Where is Full Self Driving Beta?

[DerbyDave]

"By the end of the year (2020)", "Soon", "Expanding Beta program with option to opt-in from UI" -- Well, the first quarter of 2021 is over, and Tesla has been relatively silent on FSD Beta availability, except for some Musk tweets that didn't materialize. They must be having problems not to be able to release the upgrade in Beta. There should be an option for those of us who paid up to $10,000 for FSD to get a prorated refund of the purchase price if the option isn't available during our ownership of the car. If I purchased the product last year and sold the car today, I should have the option to get a 100% refund to remove FSD from the car once sold. Once FSD is released as not Beta, the proration should start to reduce the amount of my refund when the car is sold, traded, or totalled. If the FSD goes with the car, the investment and potential refund will transfer to the next party. I am just concerned that if I trade my car in 4 years, and I only get 1 or 2 years of FSD, my "$10,000" purchase price will be prorated and refunded to only include the period when I am able to actually use the product.

In the meantime, I should be able to use the Beta FSD with appropriate legal disclaimers if I ask to receive it and have paid my money. Thank you. -- Rant off....

 

[TLLMRRJ]

It's a well established and publicized trend that Tesla is not good meeting their own timelines, so you haven't stumbled onto something new.

With regards to FSD, I read someone comparing FSD to Theranos, and after doing some research on Therasos, I think they could be right.

 

[ucmndd]

lol, they don't owe you balls. You knew what you signed up for.

Prorated refund? 100% refund? Hah, keep dreaming...

 

[2101Guy]

its like Paul Masson wine. It will not be released, before its time.

 

[Mark2018s]

"By the end of the year (2020)", "Soon", "Expanding Beta program with option to opt-in from UI" -- Well, the first quarter of 2021 is over, and Tesla has been relatively silent on FSD Beta availability, except for some Musk tweets that didn't materialize. They must be having problems not to be able to release the upgrade in Beta. There should be an option for those of us who paid up to $10,000 for FSD to get a prorated refund of the purchase price if the option isn't available during our ownership of the car. If I purchased the product last year and sold the car today, I should have the option to get a 100% refund to remove FSD from the car once sold. Once FSD is released as not Beta, the proration should start to reduce the amount of my refund when the car is sold, traded, or totalled. If the FSD goes with the car, the investment and potential refund will transfer to the next party. I am just concerned that if I trade my car in 4 years, and I only get 1 or 2 years of FSD, my "$10,000" purchase price will be prorated and refunded to only include the period when I am able to actually use the product.

In the meantime, I should be able to use the Beta FSD with appropriate legal disclaimers if I ask to receive it and have paid my money. Thank you. -- Rant off....

I agree....we paid for it, we should have the option to use latest version!! We know its not foolproof.

 

[Darmie]

It's a well established and publicized trend that Tesla is not good meeting their own timelines, so you haven't stumbled onto something new.

With regards to FSD, I read someone comparing FSD to Theranos, and after doing some research on Therasos, I think they could be right.

Haha, Yes, Tesla's time line is a bit off from the rest of the world's time zones. The longer we wait, the better the product will be. I don't spend a lot of time watching the FSD beta YT vids, but it does appear to be getting better.

 

[Tam]

lol, they don't owe you balls. You knew what you signed up for.

Prorated refund? 100% refund? Hah, keep dreaming...

I don't know about the refunds but Tesla certainly owes us a "beta" program because, since 2016, many of us already knew that a final production quality FSD will not be released first but we do expect to get the "beta" program while waiting.

The expectation is not unreasonable because Elon Musk tweeted that so many of us wanted it, so he will give us a "download" button.

Again, the request for a beta program is not unreasonable and Elon Musk was willing to accommodate that.

But that's just that! Whether we can get it or not is another matter!

 

[TLLMRRJ]

Haha, Yes, Tesla's time line is a bit off from the rest of the world's time zones. The longer we wait, the better the product will be. I don't spend a lot of time watching the FSD beta YT vids, but it does appear to be getting better.

I've watched some of the videos. It's honestly a little disheartening for me. If you were going to make the Theranos comparison, their product was supposed to be able to do over 200 blood tests in one go, but they only got to about 20 or 30, and iffy results at that.

I'd say FSD is about at that point too.

It takes all it has to just stay on the right part of the road, but when it comes to making left and right turns that aren't protected, make sure your life insurance and will and up to date.

