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Tesla is heading into multi-billion-dollar iceberg of its own making

https://electrek.co/2025/10/20/tesla-heading-into-multi-billion-dollar-iceberg-of-own-making/
191•ndsipa_pomu•2h ago

Comments

Someone•2h ago
FRA: “As for HW3 owners who bought FSD, which basically turned out to be an interest free loan to Tesla for years, the automaker needs to offer free FSD transfer and a $10,000 discount on a car upgrade.

While this might sound like a lot”

It would add up to a lot of money for Tesla, but for customers? Some of these people paid $15.000 years ago for something that hasn’t been delivered, and now, they would be able to get $10,000 ‘back’, only if they commit to spending way more again, in the hope to eventually get what they bought years ago, or, more likely, in the hope of eventually being able to subscribe to get the features they already paid for years ago.

CaptainOfCoit•2h ago
Yeah, sounds completely backwards, how could anyone accept that? "Yeah, sure, you lied to me about it before, but for my next purchase I'll get it slightly cheaper, sounds great"
cjrp•2h ago
I think it would work for the fully-indoctrinated customers, but what % of their total base is that? 5%?
boringg•1h ago
I think it is much higher for tesla.
LightBug1•1h ago
At this stage, I imagine them mostly wearing red gag balls ...

Why else would you put up with this nonsense?

If nothing else, Musk is a Svengali extraordinaire ...

cjrp•1h ago
Hmm I'm not so sure, admittedly based on anecdata. In the UK I know 10+ people who drive Teslas, and none of them are fanboys in any way. It was just the cheapest EV with decent range when they bought it.
boringg•1h ago
I'd say the UK isn't representative of the Tesla market is my guess. Ive talked to a bunch of friends who own them and are the antethesis of red pilled. They lament that the competition is still not there at all and that their Teslas are a much better experience then the rest of the market. Take it for what its worth - anecdotal.

Would they buy them again? Probably not but thats because of politics.

chronci739•1h ago
> Would they buy them again? Probably not but thats because of politics.

That’s the article’s point.

Politics, FSD overpromises, Elon, whatever the reason.

Tesla deliveries are down and people aren’t coming back.

ToucanLoucan•55m ago
Also the QA issues.

I can't fathom wanting a Tesla unless the politics are not merely a turn-off for you, but you want to support them directly.

CaptainOfCoit•59m ago
Since 2024 or so I think every single new customer must be one of those, as no one else seems to want to buy a Tesla.
orochimaaru•1h ago
Unless it’s in the purchase agreement, the wording on “fsd” may skirt the ethically questionable but legally acceptable line.

If the “fsd” wording is present in the purchase agreement, then Tesla owners have a class action lawsuit.

estearum•1h ago
Fine print in contracts can't override and totally negate specific offers made in marketing or the sales process.

If they said "$x gets you y", ran ads saying "$x gets you y", held press conferences saying "$x gets you y", then gave you an invoice showing you pay "$x for y", a backing contract saying "$x does not get you y" will not stand up in court.

So in addition to not being legally okay, it's obviously not "ethically questionable." Taking people's money and not delivering value you promised to them in exchange is bad.

altcognito•1h ago
Since Tesla thinks they are clever by not running "ads", but instead relies on their own "viral marketing", they may find it rather upsetting when they go through discovery and there are heaps of internal memos talking about how it is important to market the idea that they are selling FSD forward, very directly misleading customers.
bluGill•55m ago
Just Elon's public statements should be upsetting.
bluGill•56m ago
Courts generally know that people don't read fine print, much less understand it. So if there is something courts see as a promise that people will see and understand they will tend to decide that when the fine print is in conflict with advertising they tend to assume that there is an intention to deceive and so they will punish you for it.

When reading the above, think: the opposition lawyers have incentive to present the case that way. Judges rarely stop them. Juries tend to accept the above presentation. Of course the other side has lawyers that will try to pick apart that argument. It is anyone's guess what the jury (and thus court) will decide.

There are many different legal systems in the world. The above is a US perspective. I cannot comment on other countries, just know that each is different. Even if Tesla wins in court in the US, they can still lose a lot of money in other countries that work different.

JumpCrisscross•45m ago
> the wording on “fsd” may skirt the ethically questionable but legally acceptable line

Under U.S. federal law, perhaps.

That's where "Tesla’s current FSD expansion in international markets" gains salience. I doubt courts in "China and now Australia and New Zealand," or states with strong lemon laws [1], will let a manufacturer off the hook on a just-kidding clause.

[1] https://www.autosafety.org/in-new-lemonlaw-rankings-illinois...

mrtksn•1h ago
It’s a cult, in cults people don’t demand refunds from the messiah. IRL they ask what else I can contribute to the church to fix that because it mist be their fault that the prophesies didn’t come true. In the end it’s not a problem if parties choose not to make a problem if it.

In recent years the leader of a cult in Turkey known for being filthy rich died and when cult split the new factions summoned the believers to re-do their inauguration ritual, which involves money collecting, since the old one expired within the death of the leader. And they went and did that, because although its not the members that are rich they still benefit from being in the community and the business connections.

Tesla has a similar thing, they are on a mission and many make money from being part of the community as they collect referrals, make content and sell accessories. Even if not doing any of that they ysually have Tesla shares and even if that’s not the case they want to keep the value of their vehicle high. Also in comes with the emotional baggage of having told everyone how their tesla drives autonomously etc.

IAmBroom•48m ago
Elon has eroded, even exploded, a lot of that cult. I've seen multiple Teslas in the wild with apologetic "I bought this before I knew he was crazy" bumperstickers.
stronglikedan•32m ago
> "I bought this before I knew he was crazy" bumperstickers

how ironic

gipp•47m ago
That probably describes some corners of Tesla's market, but 99% of people buying Teslas and FSD are doing it because it is (was?) a cool car with a potentially cool feature. You're letting the wildly unrepresentative sample of "loud people on the Internet" distort your perception of the world at large.
mrtksn•36m ago
Those who don’t care, wouldn’t care anyway. If they still have the car the can just sell it, if they don’t have the car its irrelevant.

Most people just don’t want new troubles in their lives, its juts money long gone.

drcongo•54m ago
$15k?! I've got a bridge they could buy for just $10k.
NickC25•43m ago
>It would add up to a lot of money for Tesla, but for customers? Some of these people paid $15.000 years ago for something that hasn’t been delivered, and now, they would be able to get $10,000 ‘back’, only if they commit to spending way more again, in the hope to eventually get what they bought years ago, or, more likely, in the hope of eventually being able to subscribe to get the features they already paid for years ago.

Sounds like fraud.

Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again? The guy can't help himself but lie and make deliberately misleading half-truth (at best) statements in investor meetings and presentations. Textbook fraud.

An ethical steward of capital he is not. We've gone through 4+ US presidential administrations with him as the CEO, and not once has he been effectively taken to task let alone held accountable for his bullshit.

code_for_monkey•37m ago
America is run by sham companies with con man ceos. Look at the president! He is one. The federal government does the kind of crypto pump and dumps you'd expect to see being run on snapchat. Of course no one is holding Musk's feet to the fire.
danans•28m ago
> Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again? The guy can't help himself but lie and make deliberately misleading half-truth (at best) statements in investor meetings and presentations.

