What grates for me with this stuff, sensor removal, etc, is that it’s all about how it benefits Tesla. Less sensors, lower cost to manufacture, bigger margins per car (like Tesla is hurting in that department with 34%+ margin per car).
When are customers ever going to be the ones that benefit from these sensors and other hardware being removed? You have people championing these decisions too, perhaps they have Stockholm Syndrome or - more cynically - they see TSLA investors first and foremost, gross margin per car going up is good news for them.
What makes it worse is that none of these replacement systems are released and imposed upon people when they’re ready. Customers are just expected to suck it up for however long it takes Tesla to approximate the functionality of systems that worked perfectly well already.
It’s all very well smart engineers and AI gurus suggesting that cameras doing everything is possible, but it’s not possible right now and customers actually have to drive these cars and live with their shortcomings. Those customers paid full price for them too, only to have functionality deleted down the line. Tesla have said they “aren’t planning to” remove USS from older cars, but how long is that likely to last?
Just once I’d like to see a development of the car that wasn’t all about reducing manufacturing costs at the customer’s expense.
