New button to enable FSD Beta download?

[rbbos88]

They could have started with the folks that made the early access tier of the referral program too.

I haven‘t ever received anything for my two referrals (lifetime free SC, so EAP was promised)...

 

[EVNow]

I’m of the opinion that the button will make an appearance sometime before the end of March for all people who have purchased FSD, in the US.

There is one thing that may propel download button to appear in March.

Q1 traditionally is a weak quarter for Tesla (and EV sales in general). Even though Tesla seems to have an endless supply of ready to recognize revenue stream from Fiat, they may still need some extra revenue recognition this quarter. I’ll be watching this download button very closely - for more than one reason.

 

[rxlawdude]

There is one thing that may propel download button to appear in March.

Q1 traditionally is a weak quarter for Tesla (and EV sales in general). Even though Tesla seems to have an endless supply of ready to recognize revenue stream from Fiat, they may still need some extra revenue recognition this quarter. I’ll be watching this download button very closely - for more than one reason.

Exactly! Pull another demand lever.

 

[GZDongles]

There is one thing that may propel download button to appear in March.

Q1 traditionally is a weak quarter for Tesla (and EV sales in general). Even though Tesla seems to have an endless supply of ready to recognize revenue stream from Fiat, they may still need some extra revenue recognition this quarter. I’ll be watching this download button very closely - for more than one reason.

How much deferred FSD revenue do they still have, and how much could be unlocked by allowing a download? Simplistically, I paid $7K for FSD with an early 2020 order. They promised 7 features, and one (autosteer on city streets) is missing. So my assumption would be that they can unlock $1K of deferred FSD revenue if I download the beta.

For those that orders FSD back in 2018 when they were still promising a Level 4 or 5 system, does anyone have any idea how much revenue they deferred?

I guess my sense is that the revenue impact is going to be small if it's only 1/7th of total FSD revenue that gets unlocked and it's only for those that go into the service menu to manually download the beta. Furthermore, that's obviously only going to affect top line revenue, but won't do anything to help Tesla generate cash in what's usually a down quarter. While normally I can be pretty cynical, using the beta to impact Q1 earnings doesn't really make any sense. In fact, the deferred FSD revenue is going to be more and more of a rounding error going forward. I'd expect that some of the 2018/2019 FSD buyers are going to get some amount refunded when FSD remains a level 2 system for the near to medium term.

 

[EVNow]

How much deferred FSD revenue do they still have, and how much could be unlocked by allowing a download? Simplistically, I paid $7K for FSD with an early 2020 order. They promised 7 features, and one (autosteer on city streets) is missing. So my assumption would be that they can unlock $1K of deferred FSD revenue if I download the beta.

I’ve to check that - i’ve not been modeling the P&L for a couple of quarters. It’s pure profit and could be about $100M. I’ll post in this thread tomorrow.

 

[dgatwood]

Me too! It’s unusual for me to “believe” Elon like this. It’s not exactly trust, but I hope it is not misplaced. It just seems like things have progressed to the point where an exceedingly weird rollout like this could occur.


That’s funny. What model year/type of car do you have?

2017 Model X. HW3 upgrade, still on MCU1.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

2017 Model X. HW3 upgrade, still on MCU1.

Too old; time to upgrade. There's no reasonable way to implement a button on such a dinosaur.

 

[Magnetic]

Model 3 2018 LR, AWD, FSD, 2020.4.11

Reality Check: You get to be Tesla Picking the Beta’s...

What could possibly go wrong….
Tesla Unintended Acceleration Class Action Lawsuit Filed

Take a look at the headlines over the past few years. There will be plenty of users stating the beta did it, drove into intersection causing accident. Pull the logs and take a look, hmmm, somebody stepped on the accelerator at the intersection. Apparently they felt it was safe to go and thought Beta was taking too long. Opps. The headlines: “Tesla FSD Beta causes accidents, X fatalities etc etc.

So choose wisely on your Beta picks, otherwise be prepared to spend a lot of time and resources tied up in lawsuits. Not to mention how to control for who is actually driving the car once you release it. Folks do have teenagers/twenty somethings and we’ve seen their videos with Autopilot/FSD, and lawsuits.

Even with Elon’s statement on “Down Load Button” and 8.3, does not mean we will be getting it in a large roll out. We saw what happen with “increasing to 10k users” (2k) not to mention the Early FSD buyers with the Early Access program.

It will be wonderful when we do get it, especially if phantom braking disappears. Like everyone else I am eagerly awaiting it, especially considering some cross country trips coming up.

 

[FloridaJohn]

It will be wonderful when we do get it, especially if phantom braking disappears. Like everyone else I am eagerly awaiting it, especially considering some cross country trips coming up.

Keep in mind that the FSD Beta is only for city driving. No changes have been made to the current AP and NoAP codebase, so it is unlikely getting access to the FSD Beta will improve any sort of cross country trip (assuming you will be mainly driving on highways during the trip).

The assumption is that eventually the code used in the city streets Beta will be rolled into the existing software, but there is no timeline for that and one can reasonably assume that will happen after city streets is working much better than it is today.

 

[Microterf]

Keep in mind that the FSD Beta is only for city driving. No changes have been made to the current AP and NoAP codebase, so it is unlikely getting access to the FSD Beta will improve any sort of cross country trip (assuming you will be mainly driving on highways during the trip).

The assumption is that eventually the code used in the city streets Beta will be rolled into the existing software, but there is no timeline for that and one can reasonably assume that will happen after city streets is working much better than it is today.