Perhaps you just answered your own question. But are you sure he's the only big tech CEO who does it, or does he just do it the best?

immibis•17m ago
Because it's about, and always has been about, and always will be about, power and personal connection, not following the rules. Following the rules is one avenue to power - if the rules are enforced as written. But there are others, like bribing whoever is meant to enforce the rules and then breaking them. Another is to abuse rules, like setting up a string of companies that go bankrupt like crumple zones.
sporkxrocket•9m ago
We created Sarbanes-Oxley after Enron and made it very difficult to go IPO, yet somehow TSLA is allowed to engage in blatant and obvious fraud. Musk lies in every shareholder meeting and is rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars. I can't think of another case of financial fraud at this scale that is allowed to go completely unchecked.
slowmovintarget•3m ago
The Star Citizen model.
scrollop•2h ago
As expected, based on it's actions and promises, over it's history.

There is a good choice of EVs from various manufacturers.

speedgoose•1h ago
In some markets, it means having to spend more or purchasing a worse car. Tesla offers some very good value cars, and 0% interest rate for 3 years. It almost makes you want to forget about the CEO.
anonymars•1h ago
Also, how does the charging situation compare outside of the Tesla ecosystem? (Assuming you can't charge it at home)

Tesla really makes charging about as seamless as can be. It integrates into the navigation system (the car will automatically add charging stops, pre-warm the battery, tell you how many spots are open, etc.), integrates the payment, etc.

I've rented a Tesla. The most annoying thing about it was the goofy unlock (tapping a key card at the right spot on the door pillar) but I'm very wary of renting any other EV and having to dick around with finding the right charge place, determining if it has the right connection, will it charge fast enough, can I just pay by card or do I need some stupid app, etc.

coldpie•1h ago
> Tesla really makes charging about as seamless as can be. It integrates into the navigation system (the car will automatically add charging stops, pre-warm the battery, tell you how many spots are open, etc.), integrates the payment, etc.

Other cars have all that, too, yeah. I got a 2025 Ioniq 5 and it does all that, and it's also not restricted to just one charging company's chargers. The payment integration stuff exists, but it requires support from the charging company obviously, and IMO that's kind of a mis-feature anyway, so I never bothered to set it up.

> can I just pay by card or do I need some stupid app

In my experience, almost all chargers just use a card. 100% of the ones I've used in regular gas stations on freeway exits just use a card. Once in a blue moon you run into a stupid app one, but it's usually an older charger that was installed in a city center in the early days of EV charging. The apps seem to be mostly disappearing, thank god. Ironically I'm pretty sure Tesla's chargers require a stupid app for non-Tesla cars, but I've never used one, so not certain.

> determining if it has the right connection

Yeah, the adapters are clunky. It's just gonna take time to phase out CCS. Hopefully that's a solved problem in 10 years as everyone switches over to NACS. I did use a native NACS non-Tesla charger with my native NACS non-Telsa car once on a recent road trip. The future is... almost here!

monkeywork•44m ago
The idea that you don’t need an app to charge is, in my view, highly dependent on the region. I follow several YouTube channels where people document long EV road trips to showcase how the charging infrastructure is evolving. While things have definitely improved over the past couple of years, using non-Tesla charging stations still often involves:

- Charging speeds that fall short of what's advertised

- A requirement to use an app for payment (even if no account setup is needed)

- Chargers that are out of service but not flagged as such in the system

coldpie•37m ago
> highly dependent on the region

Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way, but I bet you're right! I bet denser areas got chargers earlier, so they're stuck on the stupid-app-based model that was popular 5 years ago. Where I am in the upper midwest, the rollout has been happening only over the last couple years (e.g. several of the chargers I stopped at last month are not even on Google Maps streetview yet), so the chargers are in better shape and just have standard card readers now.

aDyslecticCrow•1h ago
The Tesla charger is now the North American Charging Standard NACS (standardized as SAE J3400). So most or nearly all new EV's in USA use it. So that's not an issue anymore.

In Europe, Tesla use the European standard Type 2 (standardized as IEC 62196-2) charger. So that's not an issue either.

> correction: I thought Tesla still used their own charger in Europe.

padjo•43m ago
Teslas in Europe have Type2 connectors.
aDyslecticCrow•37m ago
I seem to be a bit outdated then. If they've also switched over then even less of an issue.

The EV charger standard wars are over.

fukka42•58m ago
Tesla is awful outside of the US where they didn't invest heavily in spamming their charging stations everywhere.
simonask•16m ago
Have never had any trouble in Scandinavia or Germany.

There are regions of Europe with less developed infrastructure, but the situation is identical for all car makers.

aDyslecticCrow•1h ago
Unfortunately (or fortunately if you like cheap good cars) China has gotten ridiculously good at lithium batteries, and is rapidly eating the EV market. The traditional American and European brands are either sold to china, or falling behind.

Tesla lead the market for quite a while, but lost their way trying to become a software company instead of perfecting manufacturing. They don't heave a lead anymore, and trust for their brand is tanking. Between tesla and a chineese EV, i trust both about equally now.

monkeywork•50m ago
Until N. America lifts the 100% tariffs on Chinese cars, it doesn't really matter if they are equal to Tesla or not in this market.
bdcravens•58m ago
Perhaps, but depending on the vehicle, you're giving up quite a bit:

Parking and proximity LIDAR/sensors

3d camera view

CarPlay/Android Auto

Lack of tactile controls (even Tesla has admitted removing the stalk was a mistake)

The ability to exit your vehicle if there's a power system failure

etc

lotsofpulp•15m ago
On the other hand, I paid $41k for a 2024 all wheel drive 3 row (5 adults + 2 kids) Model Y. That saved me $20k+ compared to alternatives.

> 3d camera view

The illustrated overhead view is sufficient that I do not miss a 3D camera view.

>The ability to exit your vehicle if there's a power system failure

This is not true, at least in my 2024 Model Y.

Not having carplay/android auto sucks, but I haven’t missed it enough. And there are enough tactile controls, in my model at least, that it hasn’t been an issue.

All in all, I wouldn’t pay $60k for a Tesla, but sign me up @ $41k.

CaptainOfCoit•2h ago
> Tesla needs to offer all HW3 owners a $5,000 loyalty discount, that goes on top of all other incentive program, when upgrading to a new car.

Is it just me, or does that seem backwards? If I purchased something with a specific feature, or promised future feature, and 5 years later it's still nowhere to be seen, I don't want a coupon for "my next purchase", why would I buy from the same place after they already lied to me before? The only acceptable solution would be to get back the extra money spent for that feature.

chronci739•1h ago
> why would I buy from the same place after they already lied to me before?