 

[Big Toys]

Sounds like you funded the R&D for a "better...tomorrow" (radio voice).

 

[boonedocks]

"By the end of the year (2020)", "Soon", "Expanding Beta program with option to opt-in from UI" -- Well, the first quarter of 2021 is over, and Tesla has been relatively silent on FSD Beta availability, except for some Musk tweets that didn't materialize. They must be having problems not to be able to release the upgrade in Beta. There should be an option for those of us who paid up to $10,000 for FSD to get a prorated refund of the purchase price if the option isn't available during our ownership of the car. If I purchased the product last year and sold the car today, I should have the option to get a 100% refund to remove FSD from the car once sold. Once FSD is released as not Beta, the proration should start to reduce the amount of my refund when the car is sold, traded, or totalled. If the FSD goes with the car, the investment and potential refund will transfer to the next party. I am just concerned that if I trade my car in 4 years, and I only get 1 or 2 years of FSD, my "$10,000" purchase price will be prorated and refunded to only include the period when I am able to actually use the product.

In the meantime, I should be able to use the Beta FSD with appropriate legal disclaimers if I ask to receive it and have paid my money. Thank you. -- Rant off....

You might want to look here too:

After what time has passed would you consider an FSD class action lawsuit?

And what type of reimbursement would you expect? By FSD, I mean full hands off autonomy & sleeping in your car. Not beta.

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[bob_p]

Since purchasing our first Tesla (2012 S P85), we've seen Tesla consistently miss Musk's predictions of when new software features/releases would be introduced. Some of the features he promised in 2012, 2013, ... - still haven't been released - and may never be released. And when the features were released - Tesla is pretty consistent in taking much longer than Musk predicts.

Musk runs pre-beta software in his vehicles - and when it seems to be working from him, he appears to assume the software is close to release and will be distributed soon. But he's only using a small percentage of the software - on a very limited number of vehicles that the software must support - so getting the software fully functional and working well on the full fleet of vehicles always takes much longer than Musk believes or wants.

Plus, it seems he sometimes makes public comments on the releases to continue applying pressure to the Tesla software development teams - trying to get them to move faster (a strategy that has a decreasing effect as he continues to use this strategy).

So anytime Musk gives a date on software - expect it could take 2-10 times as long before the software actually gets released.

As for providing increased access to beta software - this is a sore spot for many of us with software project management backgrounds. Since Tesla continues to release software that has obvious bugs or design flaws (such as the tiny dashboard fonts in the recent release), it's obvious that Tesla is not doing enough testing to catch these flaws - and should expand their testing pool to get a larger number of users on a broader number of vehicle configurations to test the software before it is released.

Musk has stated several times that Tesla would expand to have a "public beta" or that FSD customers would get "early access" - and hasn't really followed through on that. And with FSD and the increased complexity of the software and the huge number of unusual cases the software should handle, Tesla should benefit by getting more customers to be using it (much more so than relying only on "shadow" mode to compare operation to what the human driver is doing).

One major feature that Tesla should implement is the ability to "roll back" software to a previous release. This is something other companies have figured out how to do (such as Microsoft's Windows operating system) - with much more complicated software - and if Tesla implemented that feature, it would make it much easier for them to expand the beta testing pool, and give customers to "back out" a bad release.

While this feature would be difficult to implement to allow a roll back to any arbitrary release, it would be pretty easy for Tesla to automatically test each new release with a rollback to the previously available official release.

As a customer who purchased FSD when our 2017 S and 2018 X were purchased, it continues to be frustrating that we have yet to see much value in those purchases - and share frustration from other customers in seeing the YouTube videos on software features Musk claimed we would have seen by now.

But, we've become accustomed to Musk's excessive optimism and while he claimed we would see the FSD beta by now - we're not surprised Musk missed yet another predicted software release date - and have a more realistic expectation that we could see it any time in the next few weeks or months.

As for getting a full or partial refund on FSD - that is something Tesla should either provide voluntarily or will likely be forced to do through litigation. We plan to keep our 2017 for around 8 years - and we're now halfway through that ownership, and still haven't see Full Self Driving. And if it still isn't there by the time we sell or trade-in the vehicle, Tesla should provide a pro-rated refund based on the % of their FSD goal met at the time of our sale (pro-rated not based on time, but on the amount of FSD functionality actually delivered - which is also what they are likely doing when claiming those funds - since they can't claim revenue on FSD until they actually deliver those features).