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People are grossly underestimating the time and difficulty of retrofitting hardware into a Tesla. Sure, WK057 managed to do so for 9k in hardware plus dozens of hour of labor, but he's a pretty remarkable guy who clearly has a lot of expertise with this stuff. Tesla would have to charge significantly more to make it worth their while. There is a lot more hardware, plus a completely new GPU that might need all new cooling hardware. The panels the cameras are in would likely need to be completely replaced. So already there would be significant cost for just hardware, new panels and possibly framing for the car, plus labor, plus the margin Tesla would have to add in because only a fool would think Tesla would do this for cost since that would be a big loss for Tesla. The cost would have to be something pretty outrageous, and actual purchase of a retrofit option would likely be very low. Then there's all the work Tesla would have to do to come up with a retrofit process plus training at least one service tech at multiple SC locations to be able to do it. Not to mention burdening already over burdened SC locations even more, since the locations that will have the most demand for retrofits will not coincidentally be the most Tesla saturated locations already with the busiest SCs. And probably most significant would be the opportunity cost of providing resources - that would be better served going to Model 3 production or for SC expansion or Supercharger expansion, or Giga Factory development, or AP development, or Nav system refinement, etc - to supply a likely tiny segment of customers who would actually purchase the retrofit.
Theres no gain for Tesla to do all that work, and really no gain for the customers who want a retrofit either, because like Elon said, a retrofit would be so ridiculously expensive you'd be better off selling your old car to get a new one. Maybe some people who recently took delivery get pissed, maybe they even try to put together a class action to sue before they get subsequently laughed out of court, and then swear to never buy a Tesla again, but the reality is only a small portion of Tesla's market base would be affected, and the vast majority will either not care or just grumble about it for a while and then let it go because they still have the exact car they paid for, and by all reports it's a great ****ing car.
Theres no gain for Tesla to do all that work, and really no gain for the customers who want a retrofit either, because like Elon said, a retrofit would be so ridiculously expensive you'd be better off selling your old car to get a new one. Maybe some people who recently took delivery get pissed, maybe they even try to put together a class action to sue before they get subsequently laughed out of court, and then swear to never buy a Tesla again, but the reality is only a small portion of Tesla's market base would be affected, and the vast majority will either not care or just grumble about it for a while and then let it go because they still have the exact car they paid for, and by all reports it's a great ****ing car.
Tesla also has expertise with their own cars and remarkable engineers, don't you think? On top of that, they have the full specs and don't need to reverse engineer stuff. If anything, they would be able to do it quicker and cheaper than a guy on their own, however resourceful that guy is. Even if you accept that they need a gross margin of 100% to make it worth their while, it's less than 20k versus nearly 100k for a new car ass said by Elon in his Tweet. Elon is giving a political answer but the reality is that Tesla offers not retrofits because new hardware capabilities are a major demand lever for them.
You're asserting this as fact it seems. Do you have a source link for the information?
Sadly, as with most major updates, there's little chance of retrofitting an older car at any cost that is remotely reasonable. Tesla struggles to keep up with service as it is. They sure as heck don't have the time to add a bunch of retrofits to their workload. As Musk said, it would be cheaper to just take the loss on the "old" 2 month old car and get a new one than it would be to try and retrofit. That's what Musk was banking on. They need cash flow to ramp up Model 3 production. Rather than get loans or sell more stock, he just choose to take advantage of all the Tesla owners who have already purchased 2, 3, 4 or more Model S cars already. Hence, the only reason they released the P100D separate from the Autopilot 2.0. Wham bamm, thank you maam.
Someone mentioned that AP 1.0 was promised to be capable of stopping for signals and stop lights....sorry folks, that promise just went out the window. Just like the P85D was supposed to get faster with software updates, it never did. Instead, they came up with Ludicrous mode and said, "nevermind, you can pay an additional $10,000 to get the speed we promised". Same thing here. Other than safety and fine tuning improvements, I would bet that 8.0 is the last time we'll see any new capabilities added to AP 1.0. You've got what you've got. Live with it, or take your $40 to $50K bath on your current car and trade it in.
Someone mentioned that AP 1.0 was promised to be capable of stopping for signals and stop lights....sorry folks, that promise just went out the window. Just like the P85D was supposed to get faster with software updates, it never did. Instead, they came up with Ludicrous mode and said, "nevermind, you can pay an additional $10,000 to get the speed we promised". Same thing here. Other than safety and fine tuning improvements, I would bet that 8.0 is the last time we'll see any new capabilities added to AP 1.0. You've got what you've got. Live with it, or take your $40 to $50K bath on your current car and trade it in.
Mine is 3 months old, so I can very much relate to how you feel. I did read the forums quite a bit before ordering and did not see this one coming, at least not at this speed.
