DirtyT3sla
Member
The original car purchaser never paid for FSD. If the original buyer still had the car, it would have been removed.
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Who owns the FSD?
- Thread starter grigory1
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- fsd full self driving
Tam
Well-Known Member
That contradicts what Tesla did in this case by first apologizing then making the customer whole.
Tesla owner says remotely disabled Autopilot features have been restored
Akikiki
A'-Lo-HA ! y'all
Or Tesla saw they could not win in public opinion and it was not worth it and just gave him the FSD.
Tam
Well-Known Member
That means the question of FDS ownership is still in the grey area.
Tesla definitely owns FSD and it can take it away as long as there are no bad public relations.
If there's bad news coverage, then Tesla would apologize as if it definitely doesn't own FSD!
FSD is an accessory to the car, like accessories on other cars.
M3BlueGeorgia
Active Member
IMHO: The only scenario where this might possibly be viable is if the car is wrecked so badly it can't be rebuilt. In that scenario, it could be worth Tesla's while to allow the FSD (or EAP) to be transferred to the new car which replaces the wrecked car. But even that would be tricky to implement (and therefore fraught with risk of errors creating bad PR)
Otherwise, when trading in or selling a used car with FSD (or EAP) the expected price of the car will be higher because of it.
M3BlueGeorgia
Active Member
My belief in this case is that Tesla viewed the new owner as acting in good faith and did a sensible PR-related action to make him whole.
Tam
Well-Known Member
If I bought a house that came with a refrigerator Viking 734254 listed.
Everything was fair and squared until somebody at a department store made an audit and found out that although the refrigerator was bought, there was never any payment made toward the cost of $15,462.00 before interest charge.
Since the payment was never been made by the previous owner, and the current owner didn't even know about it to pay for it, then logically, the new owner "has never paid for it".
The correct way for that department store is to notify the current homeowner of its intention to either get the payment paid or it would repossess the item.
If the payment failed, it just can't stealthily dispatch a ninja team to enter the house without detection and repossess that item while it knew that the homeowner was not at home which was similar to what Tesla did but with software instead of physical ninjas.
There's a proper way to get a legal repossession process with written documentation. In some cases, accompanied by the Sherriff.
I don't know about the law, but most likely, Tesla has to go through a court to get a ruling on repossession rights that's equivalent to dispatching jinja repossession team with no notifications.
The correct way for that department store was to put a lien on the house so that the house title won't be cleared until the $15,462.00 and interest charges are made.
So, even in a house auction, the new owner still needs a house title too. And to get the new title, the new owner will have to arrange how that $15,462.00 and interest charges will be made.
In summary, companies can do lots of things but they just need to write it down and they just need to be cleared by a legal process so everyone is clear.
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Knightshade
Well-Known Member
Not nearly as much as you seem to suggest...
The reason there was confusion here was ownership of the vehicle passed back to Tesla.
Who commonly (and perfectly legally) removes FSD when that happens.
The problem comes in with the fact they appear to remove it on the back end, and then just wait for the next set of software audits/updates to happen before it gets removed from the actual car
Which still wouldn't be a problem except they apparently send some of those cars to auction before the audit/update completes.
There remains no evidence the auctioned car was listed as including FSD...
The dealer just assumed it did because the car appears to have the relevant menu options....then the audit/update happened and it was removed... still while the dealer owned it... said dealer then noticed it was gone before he gave it to the new owner but assumed it was just a glitch, not the expected removal of the feature from Teslas original flagging of the car for removal.
As I say- the fix for this is for Tesla to immediately do the SW update as part of the process of taking back possession of any used vehicle if they intend to remove it.... thus removing any window during which FSD might "properly" have been removed on the back end but on the car itself during which it might get sold at auction to a dealer who likely has no idea how any of this works anyway.
Right NOW, until Tesla does that, you're left with the following:
Buying used from Tesla- you'll get whatever is on the MVPA. If it says FSD you get FSD. If not, you don't.
Buying used privately- If it's the original owner, ask to see the MVPA... if it says FSD, you get FSD. If not, you don't.
Buying used privately if it's second or third hand is trickier only because you might not be able to check if Tesla ever took ownership of the car after the original owner- if they did, they might have removed FSD during said ownership. Until they're quicker about taking it off the actual car when that happens you might end up like this guy. If you plan to do this, you'd want to be sure the seller puts, in writing, if it comes with FSD or not. This way if you do get caught by this you have legal basis to go back to the seller and get compensation if the seller is wrong.
