Tiger
Active Member
They will make tempting upgrade offers until there are a handful of these left. To throw in some conspiracy theories, maybe they will remotely crash them remaining ones and replace them after being totaled
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Wiki FSD’s Earliest Adopters Still Waiting
- Thread starter Lowchrg
- Start date
They will make tempting upgrade offers until there are a handful of these left. To throw in some conspiracy theories, maybe they will remotely crash them remaining ones and replace them after being totaled
hybridbear
Active Member
That provides an interesting twist to Tesla's offer to give a one-time FSD Transfer. If it gets older owners (like us) to trade it our cars then Tesla can remove FSD from that older car & re-sell it with the new lower promise while also selling a new car that is less capable (no USS) and has a lower FSD promise.
dbldwn02
Active Member
Yup...Exactly why I'm not falling for this "amnesty offer"
What's the chance of anything coming from that older car promise? I think pretty unlikely. I'm passing on this amnesty offer, but going to have to think really hard when I hit the battery warranty expiration.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
I think it's exceedingly likely at least a refund of FSD (with interest) would come from that older promise as it was pretty explicitly promising L4 or higher.
Though I imagine they'll also offer some kind of (potentially better) trade-up offer before they admit they have to do that if they ACTUALLY have some HWx capable of L4 by then.
I think L4 FSD is so far away that the impact would be minimal for the oldest cars as most will be off the road or out of the original owner's possession.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
I expect there'd be a class action to resolve it far sooner than that- the oldest L4 FSD promised cars are 7 years old this fall- average age of new car ownership in the US is 8.4 years last I saw. Once you fail to deliver within the average length of ownership of the thing you're on a pretty easy path to a jury using the reasonable person standard deciding you failed to deliver it at all.
dbldwn02
Active Member
Challenge accepted!
This isn't relevant. A company's factual promises about their products do not only apply to the initial purchaser, just like warranties aren't tied to the original owner.
It would be trivial for 2nd, 3rd, or any further owners to define damages caused by learning at some point in the future that the cars are not actually L4 capable. They bought the car at a specific price understanding that the car was capable. It is worth less if it is not, and that's damages.
If that wasn't true, nothing anyone advertised about their products would apply, since you're almost always the 2nd owner, as the retailer you bought from had ownership of the item before you did. Including most cars bought from dealerships. They posess the title between the manufacturer and the purchaser.
boonedocks
MS LR Blk/Blk 19”
I hope there is no “CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT?
As for a refund….I think a lot of us bought FSD on our 2016/2017 cars when Tesla had a true
sale trying to raise some capital when times were hard. My guess is they will come in and say, here is your $3,000, we are removing FSDB and we are done with you. You should have taken our deal!!
So he's finally admitting that Tesla lied to me when they claimed that my 2018 Model 3 had "all the necessary hardware" to be a robotaxi? Not only have they had to replace hardware for purchasers of FSD, but now they're saying they cannot upgrade the hardware on my car!
Offering to allow purchasers of FSD to transfer FSD to their next Tesla does not change the fact that they lied about the capability of the cars. What they told me was that my car had all the needed hardware and could be upgraded to FSD at any time with a mere OTA update. They warned me it could cost more if I didn't buy it right away, but they promised it would be possible. Not on a new car five or ten years later, but on the car I purchased in 2018.
And for FSD buyers, "amnesty" seems to mean they will honor your purchase of FSD only if you buy a new car from them! WTF??? If you paid for FSD they should have to give you a new car for free if they cannot upgrade your car! Or buy your car back for the full price you paid including all options, because it's not just the price of the FSD: You bought that car because FSD was promised. If they do not deliver full robo-taxi capability, they have defrauded you!
It was not only a lie, but it was an irresponsible and inexcusable lie, because (as I said at the time!) there is no way they could know what hardware would be needed to run software that had not been created yet.
To be clear, I knew when I bought my car that FSD would never be able to run on it. I knew there would have to be hardware improvements once the software existed. I bought my car for what it could do on Day 1, not for the lying, dishonest, fraudulent promises they were making. My question has always been: When you are building and selling the best car in the world, why do you have to lie with claims that it will be able to do even more "some day"?
They build the best cars on the road and then they steal from their loyal customers by selling them promises they cannot deliver on. It's pretty messed up.
Has anyone tried to QUANTIFY this? For S, X and early M3 owners, historically there was about an 8% take rate overall for FSD..not sure what that actual number ended up at by ~ Mar 2019 when the marketing and product description changed. But, does anyone HAVE the number of units sold X, S, and M3 let’s say up to Feb 2019? We could probably put an 8-15% FSD take rate RANGE on that and find the universe of OWNERS that Tesla might be having to do SOMETHING for going forward.