You are smarter than the repeat Tesla buyer.

baggachipz•1h ago
The only sane offer would be to give me my money back. They know how much I gave them, now give it back since you didn't deliver and I no longer have the car. Isn't it enough that I gave them an interest-free loan for all those years?
fukka42•57m ago
They should obviously pay interest, too.
baggachipz•19m ago
In an ideal world. Instead, I expect a class action settlement and me receiving a check for $25.
brandonagr2•1h ago
Nowhere to be seen if your head is in the sand. There are robotaxi pilot programs running in two cities, FSD 14 is actively rolling out to customers, and my car drove me to work this morning on v13. I don't see any lies
CaptainOfCoit•35m ago
So you're saying the submission article is just straight up lies, or why the difference in experience?
sjsdaiuasgdia•30m ago
Have they taken the "safety operator" out of the "robotaxis" yet?

Here's a handy compilation of Musk's self driving broken promises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

skywhopper•2h ago
The time to address this productively was when “Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving” were announced. Tesla and Musk have been misleading customers for a decade now, and the FTC and other regulatory agencies have done next to nothing about it. I’m not expecting a serious crackdown at this point, but I’m also constantly shocked at the folks who still buy into this fever dream.
jgalt212•2h ago
Fool me once, fool me n times...
CaptainOfCoit•2h ago
According to the article, it seems like Tesla didn't land in hot water until they started to push the same scam outside of the US (article is mostly about Australia I think), but seems like regulators might be getting some balls to do the same in the US soon as far as I can tell.
baggachipz•1h ago
> seems like regulators might be getting some balls to do the same in the US soon

You must be new here. Kidding aside, the only reason they would do anything would be if Tesla doesn't sufficiently kiss the king's ring, which they did to the tune of $250 million quite recently. More payments will likely be required, but it's a cost of doing "business" these days.

JumpCrisscross•38m ago
> More payments will likely be required, but it's a cost of doing "business" these days

A "multi-billion-dollar iceberg" is literally referenced in the headline.

Like, yes, if Tesla pays back all HW2 and HW3 FSD buyers their purchase plus interest, they should be fine.

baggachipz•19m ago
I meant that the payments will be... fees... to the executive branch of the US government. Still large, but way less than having to make their customers whole. A protection racket by the president, that's what I'm saying. A protection racket.
CaptainOfCoit•8m ago
> You must be new here.

You too, as otherwise you surely would have at least skimmed the article before commenting :)

> As we recently reported, thousands of Tesla owners have now joined a class action lawsuit in Australia[1] over Tesla misleading customers with its self-driving promises.

> It adds to similar ongoing lawsuits in the US[2] and China[3] .

1 - https://electrek.co/2025/10/13/thousands-of-tesla-owners-joi...

2 - https://electrek.co/2025/08/19/tesla-loses-bid-to-kill-class...

3 - (https://electrek.co/2025/09/22/tesla-being-sued-china-over-n...)

zozbot234•1h ago
AIUI "Autopilot" and "Full Self Driving" were always just SAE Level 2, although arguably a more full-featured implementation of that SAE level than other automakers. Which means you must pay attention to the road at all times (i.e. you're still very much driving!) and the car provides enhanced cruise control and lane following.
stetrain•1h ago
But FSD was promised to be Level 5, eventually, just as soon as Tesla can get regulatory approval. This has been the case since they started charging for the package back in 2016.
anonymars•1h ago
Exactly, the name is literally Full Self Driving
zozbot234•1h ago
Well, in practice that clearly stands for "you must be Fully Driving the car yourSelf". Totally checks out. Even SAE Level 4 for Tesla FSD is very much not there yet, let alone Level 5 (unattended full autonomy).
gchokov•2h ago
My EU Car was produced in Germany, in May 2024, with HW3. Already largely obsolete.
CaptainOfCoit•2h ago
Well, you did buy a smart fridge with wheels, not sure what anyone expects when doing such purchase decision.
davedx•2h ago
Consumers shouldn't need to do extended due diligence on the history of whether a company told the truth or not about what it's selling you over the last 15 years before making a purchase decision.

There are, in fact, laws about this kind of thing

paulcole•2h ago
But wouldn’t you feel like an idiot if you didn’t do due diligence and were conned? I don’t particularly like saying, “well the law was supposed to protect me…” in a case where my idiotic decision was completely preventable.
scott_w•1h ago
You say this as though it's trivial to just see that Tesla is a scam. There's multiple decades of fawning articles and reviews of Tesla to the point where the average person can't be blamed for assuming they're a reputable company.

But of course, blaming the victim is much easier because it lets the person doing the blaming pretend they're morally and intellectually superior in some way.

friendzis•1h ago
> You say this as though it's trivial to just see that Tesla is a scam.

You don't need any particularly deep due diligence to see that, in fact, not living under a rock is more than enough.

> There's multiple decades of fawning articles and reviews of Tesla to the point where the average person can't be blamed for assuming they're a reputable company.

There's multiple decades of articles highlighting, in various levels of detail, how exactly bad Tesla is and Teslas are. Checking for bad reviews and deciding how applicable they are to you in particular is part of rudimentary check

Sorry, but knowingly and deliberately buying a Tesla vehicle is entirely on the customer and they get in some sense even more than what they had ordered. Similarly, if you buy a ${brand-you-don't-like} you have no right to complain about ${common-problem}, because that's the state vehicles leave the factory.

scott_w•1h ago
> You don't need any particularly deep due diligence to see that, in fact, not living under a rock is more than enough.

From May 2025: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/05/05/us-consumers-dont-trust...

OP bought their Tesla in 2024, so customer sentiment was actually favourable to Tesla at that point.

In March 2024, brand loyalty was really high according to Experian: https://inspiramarketing.com/when-a-brand-becomes-its-own-wo...

In 2019, customer satisfaction was also high: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-customers-say-...

In 2020, they had an NPS of 97: https://customergauge.com/benchmarks/companies/tesla_motors

> Sorry, but knowingly and deliberately buying a Tesla vehicle is entirely on the customer and they get in some sense even more than what they had ordered.

Clearly, the customers were not knowingly and deliberately buying bad cars because the evidence available to the average person told them the exact opposite thing.

EDIT: Strikethrough below, it was a result of a bad search but the principle above still stands.

Hell, even on Hacker News, the bad news only seems to have started appearing 3 years ago, and I know for a fact your average consumer isn't browsing tech sites to form their opinion for their next car purchase.

blibble•1h ago
why not?

a car is the largest purchase most people will make (after property)

people should do more due diligence on it than e.g. on a new phone purchase

Loughla•1h ago
There's a difference between doing research into a car and doing research into whether or not a company is lying to me.
blibble•56m ago
why not?

I certainly looked into whether the company that built my house was prudent and known for not scamming people

fnordsensei•38m ago
Information, power, and insight asymmetry between an individual and a company. That’s why there are consumer protection laws in many countries; to even the scales, not to favor individuals. With no hand on the scales, asymmetry is the default.
JohnFen•1h ago
Maybe they shouldn't need to, but they do. Due to regulatory capture and deregulation (at least in the US), the law provides very little protection against scumbag companies.
firecall•2h ago
They expect what is promised.

Consumer protections are a very real thing in the EU, UK, Australia and elsewhere!

If you make promises about the features a product will deliver, then you are obligated to deliver those features.

If not, the consumer is entitled to a refund.

6510•2h ago
You could wrap it in disclaimers of experimental technology. Just describe the exact content on the tin.

