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Should I reject my current delivery (HW3) for HW4

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The issue is that the version of HW4 that is currently being delivered is functionally worse than what it replaced.
As an early owner of an AP 2.0 car, I can assure you this is standard practice.

My car was delivered in 2016 with ZERO autopilot features, not to mention other extremely basic functionality like automatic headlights, door locks, screen brightness dimming, auto wipers, auto high beams, or even basic cruise control.

Those features all trickled in over the next several months and YEARS. Some still don’t work anywhere near as well as the hardware that was replaced (e.g. auto wipers and high beams).

This is how it goes. Buying a HW4/USS-less car right now is making a conscious choice to sit in the penalty box for the next many months (maybe years) while Tesla stabs around in the dark trying to deliver features that they promised on day one. Vision-based parking and proximity, like vision-based wipers and high beams, is never, ever going to work as well as the dedicated sensors on HW3. It’s a trash idea to save Tesla money.

The “4 is one bigger than 3 so it’s obviously better” crowd is in for a long period of disappointment and frustration. The “this is fake 4 you need to wait for 4.5 because 9 cameras is better than 8” crowd is in the same boat just smoking a bit more ElonSausage.

Never again will I give Tesla another dollar based on promises of future capabilities. You’d be wise to do the same.
 
There's as much misinformation here, as other...but knock yourselves out. I'm not going to bother to hit each one...sorry. The intellectually lazy 'why wait there will always be something new' reply is nonsense as not all updates are created equal. I'm planning to wait for HW4 and the new sensor suite, it's proven it's not vaporware like some other garbage examples above, but that's just me. HW4 is in the wild, so are new higher res cameras. Just a matter of time before there are more or repositioned cameras, maybe HD radar, on all existing Tesla models.
They are talking about a refreshed model 3 and Y (the most popular selling models) coming out later this year. I am assuming they will have the HW4 and cameras. Otherwise I am looking at the Ioniq 6 which even the base model has more safety features than Tesla. As a matter of fact when I bought my M3 I had to pay $3000 for Autopilot (which they made free the next month). I checked what basic autopilot does. And it does the same thing my 23000 2017 Prius did.
 
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There's as much misinformation here, as other...but knock yourselves out. I'm not going to bother to hit each one...sorry. The intellectually lazy 'why wait there will always be something new' reply is nonsense as not all updates are created equal. I'm planning to wait for HW4 and the new sensor suite, it's proven it's not vaporware like some other garbage examples above, but that's just me. HW4 is in the wild, so are new higher res cameras. Just a matter of time before there are more or repositioned cameras, maybe HD radar, on all existing Tesla models.
I’m waiting for HW5, in the meantime I’m enjoying my 2021 July built Plaid, immensely.
 
The goal should be, choose the decision that will make you the most happy in the future.
Buying a new (or different), car has always been a complicated decision for most people. The world has changed so much and the rate of change is accelerating, making the decision tree more difficult every day. It is a fool's errand to try to predict the future, because whatever you predict, it will likely be wrong. It's a subtle difference, but a better strategy is to try to figure out what things will be like at various times in the future, by looking at history, and selecting future milestones that will indicate which way things are moving. I recommend reading, "The Art Of The Long View", by Peter Schwartz.

My personal decision to order a Tesla YLR came about because -
Fossil fuel is a limited and non renewable, (in a reasonable time period), resource.
Burning fossil fuel produces byproducts that are bad for everything living on this planet.
Fossil fuel is so much more valuable for other things, pharmaceuticals, plastics, etc., that burning it for energy is criminally stupid.
The world is rapidly moving to totally sustainable energy sources and ICE vehicles will mostly be worthless, possibly banned or at least limited.
In a few years most transportation will be using electric energy. Private vehicles will be all electric.

My ICE car was likely at it's peak value.
I was getting old enough that it won't be very long until I will be forced to give up my driver's license.
It appeared that while robo-taxi will probably be the most cost efficient way to get around, during the transition, having my own vehicle would be very desirable. In fact, when / if robo-taxi becomes real, I can enroll a Y and let it earn me money.
A car that was autonomous and fully electric was the best fit for me.
A.I. would be necessary for self driving and Tesla was so far ahead of others, it was the only real sensible choice.
Tesla's were the safest, most efficient, most reliable and generally best buy for the money.

A major factor in Tesla's success is their focus on continuous improvement.
Inflation will cause the prices to increase, while continuous improvement will cause them to decrease, so likely future prices probably were not a factor. However, FSD prices would almost certainly increase for a long time and probably enormously. Buying it then would be the total cost forever, because it stayed with the car, not the driver and FSD was very important to me.

Generally the improvements will make the car better, so waiting will result in getting a better car. But there's no end to that, I could wait forever. The real question is: is the current "version" satisfactory?
At the time Tesla had just switched to the Ryzan computer - a good thing.
The YLR was the best fit for me, but used 2170 batteries and the 4680 LFP batteries appeared to be better (long term) but not yet available.
My Y might come from Austin or Fremont. Fremont = more experience, Austin = newer methods and tools. Difficult choice, but did it really matter?
For me, the decision was Austin / Fremont didn't really matter and 2170's were entirely satisfactory.

