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Tesla doesn’t want you to know what it promised in 2016

Posted on by darion

Until recently, Elon Musk was thought to be the only important person at Tesla who had a habit of overpromising and underdelivering. His outspoken personality and flamboyant appearance sometimes helped the CEO become an international sensation. Those who reported to him were supposed to be responsible professionals who understood the risks of overdoing it. Unfortunately, Tesla’s culture seems to be based on deceiving customers into believing they own future computers on wheels.

We have been saying for some time that Tesla Completely autonomous promises are often unrealistic or sound too good to be true. But we also understood early on that Elon Musk has a unique way of talking to customers, employees, and business partners about Tesla’s ventures into future areas, such as Waymo’s self-driving cars or robot taxis.

But now Tesla is taking active steps to hide its promise to give almost all of its customers access to software and hardware (basically a computer) that can turn their battery-powered vehicles into autonomous vehicles.

The world’s most valuable carmaker has retracted a major official blog post titled: “All Tesla cars currently produced have fully autonomous hardware.” The page is still cached by most major search engines. However, when you click on it, you’ll be taken directly to the blog’s home page. In fact, all articles published before January 18, 2019 have been hidden or removed.

Fortunately, initiatives like the Wayback Machine archive fragments of the Internet so that we can watch them and make sure that a wise Pole survives the damage.

This "Lost" Blog post

Photo: Wayback Machine

Lessons from history

Here’s what Tesla said eight years ago: “We’re excited to announce that starting today, all Tesla vehicles produced at our factory – including the Model 3 – will be equipped with the hardware necessary for full autonomous driving at a level of safety that significantly exceeds that of a human driver.”

The same blog post reminded existing and potential customers and investors that 12 ultrasonic sensors (USS) complement the eight-camera array. These sensors were removed from the Model 3 and Model Y in 2021 and from the Model S and Model X in 2022.

Customers who had USS in their EVs found that the part became unusable after a few over-the-air updates. They had to deal with the new system only with a camera, even in situations where USS could be useful. It took Tesla months to come up with a usable visualization for the parking assistant, for example. Oddly, it also refused to add a camera in the front bumper to EVs without USS. Fortunately, the Cybertruck has it.

But 2016 was a wild year for Tesla and its dream of selling self-driving cars. While it’s amazing that a car company has been trying for years to find customers willing to replace them with a computer at some point, FSD This year’s description of the possibilities is even more intriguing.

Elon Musk reveals first details about Hardware 5 Autopilot computer

Photo: Tesla

Tesla informed FSD buyers that their car would be able to go autonomously wherever the driver chose to go. “If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as its presumed destination, or just home if there’s nothing on the calendar.”

The same FSD description promised those willing to spend $3,000 that their electric vehicles would be “think of an optimal route” and navigate city streets without lane markings or handles “densely congested highways with cars traveling at high speeds.”

In fairness, the same page warned potential FSD buyers that these features would only work after “comprehensive software validation” and government approval.

Full of hope and good mood

However, Tesla was deeply confident that robotaxis would soon be on the roads as it warned its customers against using FSD to generate revenue.

As of this writing, the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) version of the system cannot take customers (who have paid up to $15,000 for the software package) on fully autonomous rides like those offered by Google’s Waymo in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, and parts of Phoenix.

But Tesla’s biggest “commitment” when it comes to FSD promises is its CEO himself. In 2017, he suggested that Tesla would need about two years to let owners take a nap during their commutes. At the time, the brand also planned to show the world the Tesla Electric vehicle going from coast to coast. It hasn’t happened yet.

The 10 most important questions Elon Musk will have to face during his Q4 2021 earnings conference call

Photo: Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk was an avid Twitter user even before he bought the social media platform and turned it into X. In 2019, he said that all Texas-based automakers “Cars manufactured since October 2016 either have the hardware needed for FSD or can be easily upgraded.”

Since 2020, the eccentric Elon Musk has been adamant about the success of Full Self-Driving. He has repeatedly declared that solving the autonomy problem will be the difference between Tesla’s trillion dollar value and nothing.

But Elon Musk isn’t the only one who has confirmed or promised all sorts of crazy self-driving capabilities. Ashok Elluswamy, a robotics engineer who is Tesla’s director of Autopilot, said in 2022 that “every Tesla that has been built in the last few years has hardware that makes the car drive itself.” Just a year later, the automaker began producing cars with Hardware 4, an improved version of the computer that would turn all Teslas into reliable robot taxis at the push of a button (or several).

The debate over whether Hardware 3 vehicles are still eligible for full FSD upgrades began when Elon Musk publicly admitted that it had become more difficult for his company’s engineers to deliver Hardware 4 upgrades to Hardware 3-equipped electric vehicles.

HW4 vs HW3 comparison

Photo: @greentheonly via Twitter

On August 21, 2024, Tesla introduced a renewed version of FSD (12.5.1.4) to its fleet of electric vehicles with Hardware 3 hardware, but the same Ashok Elluswamy admitted that it was necessary to adapt the update to older cars. “We managed to achieve similar performance as AI4 12.5 using a relatively smaller model for AI3 (i.e. Hardware 3)” explained the expert.

Owners of Tesla cars equipped with the Hardware 3 system are now wondering if they will be left behind as FSD slowly but surely evolves into a system that learns from humans and processes that information to (at some point in the future) make all the right decisions when driving on public roads.

The future of mobility is clearly not for everyone

The saga about the promise that every Tesla car produced since October 19, 2016, would at some point be capable of becoming autonomous without the need for additional hardware upgrades began after a devoted fan of the company wrote on the website formerly known as Twitter that “Neither Tesla nor Elon Musk ever “promised” give paying customers an EV capable of running SAE J3016 Level 5-capable Full Self-Driving software. They were essentially referring to the highest level of automation possible. An SAE Level 5-capable car doesn’t require the driver to pay attention to anything, not even the steering wheel.

Finally, if you now think I am somehow against Elon Musk or Tesla for whatever reason you imagine, I would like you to examine my reasoning as to why the Tesla CEO had every right to his paycheck. Remember, this article was published when many people were actively saying that he should not be receiving such a large amount of money in the form of stock options.

Public companies and large global corporations like Tesla need to be held accountable more often, or we risk going “downstream” and waking up to another 2008-like scenario, this time limited to the automotive world.

The ultimate question is: Should Tesla reimburse FSD costs to owners of Hardware 3-equipped vehicles? Hardware 5 (or AI 5, as Elon Musk calls it) is just around the corner.


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