It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days.

watwut•1h ago
Consumer protections prevent such contracts. That is why companies acustomed to "defraud as much as you want, just keep it legally plausibe" hate them so much.
friendzis•1h ago
> It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days.

IANAL, but if it was "fine" that would still fall quite firmly under "gambling"

piva00•1h ago
This kind of legal loophole might be common in the USA but in the EU is much harder to weasel out of obligations from the spirit of the law with legalese.

They can wrap as in many disclaimers as they want, if the law is clear that consumers had a presumption of delivery due to marketing promises which were unfulfilled they are on the hook for it.

It's why many American companies constantly complain about EU regulations, they empower consumers which is "bad for business™" since fraud becomes much harder to wrap in loopholes.

JohnFen•1h ago
> It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days.

No, it doesn't seem fine at all. That's scam territory.

martini333•1h ago
How? You still have exactly what you bought. You even got new features as OTA updates for free. What other car would not be as-bought after purchace?
bdcravens•55m ago
> What other car would not be as-bought after purchace?

The other cars that also have OTA updates? (Rivian, Polestar, and more, plus quite a few that provide less-extensive OTA like Hyundai, VW, etc)

layer8•2h ago
The whole FSD promise was such a scam from the start (or self-delusion on Tesla’s part, if you want to be charitable) that it would be nice to see them feel real consequences from it.
Havoc•2h ago
> It’s unclear why would Tesla sell a subcription to something that doesn’t even exist

No I’d say it’s pretty clear

firtoz•1h ago
Can you please enlighten those of us who are watching from a distance?
WJW•1h ago
Money?
rsynnott•1h ago
I mean, they were selling something which didn't exist as a one-off payment for about the last decade, so I'm not sure why selling it on a subscription basis is inherently any weirder. They clearly have the sort of customer base who like paying for non-existent things, so why not?
hiddencost•1h ago
One of the most notorious liars in history was heavily leveraged and needed the stock to do well, to avoid bankruptcy, so he lied repeatedly for years?
hypeatei•1h ago
There are a lot of "true believers" in the Tesla customer base so it's an easy way to collect money without doing much. The same mindset applies to the stock: it's not really based on any fundamentals, just vibes and Elon's personality.
__MatrixMan__•1h ago
When you get paid for not doing anything, you get paid, but you don't have to do anything.
code_for_monkey•33m ago
Musk is a con man, he'd accept money for bus tickets to Mars.
FlyingSnake•2h ago
For a minute I thought this is an moon-shot to stop climate change by building real icebergs.
IAmBroom•45m ago
That's hilarious.
KaiserPro•2h ago
Ok, so I imagine that the fine print of the $5k FSD addon has something like "This is a beta and may or may not delivered in full"

or something similar.

I can't imagine that they made it easy enough for someone to take them to court for non-delivery of FSD, which we knew wasn't going to be possible.

_hark•1h ago
They really should have just marketed the software "as-is" to whatever extent that is allowed by law. I guess they didn't because deployed automobile software is probably not allowed to be considered experimental.

Still, comms that framed it like: "This software purchase upgrades your car with state-of-the-art autonomy capabilities from our AI team, as we approach full self-driving" would have been more honest, still exciting to consumers, and avoided over-promising.

friendzis•1h ago
> and avoided over-promising

Stonk is the product and is literally built on over-promising.

panick21•1h ago
AI and focus on Self-Driving has been the biggest failure and blindspot for Tesla (Musk). So much of the strategy evolved around that, its a big reason why I pulled my investment. I invested because they were growing fast, had a pretty good product and had very high marin despite massive investment charging, service and verticial integration. And their next generation product should have been a reusable platform that could delvier a basic van, basic suv and basic pickup, all from the same assembly line. After that focus on a cheaper smaller electric car.

I thought it made a lot of sense to focus on a well functioning Level 2 System that they owned themselves. Make highway driving, start-stop traffic and such easy as possible. Make the car helpful and easy to use.

But then Tesla started focusing on making complex navigation and remote summening a feature when tons of basic stuff didn't work very well yet. For example, automated parking, 360 view, detection of features like shadows and such. Why not focus specifically on the actual dangrous problem looking around blind corners and installing a sensor suit that can help humans with the problem.

Promsing Full Self Driving with existing hardware and selling that when they had not proven that it could work was idioitc and I always felt like it was a liability. They should have been sued over this a while ago.

Initially Tesla messaging was save, nice software, fun to drive and green, and it then became half baked software, don't drive it and risky.

When it came out that Musk said they should build a cheaper next generation car, because Self-Driving would collapse the car market by 80% I knew the company had completely lost its way.

riffraff•1h ago
but the whole self driving shtick is what gave it the insane valuation, isn't it?

"we're general motors, but better" is not the same as "we'll have self driving taxis that make money to our customers while they sleep".

Musk's 2018 Pay Package had a lot of market cap-based targets[0].

[0] https://www.equilar.com/elon-musk-2018-tesla-pay-package-ana...

consumer451•1h ago
> I knew the company had completely lost its way.

For me, the biggest signal was when Tesla was suddenly all-in on BTC, and promised to build their own full node.

It made no sense.

olalonde•59m ago
Do you have a source for "promised to build their own full node"? As far as I recall, they just added BTC to the list of currencies they accept.
consumer451•50m ago
I used to spend an unhealthy amount of time watching TSLA back then, it was just my recollection. Here is a tweet from Musk on the topic:

> Tesla is using only internal & open source software & operates Bitcoin nodes directly. ...

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1374619379929772034

https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/1374619379929772034

Geee•40m ago
That's the proper way to accept BTC payments, with your own node, instead of using some third-party service.
consumer451•33m ago
That may be so, however:

1. Up to that sudden 180, Musk had been a cryptocurrency skeptic. What changed?

2. It had nothing to do with Tesla's mission, in-fact it seemed to go against it. At best it was a distraction when there were real problems to deal with.

3. When reality caught up, Tesla reversed course.

I am not stating some grand thing here, this is just my recollection of events.

Geee•16m ago
The first claim isn't true, because Elon has been a bitcoiner for a long time. There was a huge Bitcoin hype / hubris at that time. Specifically, Saylor happened, and he convinced Elon and others that Bitcoin is the best reserve asset, and Tesla had a lot of cash, which was melting like an ice cube due to inflation. There was a lot of inflation talk / protecting against inflation. And in the end it actually worked out for them pretty well, given that BTC has about tripled since then (they bough at $34k).

After they had bought the bitcoin, adding it as a payment option was a way to add hype to increase its value. They quickly found out that it's too volatile for payments to be practical, and the hype cycle was ending anyway and they sold half of their reserve.

consumer451•11m ago
This quote is not indicative of someone who was into BTC (2017):

> ... A friend sent me part of a BTC a few years, but I don’t know where it is.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/935329447594541056

t1234s•1h ago
I would think the hw3 to hw4 retrofit would be easy. just swap out the FSD computer under the front and swap out the cameras. I'm sure they could make a kit that is compatible with the existing camera harnesses (if they are different). Also they would need to make a way to retrofit the bumper cam housing on older models.