The remaining decision was:
Buying the Tesla would be a good decision, but is a lot of money.
If I instead invested the same money in Tesla stock, in a few years it will likely be quite a few million dollars.
If I bought the Y and then went all in on Tesla stock with whatever investment is left, in a few years it will still quite likely be a few million dollars. The difference won't matter much to any heirs, they will still be happy I left them something and the difference in amount won't matter that much to them and not at all to me.

So I went for it!

Nearly a year ago and so far has been a good decision. For a while the FSD software was disappointing and progress seemed to be very slow, but it appears that I stepped in just as the "S" curve all projects have, went hyperbolic and now I am satisfied with both where it's at, and the rate of progress. The car has had no problems at all. Maintenance = washing and vacuuming occasionally and adding windshield washer fluid a few times. It will quite likely be the best car I have ever owned.
 
Problem with Tesla, you never know when or if they will follow through. Lots of unkept promises so far. Makes it very hard to make an informed decision other than to base it on what is currently shipping and enabled.
As an engineer myself, I am very used to conversations that go like: Hi. We have this terrible problem and have absolutely no idea what is wrong, can you solve the problem for us? Perhaps, I'll be glad to give it a try. Oh good, tell us exactly when you will be finished so we can tell the customer. . . . . . . . Which if you're not on the receiving end of it, is probably pretty funny.

As far as I can tell, Tesla has honored all the promises I know of. They have even been willing to stick their neck out and estimate how long it will take. Elon motivates the employees in as many ways as he can, including publicly guessing how long it will take them to solve a problem(s). He is certainly guilty of being too optimistic many, if not most of the time - but that pressure results in the solutions being found sooner and has driven Tesla to be far, far ahead of their competition and the rate that distance is growing is accelerating. It has become an incredible entity. If I wasn't so very old and retired, I would be doing everything I could to get hired, just because it would be such a challenging fun place to work.
 
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Let's take one item that is still annoying. Elon said that after x/x/xx date, all model S's have the horn button HW so that if you push on the air bag, it could potential actuate the horn. All it needed was a SW update and it would be done. Still waiting on the update...

FSD, isn't really FSD. That would be stretching the truth even more than some of our most despised politicians. Maybe, someday, it might be FSD, but not now. Let's take another one, you don't need no stinking radar, we'll take it out and give you the POS replacement, TelsaVision which we've spent not time to make it even a passable replacement for what you are losing. Maybe in the future it will be better. Oh wait, fast forward to HW4 and it looks like radar is back, or will be. There used to be a list around here of all the broken promises.

As for working for Tesla, maybe 5 years ago I'd be interested, but not now. They are so focused on cutting costs, not my bag. I in my former life, I was an aerospace engineer. I'd rather spend the money where possible to get it right and build unique things rather than focus totally on mass-market commodity type items.

Maybe call me cynical. I am 4 Teslas in and Elon is looking less like a genius to me. I never drank the Kool-Aid going in but had a higher opinion of Tesla several years ago than now. The yoke and stalk removal were/are a total cluster truck and introduced real safety concerns for me. No benefit to most end users but likely saved Tesla a few $$$ but drastically degraded my user experience. Almost guarantees that I'll be actively looking elsewhere outside of the Tesla ecosystem if something happens to the two I have.
 
Glad I cancelled my MYLR order waiting for HW4, just a matter of how quickly they become widely available now that several have been delivered to customers. Several videos on YT showing actual cars with HW4 and the new hi-res cameras. Looking forward to placing my order sooner than expected. Yay!

 
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Glad I cancelled my MYLR order waiting for HW4, just a matter of how quickly they become widely available now that several have been delivered to customers. Several videos on YT showing actual cars with HW4 and the new hi-res cameras. Looking forward to placing my order sooner than expected. Yay!

Depends on how long you keep your car. I'm glad I didn't wait, as by the time HW4 is even on parity with HW3 (which in some ways it likely never will be), I'll have a new car.
 
I mean I think waiting for HW4 right now is a good idea, because the alternative would be getting HW3 and no USS.

Would I trade my USS equipped HW3 MY with FSD Beta for a 2023 HW4 MY that will have basically no advanced functionality, and nearly non functional park assist? No.

I get that some might make the choice to go forward and that totally makes sense, but I see a lot of threads implying these things don't matter, and getting a crippled non-USS car, with "maybe some day it will matter" HW4 functionality, is a complete non-issue, with nothing lost compared to the 2022s. That is just ridiculous, sorry.

Maybe in 2 years it will work out great, but right now it's not a pretty picture.
 
Right out of the box, the 5MP HW4 cameras are much better than the old ones. There are plenty of YouTube videos out there that show the difference in image quality plus the reduction of the “yellow” sun glare (note this is for current S/X cars). Plus you’re getting the faster processing. And I’m saying this as someone who picked up my latest MYP just last week, before the news came out. Wait!
 
I am expected to get delivery of my 2023 Model S in 3 days. I just found out that the car I am getting has HW3 (with USS). I am confused whether to proceed with this or reject this and wait another couple of weeks to get another car with HW4. I am going to be taking enhanced autopilot not fsd.

can anyone please guide me as this would be my first Tesla so I don’t know too much about them?
The discussion is interesting to me. BUT - I don't know if you have the right to reject delivery because you don't like the hardware you'll be getting. Fit/Finish/Condition are the main criteria, I believe.