I remember seeing a video of an fsd beta csr avoiding a plastic bag on the freeway. Not sure if it was on an on ramp or something, but it'd be great if at least that stuff already in NoA when we get FSD BETA

 

[Mardak]

How much deferred FSD revenue do they still have, and how much could be unlocked by allowing a download? Simplistically, I paid $7K for FSD with an early 2020 order. They promised 7 features, and one (autosteer on city streets) is missing. So my assumption would be that they can unlock $1K of deferred FSD revenue if I download the beta.

There's most likely some weighting of feature value as Zachary Kirkhorn mentioned in Q1 2020 earnings call where he answered there's $600 million deferred with roughly half of the $7k price when it was missing 2 of the 7 listed features back then. Additionally in Q2 2020 earnings call opening remarks, he announced that the Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control feature (I believe US-only then?) resulted in recognizing $48 million of deferred revenue, which is roughly 10% of the deferred revenue with some quarterly growth of additional FSD purchases. It seems likely that the majority of deferred FSD revenue is from USA purchases as Autopilot works better and is closer to being feature complete even though there's "only" one (heavily-weighted) feature left to recognize the revenue.

It's quite possible for a limited 10k rollout for city streets to be close to the $48 million revenue of the country-wide rollout for stop control.

 

[EVNow]

How much deferred FSD revenue do they still have, and how much could be unlocked by allowing a download? Simplistically, I paid $7K for FSD with an early 2020 order. They promised 7 features, and one (autosteer on city streets) is missing. So my assumption would be that they can unlock $1K of deferred FSD revenue if I download the beta.

Here is the 10-K for 2020 -> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000156459021004599/tsla-10k_20201231.htm

Total "Deferred revenue on automotive sales with and without resale value guarantee— end of period" is 1.9B. It was 1.5B at the end of 2019. This part includes "Deferred revenue activity related to the access to our Supercharger network, internet connectivity, FSD features and over-the-air software updates".

Revenue recognized during 2020 was a total of $326M. There was nothing on the scale of City NOA that was released during 2020. I'd say when they release City NOA worldwide - they would recognize $1B. How much they can recognize by providing that download button to US cars - is anybody's guess - but is substantial. So, revenue recognition for City NOA can be quite a bit more than $100M I threw out earlier.

 

[GZDongles]

There's most likely some weighting of feature value as Zachary Kirkhorn mentioned in Q1 2020 earnings call where he answered there's $600 million deferred with roughly half of the $7k price when it was missing 2 of the 7 listed features back then. Additionally in Q2 2020 earnings call opening remarks, he announced that the Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control feature (I believe US-only then?) resulted in recognizing $48 million of deferred revenue, which is roughly 10% of the deferred revenue with some quarterly growth of additional FSD purchases. It seems likely that the majority of deferred FSD revenue is from USA purchases as Autopilot works better and is closer to being feature complete even though there's "only" one (heavily-weighted) feature left to recognize the revenue.

It's quite possible for a limited 10k rollout for city streets to be close to the $48 million revenue of the country-wide rollout for stop control.

Thanks for the well-researched answer!

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Revenue recognized during 2020 was a total of $326M. There was nothing on the scale of City NOA that was released during 2020. I'd say when they release City NOA worldwide - they would recognize $1B. How much they can recognize by providing that download button to US cars - is anybody's guess - but is substantial. So, revenue recognition for City NOA can be quite a bit more than $100M I threw out earlier.

If it's still a limited release beta, I wouldn't think that would count as an official release and they wouldn't be able to recognize any of it. I could be totally wrong though. I guess we'll find out at the next quarterly meeting.

 

[EVNow]

Apparently they felt it was safe to go and thought Beta was taking too long. Opps. The headlines: “Tesla FSD Beta causes accidents, X fatalities etc etc.

As people (and lawyers) start understanding you can't easily get money out of Tesla since they have logs of everything - frivolous lawsuits will not be a deterrent to new feature releases.

 

[EVNow]

If it's still a limited release beta, I wouldn't think that would count as an official release and they wouldn't be able to recognize any of it. I could be totally wrong though. I guess we'll find out at the next quarterly meeting.

Even the stop sign etc are "limited release beta".

ps : Here is a better place to discuss this in detail. Near-future quarterly financial projections

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Even the stop sign etc are "limited release beta".

ps : Here is a better place to discuss this in detail. Near-future quarterly financial projections

Everyone who purchased FSD got stop sign recognition. It's still beta but not limited release beta only available to a select few. If they are going to be able to recognize FSD income for some buyers then I think they'd have to release that functionality to all FSD buyers.

 

[EVNow]

Everyone who purchased FSD got stop sign recognition. It's still beta but not limited release beta only available to a select few. If they are going to be able to recognize FSD income for some buyers then I think they'd have to release that functionality to all FSD buyers.

Only partially true. Stop sign etc are not available worldwide.

As long as the functionality is available to a large number of users, Tesla will recognize some revenue. Practically it means General Availability to US model 3 fleet at a minimum. That GA can be just a download button. People don't have to download the software - it just needs to be made available for download. Ofcourse, Tesla will continue to call this Beta for a long time.

 

[Snuffysasa]

Keep in mind that the FSD Beta is only for city driving.

Not true.

Perception, Prediction, Object and Lane fusion, etc, etc are all improved in the FSD beta for highways

 

[Snuffysasa]

Only partially true. Stop sign etc are not available worldwide.

As long as the functionality is available to a large number of users, Tesla will recognize some revenue. Practically it means General Availability to US model 3 fleet at a minimum. That GA can be just a download button. People don't have to download the software - it just needs to be made available for download. Ofcourse, Tesla will continue to call this Beta for a long time.

Exactly, and to add to that they may make the button available... and only actually trigger the download and install to ~10k or so in March... and gradually add people over Q2... but I can see them considering this enough to recognize more revenue