If they offered this for sale for $8k including the FSD license for older hw3 teslas that don't have FSD it might offset some of the cost to bring up the people who already paid the $8k on HW3.

jimbo808•1h ago
This is kinda a hilarious coincidence, because I just watched a podcast with Andrej Karpathy, the guy who was running their autopilot program back when the sage "fully autonomous in one year" predictions kicked of their 15+ year long run (and counting).

These days he's moved on to predicting 10 years for AGI and is, I shit you not, citing his 15 year track record of making accurate predictions (timestamped link below if you want have a laugh).

https://youtu.be/lXUZvyajciY?si=3PyVM476W6k3n-DR&t=181

morkalork•1h ago
So, tacking on the 15x multiplier from his Tesla FSD prediction: AGI in 150 years.

Yeah that actually sounds about right!

estearum•1h ago
Do we know that Karpathy was the one making those predictions? Musk is absolutely notorious for throwing completely made up and detached-from-reality deadlines onto his teams, including making public obligations to such.
Fricken•50m ago
Karpathy, the celebrity AI researcher with no relevant autonomous vehicle experience, was hired to make Elon's bad predictions look good. He was an active and willing component of the scam. I'm sure he was paid handsomely.

Autopilot's first director, Sterling Anderson, was fired because he was not willing to go along with the scam.

londons_explore•1h ago
Every time Elon made an FSD prediction on stage live, you could see Andrej wincing in the background.

You could tell Andrej was going along with what hiss boss said, but didn't believe it himself.

skeeter2020•1h ago
I don't think that absolves him from any of the scorn though. In fact it might make his shortcoming even worse.
ben_w•1h ago
Absolve? No.

Even worse? Nah, the judgement of someone in their 20s should be assumed poor.

mcmcmc•26m ago
And yet VCs throw hundreds of millions of dollars at startup founders in their 20s every year
geodel•5m ago
Yeah, because it works as law of probability not law of physics. So out of ten thousand immature 20s a dozen may be very good making something that generate lot of wealth and immaturity in those cases might be helping not hurting them.
moralestapia•14m ago
Absolutely.

There's a funny but very crude saying in Slovakia, which where he's from so he might know it, lol. I cannot write it here for obvious reasons but it's related to letting people do things to you for money ...

As others have pointed out, there were a lot of incentives ($$$) for Krapathy to behave like that during his tenure at Tesla.

pilingual•59m ago
https://youtu.be/FnFksQo-yEY?t=1357
daveguy•18m ago
Hm. Is Karpathy the fool who convinced Musk that the best sensing technology (lidar) shouldn't be used? That is disappointing. I like Karpathy and always thought the cameras-only mistake came from Musk as chief fool.
chronci739•1h ago
> the guy who was running their autopilot program back when the sage "fully autonomous in one year" predictions kicked of their 15+ year long run

To be fair, if I’m being paid $10 million/year, I’ll make any damn prediction my boss tells me to make

maxerickson•1h ago
I mean, I probably would do too, but it doesn't exactly speak to the integrity of whatever is being said now.
senordevnyc•1h ago
I mean this question in good faith, and with all due respect to Karpathy: is there any reason to give this guy any credence beyond his ability to teach about LLMs? The only interesting industry experience of his that I'm aware of is leading Tesla's AI division during the period where they decided on this disastrous and dangerous vision-only approach that has resulted in multiple deaths. That alone makes me think he's not only incompetent but unethical. Am I missing something?
chronci739•1h ago
> during the period where they decided on this disastrous and dangerous vision-only approach that has resulted in multiple deaths

To be fair, it was a direct decision from Elon due to covid supply chain shortages of radar and ultrasonic sensors. Not from engineers (as is common at Elon companies)

But Andrej deserves some of the blame because he was too busy sucking on the $TSLA stock teat to say anything

fukka42•1h ago
Pretty sure musk was hell bent on Vision only before covid.
daveguy•15m ago
Yes, the decision was definitely made well before covid. It's just that musk and fanboys couldn't stop crowing about it during the covid shortages because that temporarily made camera-only sensing look like a good idea.
_hark•1h ago
I don't recall Andrej making "next year!" claims, it was always Elon. I found Andrej's talks from that time to be circumspect and precise in describing their ideas and approach, and not engaging in timeline speculation.
Geee•44m ago
He doesn't say that at all on the video. He refers to his experience in the industry in regards to other people making predictions. To be clear, he knows that FSD predictions were too optimistic, and that's why he says that AGI will take a decade at least. Almost everyone else in the industry is predicting AGI "soon", i.e. in 1 or 2 years.
dawnerd•27m ago
But we still don’t have FSD despite whatever robotaxi is doing. We’re not getting AGI in a decade.
CaptainOfCoit•23m ago
Saying "We won't get X in N" is easy and not very interesting, what about answering "When will we get X?" instead?
WhitneyLand•42m ago
Oh come on. How many of us have been an engineer on a project and had to watch an exec make promises we knew were not reality?

It also doesn’t necessarily mean he was a yes man. Often in these situations people spell out their confidence levels plainly and directly to such execs and it just bounces off.

I’m also seeing below people suggesting he could have publicly voiced his concerns, but that probably wasn’t even a legal option for multiple reasons.

blinding-streak•1h ago
I have zero sympathy for any Tesla owner that believed anything from Elon's mouth. That's your own fault.

Tesla has shown time and time again to be hostile to its own customers in a variety of ways.

niek_pas•1h ago
Thankfully, there are actually laws about this sort of stuff! So companies don't (necessarily/always) just get away with "you shouldn't have listened to us, this is your own fault."
bdcravens•1h ago
Correct, but unless regulatory bodies proactively force Tesla to compensate, there at least has to be an effort from consumers to stand up, admit they were conned, and press the issue.
JumpCrisscross•40m ago
> there are least has to be an effort from consumers to stand up

FTFA: "...thousands of Tesla owners have now joined a class action lawsuit in Australia over Tesla misleading customers with its self-driving promises. It adds to similar ongoing lawsuits in the US and China."

bdcravens•36m ago
I was replying to a comment which seemed to imply that the law alone was adequate to prevent abuse of consumers.
JumpCrisscross•12m ago
> the law alone

Lawsuits.

delecti•1h ago
Maybe that applies to people who believe something he says today, but a decade ago Musk's history as a grifter wasn't nearly as apparent. And like the other reply says "you got tricked and it's your fault" doesn't apply to false advertising or fraud laws.
bob1029•1h ago
I feel like Tesla would have been significantly more competitive with the non-EV market if they had gone in a completely opposite direction with regard to fancy technology.

Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train and I'm much more interested. Make the car kind of ugly too. On purpose. I don't need a GPU farm inside my car. I'm not running a robotic taxi company. I just want to go get some groceries.

I've worked on cars long enough to realize I don't want a chip using a leading edge semiconductor node in my vehicle somewhere. I live in a pretty nasty climate. A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. There's always something that starts to break once you cross into that 150F temperature level. I want semiconductors that were engineered to run in the basement of hell 24/7/365. 28nm and thicker sizes. I don't want 3nm gates in my car. There's no way these chips would last 10 years.

zozbot234•1h ago
> A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible.