One of my concerns is - will the introduction of this new hardware significantly negatively impact the resale / trade in value of my current car? With such significant improvements in AP, there may not be that much interest in AP 1.0 which may reduce demand and therefore impact resale price.
I believe you are correct. There is no incentive for Tesla to add features to AP 1.0, unless it somehow helps them to improve AP 2.0. In fact, I believe that the main reason for the changes in 8.0 is so that Tesla can collect the data they need to get AP 2.0 to work. I haven't upgraded from 7.1 to 8.0 yet as it seems like a step backwards. Based on this announcement, I am worried that they may never really get 8.0 right for the "old" cars as they will be too busy with the new ones.
I don't think you could reasonably come to an estimate of $20k for an AP 2.0 retrofit based on what wk057 did. His own article said that Tesla could never offer something like what he did because it would cost too much.
Yes, Tesla of course has expertise with their cars and remarkable engineers. Those remarkable engineers won't be at every service center, they will be at Tesla's main facilities, working on improving the actual design of the car and future iterations of the car's systems and future Car models like the 3, Y, the Tesla pickup, and the Tesla semi. Tesla won't be assigning those engineers to do the actual reftrofits of the cars because that would be a huge waste of monumental proportions. The actual retrofitting process would have to be designed and then taught to service techs and workers at the service centers, most of whom probably won't be nearly as talented or knowledgeable as wk057. Your estimate of a mere 20k dollar upgrade is most likely ridiculous and completely ignoring labor costs plus the costs of actually designing a retrofit process, plus the costs of having to divert any replacement parts that would be needed from being put into new cars or repairs. And then there's the question of how much Tesla vehicles have been changed. Elon has said they implement dozens of changes each month manufacturing the cars, presumably to either improve the cars or refine the process; depending on what those changes are (maybe wires and wiring harnesses are routed differently through the car to ease manufacturing or reduce wear, for example) Tesla might have to adjust the retrofit process to fit different cars, which would add complexity, and thus time and money and resources.
Tesla has no motivation to do it. The market would be small, and as I said before, most will get over it.
Did you even read the post from wk057? Seriously, the amount of work he did, not including just planning everything out, was INSANE.
Here's a quote from that post you linked to you might have missed (some parts in bold for emphasis):
"Again, don’t expect to go into Tesla and start demanding they retrofit autopilot. It’s not going to happen. It’s way too much work, and way too involved. Also, if Tesla were to do it they would be replacing basically every wiring harness/fuse box in the car vs. making some modifications like I did, which would be even more work and extremely expensive. I did this as a sort of proof-of-concept, and because I wanted my wife to have autopilot but didn’t want to trade her car in. It shows that it can in fact be done with substantial effort."
Sorry if it wasn't clear. I was talking about APv1 retrofit which was said also to be unfeasibly expensive. I didn't mean it to apply straight to APv2.
Not only that, but Wk057 was modding parts, wiring harnesses, bumpers, getting salvage parts. Tesla would charge you full retail. They won't mod anything like drill a new sensor hole in the bumper. If the new ultrasonics have a slightly different mounting mechanism or anything different, you'll need new bumpers, new everything.
Software upgrade $5K+
new bumpers (potentially)
new sensors
new cameras
new B-pillar glass
new windshield
new PX2 GPU (expensive!)
new piping for liquid cooling on Px2
new GPS
new Radar?
new wiring harnesses to basically everywhere
new fuse-box?
new mounting hardware to retrofit, which doesn't exist and would need created to ensure 100% alignment in the field.
body work:
install new windshield
repaint / blend new bumpers
Figure 2 weeks, min. 60 hours of labor including paint prep, and paint, cost of loaner vehicle
Figure min $10K on labor, 20K on parts, 5K on software, plus this adds new liability, warranty, and other opportunity costs of overloading both service centers and body shops. In order for Tesla to make this worthwhile, they'd want $15K profit. So $50K to upgrade to AP2, how does that sound?
HumanGenome
Member
So you think a "no OEM responsibility" garage retrofit of a single car is the same as a supported by the company, done at scale retrofit? Also, you think an AP1 retrofit is the same as an AP2 retrofit? That's a lot of leaps in logic.
"Other than <the things you one might rationally expect them to improve with only software>"... Well, yah.
Was anyone on TMC expecting new features for AP1.0? Speaking for myself, safety and finetuning of existing features is all I expected going forward as of roughly a year ago.
mblakele
FSD Beta (99)
Agreed, and I'll be happy if we don't lose existing features. I worry that a regulatory authority might offer Tesla a deal: "We'll approve hands-off driving for AP2 if and only if you sunset certain AP1 features which we see as risky, specifically AutoSteer." Tesla might take that deal, especially once AP2 cars outnumber older models. I hope nothing like that happens before I'm ready to upgrade.
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