Speaking of- the seller, as the current owner, can go to any Tesla dealer with the VIN and get a printout of what the car actually is supposed to have on it per the back-end systems- so they can cover themselves when selling.
Tam
Well-Known Member
There's no denying that if a car is under Tesla's ownership, it can do whatever it wants with it.
The grey area here is when the car is in the hand of a new owner, no longer under Tesla's ownership, no longer on Tesla's parking lot, the car title is missing Tesla as a lienholder, what's the right way for Tesla to demand an additional payment or the feature would be taken away?
Just like if a new homeowner got a new key for a house with a refrigerator that's not been paid, current law does not allow a store department to break down the door or even use a locksmith to seamlessly enter into the house to repossess that refrigerator.
Car repossession is different: The car owner signed off the contract that the repossession could happen any time when the payment is missed. But the law does not allow the car lender to do that to a new owner who bought that same car with a cleared title without any legal liens.
Even in a car possession, a lender is not allowed to break in someone's gates, garage... although an open driveway and public places are ok.
Thus, Tesla needs to put its name on the legal lien to prove that it still owns the car.
In this case, once the horse has left the barn, Tesla has decided to let the horse runs free without tying the horse down with a leash to the barn.
The grey zone here is: Tesla has not clarified that this is just one lucky horse or this will be applied for horses that have left the barn from now on!
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ACA Man
Member
This is exactly the reason why our first Tesla is also our last.
We just don’t like their unscrupulous way of doing business.
It's not unscrupulous; It's bendable.
The problem with Tesla is they don't have any competition.
Companies without competition historically walk all over their customers. It's only when they get competition that they suddenly realize that wasn't such a good idea.
I fully expect the future of FSD to be treated as Software. Why? Because you lock a customer into a Tesla because they spent so much on FSD that they're stuck.
So in that way Tesla wins.
The customer does win because they get better FSD hardware when they trade in their car. So if HW4 gets better sensors then someone trading in a HW3 car would benefit from that.
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Why would they do that for a wrecked car? Insurance should pay the fair market value of the car - as equipped. Individual will purchase another car. It isn’t Tesla’s job to make the individual whole - that’s the insurance company’s job.
I wonder how insurance regulation would handle this?
Tesla has their own insurance so it seems to me that they'd want to decrease the cost to make the individual whole. So I could see them simply transferring the SW license. It seems silly to throw away $7K. The $7K can't be used on the wrecked car. It's unlikely ever to approved for FSD even if someone did rebuilt it.
I know that this is different then how things used to be. But, cars are becoming more and more SW so I don't see why were continuing to do things the old way.
At this point, I believe it's a small number of Tesla's that are actually insured by Tesla. So I don't think it really matters.
But -
Tesla insurance would have to make the person "whole" (fair market value per the contract) regardless of what brand they replaced it with. So if they "transferred the license" it would have Tesla insurance showing a lower loss but Tesla auto showing a lower margin in case someone replaces a Tesla with a Tesla. Not sure that benefits either of them much.
And, they are still out the cash if the insured wants a different car.
It wouldn't be much different from Ford being willing to take a lower profit margin on a new car sale if they had their own insurance product.
NCAviator
Member
What is being discussed is the car industry entering the software industry. If you want to see how that industry has changed its selling and licensing of software over time just google. What Tesla is doing today with FSD and other software features is what it can do with the competition it has now. I remember how Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple, etc sold it's software. In the old days it was tied to a floppy disk that you had to insert from time to time. Then it was tied to ONE machine. Then you could use it on multiple computers. Then it was a subscription. Right now Tesla is in the lead. When there is competition; you can bet Tesla will make changes to entice you to buy. If they are smart; they will try to reward their early customers. Tesla is playing a game with FSD. Telling it's customers the price will go up. It might if their product stays superior. I can envision a day when they would give it away to get you to buy their car too. It is called competition. BMW tried to get their customers to pay for Apple Car Play. That failed. We are also seeing how the Government and Consumer reports are bashing auto companies for charging for safety features. They are pushing them to be Standard. Sounds good, just means the standard price of the cars goes up.
What you better do if you own FSD is keep good records of how/when and on what you bought it. Things are going to change.
What you better do if you own FSD is keep good records of how/when and on what you bought it. Things are going to change.
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