AIUI, the car can run its cooling/AC system to keep itself cool, even when powered off. I'd imagine that this is actually a bigger concern for the battery's health and safety, not the chips. You're not supposed to let a battery get that hot.

bob1029•1h ago
If a cooling system needs to be built just to keep the car from dying when no one is using it, then I would argue we have jumped the complexity shark and need to go back to the drawing board. I can walk away from my vehicle without worrying about it turning back into a pumpkin. Most consumers are looking for an experience approximating this.
bluGill•34m ago
A car in stop and go traffic in Texas at the same time will need even more cooling, the car needs to be kept comfortable for the humans as well as what the batteries need, plus because the car is moving it has extra heat from turning motors.

As the others have pointed out all the major manufactures know the problems here, and ensure there isn't a problem.

hypeatei•1h ago
> Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train

Exactly. The minimalist interior is super unappealing to me. I want something that's not all based on one screen. It's not just bad from a usability perspective but also seems risky if there are any issues with the screen (climate controls are very important for visibility certain times of the year)

cheschire•1h ago
Making the car kind of ugly does not get the sales though. Many people that buy new cars cannot afford them. They need the car to be sexy looking in order to boost their pride so they can convince themselves they "deserve" this 8 year financial obligation.

I would absolutely go for a 2002 electric Acura Integra though...

estimator7292•1h ago
I don't think there's more than like five people on the planet who think the cybertruck is sexy
bluGill•43m ago
I wouldn't either except that I personally know 5 people who think it is sexy, and I can't believe that my very small circle of acquaintances could possibly cover everyone, so there must be a lot more than five.
__MatrixMan__•1h ago
Back when those decisions were made, I bet they thought full automation was right around the corner and robotic taxis would make more sense than individual vehicle ownership.

I think they're caught flat footed because here we are a decade later and the consumer's opinion still matters.

bluGill•37m ago
I have long thought the idea of robotic taxis didn't make any sense for most people. Where people already get a taxi of course it makes sense. There are a few people who don't drive much who it also makes sense for. However for the vast majority owning a car will always make more sense.

Most people are traveling during rush hour - there isn't much opportunity to share cars with them, and where there is it means cars traveling empty from the city to the suburbs in the morning. (and the opposite at 5pm).

When you own your own car you can "leave your golf clubs in the trunk in case a chance to play a round happens in the middle of the day". You can run errands over lunch. You store other things in the car that you don't need everyday. None of these are a big deal (many people take transit and thus cannot do that), but it is enough that when the economics are not a clear win you will want to own a car.

runako•20m ago
> I bet they thought full automation was right around the corner

I will bet that none of the engineers on the automation team over the age of 35 thought that. Only the young & naive or non-technical people would have believed that.

LeifCarrotson•56m ago
Check out Slate:

https://www.slate.auto/en

https://images.ctfassets.net/20dhmw20vttc/3FXvexNHHbtaijk1Ur...

Worried about infotainment and AI processors? It doesn't even have a radio. See those things on the door cards by your knees? They interface with an advanced window regulator and associated torque-sensing motion control system that uses evaporative liquid cooling to prevent failure due to overheating.

You could buy three for the price of a Tesla.

rocmcd•17m ago
> You could buy three for the price of a Tesla.

Except you could actually buy a Tesla today, which is not something you can do for a Slate. Also they don't even have expected delivery dates or official pricing yet, so who knows when they will be available or what the actual price will be.

I would love for Slate to become a thing, but at this point it looks like vaporware.

vscode-rest•16m ago
They won’t be able to sell in USA without a backup camera, curious what their plan is there.
bickfordb•52m ago
The problem was they needed to pretend be a technology company (with FSD, and now robots) to juice the stock price/earnings multiple. If they were simply a car maker with EV motors, the stock would have a much lower multiple.
padjo•46m ago
I don’t think they _needed_ to do that. They chose to do that. It’s been fairly successful in the short to medium term but the jury is still out on what happens if/when the market acknowledges that they are in fact just a car company.
constantcrying•48m ago
The one reason which made Teslas growth possible was that it was seen as a technologically superior car company. Great software is part of that.

There were actually many companies which tried small basic "urban" electric vehicles. You never heard of them.

Customers will not care about the cars people on here want. Customers want highly integrated software. Law makers are also demanding increasing software complexity.

>A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible.

Toyota, Ford and VW have proving grounds in Arizona, because engineers know that cars get very hot. This is part of standard vehicles testing.

bluGill•44m ago
People say that, but then they look at their real options and discover they could buy the bare bones model - or for a similar price they can get a several year old model with all the luxury items. They rarely buy those basic models because even though they don't need the luxury they want at least one and so the used car with everything is what they buy.

It isn't hard to make crank cars, but it will cost you a million dollars (likely 10, but lets go with 1 million) to build all the needed jigs to make them, so if there are only 1000 people who buy crank windows that means the cost of cranks is $1000/car. You can skip the jigs, but now the cost to manually make the cranks is $400/car, meanwhile because everyone else wants electric windows the cost per car is about $100. Those costs are why an option-free car would have to cost more than a luxury model.

stetrain•15m ago
People get the cause and effect of fancy EVs backwards.

To build an EV you have to spend $10-$20k on the battery pack that goes into it. They're getting cheaper, but that is a gradual process.

So your Toyota Camry / Honda Accord EV competitor is going to need to be priced starting at $40k to have a chance of breaking even.

How do you get people to stomach $40k for a base Honda Accord but Electric? You add things that cost very little but make the car feel more premium. Power seats, big screens, LED interior lights, glass roof, a processor that can play video games, cameras and autonomy features, etc. don't cost that much in the big scheme of things. Some of them, like screens instead of physical controls, might even save money in production and assembly costs.

So you add ~$3k worth of "premium" features to the car, price it at $45k, and now the buyer feels like they are getting something worth the money.

jqpabc123•1h ago
As far as Wall Street is concerned, none of this really matters.

Tesla stock (P/E over 250) is priced as if Telsa is the largest auto manufacturer, the biggest robotaxi company, the dominant robot producer and the leading AI service provider.

Meanhile; back in reality, none of this is even close to being true.

Logic simply cannot explain it --- so the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort. One that Wall Street must have a stake in.

rsynnott•1h ago
> Logic simply cannot explain it --- so the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort. One that Wall Street must have a stake in.

... Wait, is your contention that every time the markets price something incorrectly, there must be a conspiracy? Tesla is a meme stock, one of hundreds, albeit the biggest. There's no need for a conspiracy; the markets are just actually not all that great at pricing, especially where there's significant retail involvement.

jqpabc123•1h ago
Tesla is a meme stock, one of hundreds, albeit the biggest.

Nothing about the valuation makes any sense and it hasn't for years. Tesla is no longer a startup. Market performance history is readily available from which one should be able to make rational judgments.

Tesla only has about 10% of world wide *EV* sales. Yet it's market cap exceeds all major auto manufacturers *combined*.

As you point out, it's the scale and magnitude of the disconnect from reality maintained over a long period of time that puts Tesla in a league of it's own.

JohnFen•1h ago
> the fallback is a conspiracy of some sort.

