Order Date.
Any changes made by you to your Vehicle Configuration,
including changes to the delivery location or estimated delivery date, will be reflected in a subsequent Vehicle Configuration that will form part of this Agreement."
I'm not a contract lawyer (though during my IT career I had occasion to participate with company attorneys in contract negotiations with software vendors). Do you believe this section, which says if you make any change to your VC after your pre-order date, you may not get the original cost for options you selected if they increased, legally means that if you
do not change your VC before purchase, you will
not be required to pay such price increases? Non lawyers would assume this to be the case, but in contract law conventional logic and common sense may not apply!
I find the last sentence quite confusing. It seems to suggest that delivery location is part of the VC, but when we create our pre-order VC we don't set a delivery location nor an estimated delivery date! And that such changes trigger creation of a new VC that will replace the original VC for the purposes of the Agreement. There is lots of ambiguity here IMO. One thing I believe it may leave open is if Tesla gives you a delivery date and for whatever reason you want to defer the purchase by some number of weeks or months, they can say "sure, that's fine. But your FSD price is going to rise to whatever they have set at purchase date."
I'm interested to hear anyone's thoughts on how to interpret this legalese. Especially anyone practicing contract law!
Please don't mistake what I'm saying to meanTesla is certain to enforce these conditions in some or all situations. Just that they may have a legal right to do so if they choose.