A forced upgrade to the majority of the fleet, is a service nightmare, even when it can be done by mobile service. Customers will not be happy waiting 3 months for a service appointment, The HW4 upgrades to HW3 cars complete with new builds for HW4 chips. The old HW3 chips are E-waste.
I don't know why people think this is a good idea, or why you think it is necessary.
It is a service nightmare. It would not be practical to do as a normal course of service business. I have a vision as to how this would be done but it is not for this thread.
I agree that HW 3 would be nice to keep but HW 4 with upgraded/different cameras has been discussed for CT.
The build/design of HW 4 has to be influenced by Optimus.
My thinking is that the real experience earned from bringing Dojo into reality will carry on to the revised design of FSD 4 running the full stack capable of 99.999…. % of edge cases. Once FSD 4 is at the pencil down stage, the question becomes how to implement it to the greatest benefit. This place is close IMO.
I think the careful business thinker would soon realize that the greater the addressable market for a subscription SW service, the greater the first mover advantage for that service.
The HW (chip/board/maybe camera) cost of FSD fleet upgrade would be dwarfed by the high margin subscription income of a vastly expanded addressable market years earlier (plus the first mover lock-in).
On top of this is Optimus cost benefit from millions larger chip orders and the service alternative (not discussed here) required for humanoid robots.
There is no new factory work planned for 2022 or 2023 until a site is chosen. I view this window of time as a resource to be used for CT ramp and transition to FSD 4/Optimus. Starship development is in here too.
It makes little sense to order 2 million FSD 4 HW packages (new vehicle builds) when for a modest amount more the order can be 4+ million packages and the otherwise stranded base of FSD 3 vehicles can be added to the SWAAS subscription addressable market.
In a sense it is a similar logic that is followed by the cellular service companies offering free phone upgrades.
FSD 4 HW should not be gating the success of FSD generally IMO.