I don't think you have to go to conspiracy theories to explain it. The fact that Wall Street has always been highly suggestible, fad-driven, and has a strong herd mentality is sufficient. Combine that with sunk cost fallacies and this is exactly the sort of behavior I'd expect.

jqpabc123•7m ago
Combine that with sunk cost fallacies and this is exactly the sort of behavior I'd expect.

Sorry, sunk cost fallacies can't explain why a majority of Wall Street analysts maintain a *buy* rating on a company with a PE of over 250 and a *declining* global market share.

bamboozled•44m ago
I came here to say something similar, no matter how bad the numbers, no matter how bad the cars, no matter bad the press, there will be absolutely no consequences for any of it.

We live in bizarre times. The older I get, the more I wonder why I try do things "properly" and honestly. I guess it's just a preference.

Zufriedenheit•1h ago
Somebody sued Tesla at a UK consumer court because FSD was advertised as delivering fully automatic driving soon. It was based on Consumer Rights Act, which states that goods must match their advertised description. Tesla ended up paying back the full purchase price + interest and legal fees in return for him dropping the case. It seems Tesla lawyers know they are in a bad position with this. The company has just promised way to much to early. Which was totally unnecessary imo. The car were pretty cool products and would have sold well if they just called it driver assist system or something similar.
cjrp•1h ago
Maybe this is the next PPI/dieselgate/car finance campaign? "Did you buy a Tesla between 2015 and 2025? You could be owed £1000s"
pjc50•1h ago
UK small claims court is really effective. I've often wondered if any of the various PayPal problems cases have made it to there.
mystraline•1h ago
Pity that BYD is banned in this country, thanks to Biden, and now Turnip.

But as for Musk, I always thought something was absolutely not right with him. I thought of him as a pandering populist with feudalistic tendencies. And I lost what little credibility with him back in 2015/6 with him screaming from Twitter about the flooded cave rescuer was a pedophile.

I also remember him launching the first starlink SATs, without any permission. Flooded the LEO with thousands of space junk. I'm just waiting for a Kessler syndrome event.

And come to find out, he also defrauded customers on FSD on teslas.

Basically, stay as far away as you can from anything musk. It will come toppling down. And when it does, all the devices will come with it. (Think of when IoT companies shut down, and equipment is now landfill)

aDyslecticCrow•56m ago
> I'm just waiting for a Kessler syndrome event.

That will thankfully never happen. LEO is a range, and Star-link is near the bottom of that range. Their satellites have a 5 year lifetime, because that's when the fuel needed to re-adjust their orbit runs out, and atmospheric drag pulls them down. A Kessler syndrome event in that orbital plane would resolve itself within a decade at most.

> Pity that BYD is banned in this country

BYD makes unreliably good EV's for the price. From a consumer perceptive it's a big loss. But i understand why we restrict their import if we want to keep that industry around ourselves (In particular lithium battery production). There is some truth to china using it as a leverage. That being said... the approach Biden and especially Trump took to supposedly help the local industry is ... a bit crude.

mac-monet•1h ago
Altman, Amodai and Musk seem to have no problem outright lying about the capabilities they have or the potential of what they're working on, in order to drum up hype. It sounds cool in the moment but it gets so old so fast. And with real costs in this case.
fukka42•1h ago
Crazy that people are still funding this Nazi
epolanski•51m ago
Politics aside I'd say it's more confusing why would they open their wallets based on future expectations.

It's a car, not an early access videogame, where you're partially funding future development.

maxdo•1h ago
Just to balance this article.

HW3 owner. Car drives really good on FSD as for 5 years old car , it’s not even close to anything that was on the market , I still receive updates .

Any short trip or long trip when I’m lazy I simply turn it on, and it works perfect 99% of the time. Both highway and local roads.

When I’m in the gym and it’s raining or snowing , I press the button and car actually comes to me. It used to be broken now they fixed it. It recently also start to park itself after fsd route is over. How awesome is that for a 5 years old car ??

Why should I be upset ? Do I want free hardware ? Sure . Is $7k I paid a fair price ? Yeah . go check modern offering from any other company . They charge you comparable price for way less functionality. In the world where bmw tries to charge you every month for heated seats , I think it’s a fair price.

Oh yeah , I live in New York , I use fsd almost daily for 5+ years . In this very busy setup 0 accidents . Which is rare even for an experienced human driver.

JumpCrisscross•42m ago
> Why should I be upset ?

You shouldn't. If you're happy, enjoy it and move on. Others being upset doesn't negate your right to be happy. Just as your experience doesn't negate someone being upset about feeling they were lied to.

> I live in New York , I use fsd almost daily for 5+ years . In this very busy setup 0 accidents . Which is rare even for an experienced human driver

FSD was sold as Waymo. Unsupervised. Tesla is unable to match that capability on its newest hardware so far.

ramzez•38m ago
here in the uk, I paid and we don't even have FSD yet
matthewdgreen•33m ago
I'm a 2018 model year owner who also paid for FSD. The current FSD is not "fine" or "FSD" at all. It requires constant monitoring because one out of every 50-100 decisions will be problematic. Even the highway driving (autopilot), which was great initially, has recently degraded in quality: now it's much harder to get it to consistently stay in one lane or choose the speed I want to go.

Tesla knows the current FSD isn't fine; if it was, they wouldn't be upgrading the hardware to handle bigger models. So there's nothing surprising about expecting Tesla to deliver the same hardware to people who already paid them for the product they're still trying to deliver. If you're satisfied not receiving the full product you paid for, that's fine, of course. Heck, you're free to write Tesla a donation check. But Tesla should deliver the product (or a refund) to those who aren't.

vardump•5m ago
"Even the highway driving (autopilot), which was great initially, has recently degraded in quality"

Are you sure it's not a hardware or calibration issue? Disclaimer: I don't own a Tesla, but I'm just pointing out that it could also be a hardware issue.

stetrain•26m ago
It can be best in the market and still not what was promised.

Tesla has gained part of their stock valuation and customer base over the years by promising Level 5 FSD. As in, you can sleep while the car drives you to work, or the car can go make money for you as a Robotaxi on the Tesla Network when you aren't using it.

They haven't delivered those things which they have been promising to customers since 2016.

runako•24m ago
> They charge you comparable price for way less functionality.

BYD's comparable offering is generally free/included in the car's price.

Separately, I can't believe we are still discussing a product called "Full Self Driving" that is not "full self driving." Paying big companies to lie to us is not a recipe for building a better world.

dvrj101•23m ago
Article clearly mentions multiple lawsuits in multiple countries, by what common sense one guy's experience unrelated to fake promises made by company will balance the article.
fred_is_fred•55m ago
"If you are a HW3 owner and still think that Tesla is going to retrofit your up to 10-years-old car with a computer that is going to make self-driving, you are being delusional."

I think this is the target market. Delusional people.

michelb•50m ago
Good thing it's not a car company, so a reboot is easy.
ajross•38m ago
Not to engage with the hyperbole angle here, but just to call out the spin in the headling:

Tesla has shipped 8 million cars total. Maybe 70% of them (including mine) have the HW3 computer that the article claims won't do FSD. Of those, maybe 10% (I'm one) actually purchased the FSD product[1]. So figure like 500k cars actually affected.

If the cost to Tesla of a HW4 upgrade is less than $2000 (it's likely *much* less, this isn't particularly fancy hardware and it requires no sensor or other upgrades, it's just a board swap), then we're looking at "sub-billion" and not "multi-billion-dollar iceberg".

It's a $1.4T company. If everything falls out like Electrek[2] expects, it might rise to "Really very notable recall". Hardly a Titanic collision.

[1] As opposed to renting it, for which there would be no remedy. You can't sue for a rental product that you claim doesn't do what you wanted. If you didn't want it, why did you pay for it? At most you get the first month's fee refunded.

[2] Electrek has been expecting Tesla to fail for like seven years now.

ionwake•33m ago
I like Tesla but its def the new "never preorder ur game based on the latest viral video " vibe atm
Geee•32m ago
Are the cameras or other sensors different in HW4 vs. HW3? The compute unit might be quite easy to upgrade, but cameras probably aren't.
throwaway150919•28m ago
I feel like there is a bad sci-fi story here, where an Oligarch lies over and over and robs people blind. The revolution happens, and then instead of the guillotine, the Oligarch is beheaded by a chainsaw. The executioner will arrive in a Cybertruck.
WA•25m ago
The bad sci-fi story is that the Oligarch will get away with it, will die of old age peacefully while having scammed millions of people along the way and the average person foots the bill. No happy ending.
Workaccount2•27m ago
Electrek missed the boat

Tesla is now a robotics company, and their car business is now a rounding error of their future potential. Their robotaxi business is also not really important either.

See Tesla will now be building fully autonomous robots. This will allow Elon Stark to lock on to multi-trillion dollar revenues that are just around the corner once they dial in these last few bolts of the Optimus bot. Forget everything about the cars and the taxi. Those are outdated and irrelvant. Fill you head with visions of Tesla bots being everywhere all the time doing everything for you. By the end of 2026 there will be 100 billion Tesla bots sold. So the stock is grossly undervalued. Go buy the stock please god buy the stock how the fuck is tesla ever going to fill the boots of a $1.5T company with collapsing revenue and the veil of empty promises slipping off.

ml-anon•13m ago
It’s sad we had to get to paragraph three to understand it was parody.
rho4•9m ago
I really hope hacker news does not also turn into a Bash-Elon-Club like electrek.co (used to love that blog). But this comment section does not bode well.

Dario Amodei Statement on American AI Leadership

https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-dario-amodei-american-ai-leadership
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RFK Jr. to unveil new guidance encouraging more saturated fats

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Shutdown with No Clear End Poses New Economic Threat

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Show HN: ModelSignature – Get end-user feedback for your OS AI models

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After closing coal plants, Idaho Power is the rare utility cutting rates

https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/after-closing-coal-plants-idaho-power-is-the-rare-utility-cutt...
2•voxadam•3m ago•0 comments

AI Wins Imitation Game: Readers Prefer Fanfic Written by ChatGPT

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/21/ai_wins_imitation_game_readers/
1•Dotnaught•5m ago•0 comments

Vibe Coding Without Losing Your Skills

1•kamil1300•5m ago•0 comments

CEO Says His Firm May Be the Cause of United Airlines Mid-Flight Emergency

https://twitter.com/johndeanl/status/1980462264974209292
1•c420•7m ago•0 comments

It wasn't space debris that struck a United Airlines plane–was a weather balloon

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/the-mystery-object-that-struck-a-plane-in-flight-it-was-pro...
2•pseudolus•9m ago•0 comments

Technical Position Paper on Confidential Computing

https://cyber.gouv.fr/en/publications/technical-position-paper-confidential-computing
1•kerneis•11m ago•0 comments

Building a Honeypot Field That Works

https://css-tricks.com/building-a-honeypot-field-that-works/
1•speckx•11m ago•0 comments

Money, muscles and anxiety: why the manosphere clicked with young men

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2025/oct/21/why-the-manosphere-clicked-for-...
1•ljf•13m ago•0 comments

Jellyfin 10.11.0

https://jellyfin.org/posts/jellyfin-release-10.11.0/
2•fparat•14m ago•1 comments

The Engineering of Niagara Falls [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mdvEtmo1pM
2•crescit_eundo•15m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ghswap – CLI tool for managing multiple GitHub accounts

https://github.com/shubhamV123/ghswap
1•shubham213•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: W++ – Garbage-Collected Threads

1•sinisterMage•17m ago•0 comments

The Evolution of Prop Trading in 2025: Technology, Access, and Opportunity

https://propfirmplus.com/
1•malavika_manoj•18m ago•1 comments

Why can't I buy a small smartphone?

https://www.ft.com/content/63320013-9831-4940-b79d-a26d76ecb4bd
2•sandbach•18m ago•1 comments

Apple employees have 'concerns' over Siri performance in early iOS 26.4 builds

https://9to5mac.com/2025/10/19/apple-employees-concerned-by-early-ios-26-4-apple-intelligence-sir...
2•speckx•20m ago•0 comments

Termite farmers fine-tune their weed control

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/10/termite-farmers-fine-tune-their-weed-control/
1•PaulHoule•20m ago•0 comments

Elon Musk threatens to leave Tesla if he doesn't get his ridiculous pay

https://electrek.co/2025/10/20/elon-musk-threatens-leave-tesla-tsla-if-he-doesnt-ridiculous-pay/
2•bdcravens•21m ago•1 comments

Building Real-Time Apps with Cloudflare Workers and RedwoodSDK

https://simpletechguides.com/comparisons/cloudflare-workers-vs-redwoodsdk-real-time-apps/
2•ritzaco•23m ago•1 comments

Soniox released STT model v3 - A new standard for understanding speech

https://soniox.com/blog/2025-10-21-soniox-v3
1•raluk•23m ago•0 comments

How Hard Is It to Dim the Sun?

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2025/10/21/how-hard-is-it-to-dim-the-sun/
2•geox•24m ago•0 comments

I built JobHive – a $10/month tool to organize your chaotic job search

https://jobhiveapp.com/
1•CrtlKenny•24m ago•3 comments

Show HN: RailGPT, train travel assistant

https://www.railgpt.app
2•joeharwood3•24m ago•0 comments

The Beautiful Prison: Why We Choose the AI Bubble

https://medium.com/ducky-ai/the-beautiful-prison-why-we-choose-the-ai-bubble-c1d4eb88fdd2
3•JunNotJune•26m ago•0 comments

Why did NASA's chief just shake up the agency's plans to land on the Moon?

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/10/nasas-acting-leader-seeks-to-keep-his-job-with-new-lunar-la...
3•rbanffy•27m ago•0 comments

Qiskit C API enables new end-to-end quantum and HPC workflows

https://www.ibm.com/quantum/blog/c-api-enables-end-to-end-hpc-demo
1•rbanffy•27m ago•0 comments

Ethereum Foundation Faces Internal Revolt

https://unchainedcrypto.beehiiv.com/p/ethereum-foundation-faces-internal-revolt
4•wslh•30m ago•0 comments