I DOUBT that a lawsuit, class action etc. would be fruitful, but for TESLA at some point in the next 12-24 months there is probably going to be some over supply period where they could offer to that group, FSD transfer to a new purchased vehicle (similar to now, but with less sense of urgency - and probably SOME planning vs. NONE)..
Are we talking 25K owners who fit into that category, or is it 100K or 250K - most likely NOT the latter.
Did I miss something? When did Tesla offer Robotaxi as an option when purchasing the car? Or when did they have Robotaxi as a "coming soon" option when buying a car? I bought in 2021, and the only thing they had was FSD Capability with Autosteer on City Streets "Coming Soon". I went to Telsa's site to order a new car and I don't see Robotaxi listed anywhere there either. Was it offered in a small window of time and then removed?
When I bought my 2018 Model 3, I was told it had "all the necessary hardware" for what Tesla was describing as Level 5 autonomy, though they didn't use that term. They said that if I paid for "FSD" it would be capable of driving all the way across the country without any person in the car, and that it would be capable of carrying children to school or soccer practice and picking them up after, without any driver in the car. Effectively, that would be a Level 5 car.
They said that the exact timeline for this would depend on the development of the software, and they stressed that mostly, it would depend on regulatory approval. They said this would be for my car; the car I was buying, not some hypothetical future car. Any reasonable person would understand that this would happen during the expected lifetime of my car, because they were talking about my specific car, not Tesla cars in general.
When they switched from HW2.5 to HW3 they were admitting that my car did not have the needed hardware. Now they have admitted that FSD will require hardware that they will not be able to retrofit into my car. They are admitting that the promise they made to me was a lie.
Some time later (I don't remember exactly when) they quietly and without fanfare stopped promising what would be a Level 5 car and changed their website to promise Level 2 autosteer on city streets. They changed their definition of "FSD" from robotaxi-capable to "autopilot with NAV" on city streets, Level 2, meaning that a driver must be present and always aware and ready to take over without notice, and the driver is fully responsible. They never came out and admitted that they were changing their definition of "FSD" from "a fully-autonomous car" to a driver-assist system intended for city use. They never apologized to the people who had paid for a robotaxi-capable car, which they have now acknowledged they can not deliver to those older cars. And they never apologized to the people who had paid for FSD but who now won't even be able to get the reduced version now being offered unless they're willing to buy a new car.
Tesla is saying "Buy a new car and we won't charge you a second time for the FSD package that you already paid for." And if you do, the "FSD" package you'll get will be nothing like the FSD package you were promised when you originally paid for it.
Best cars in the world, without FSD. But they were sold in a dishonest manner because they promised something they could not deliver. And now if you pay for "FSD" all you get is a Level 2 system which no rational person could argue deserves to be called "Full self-driving."
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
There already was one when EAP first was out and Tesla ended up settling and paying folks out (thought because they DID deliver the features, only a year late, the payouts were relatively small)
Failure to delivery something after 8 years it probably would be....not so small.
As for a refund….I think a lot of us bought FSD on our 2016/2017 cars when Tesla had a true
They of course can't force you to take the refund, and you'd still have legal basis to ask for more than 3k (not only interest on the 3k, but arguably if you relied on the promise for why you bought the car in the first place at least some portion of the car price as well)
I mean, they admitted that years ago when HW3 was announced-- they just avoided any liability by giving FSD buyers free upgrades.
Not can't- won't because it'd cost too much.
That's not quite how liability works though... You have to demonstrate damages.
If they promised you had all the HW needed- and they found out later they had to upgrade it, and did so for free, you haven't "lost" anything of quantifiable value from the original claim that wasn't true- so they don't "owe" you anything.
It'd be the fact they refuse to continue upgrading that'd be a problem (if they don't offer some other alternative of which several have been suggested)
There's PARTS of this that would form the basis of some legal arguments... you're not getting full what-you-paid-in-2018 refunds of course because you've driven the car all those years-- You might well be able to argue for a generous what-its-worth-today buyback with full value plus interest for FSD on top though...but that'd be for a jury to decide if it comes to that.
More likely Tesla would come forward with a significantly more generous trade-in offer that most would be ok with it (assuming they have actual for-reals L4 or better FSD to deliver in those new cars- which presently they do not...)
145,846 Model 3 and 99,394 Model S and X delivered in 2018... 10% would be roughly 24,500 people... you'd have buyers in the first quarter of 2019 too which are 50,900 Model 3 and 12,100 Model S and X so perhaps you get to about 31k people again assuming 10% take rate.
2017 is almost 100% S/X buyers- plus part of Q4 of 2016 which again S/X only... so you're maybe ballpark in the 45-50k range total for everyone who bought FSD prior to the March 2019 change.
Tesla offers an entirely different set of automation features split among two products- EAP and FSD- until roughly March 2019.
From fall 2016 until then they were promising something that was at least L4 self- driving (arguably L5, but I think you'd have a VERY hard time proving L5 in court).
Only after the ~March 2019 change was FSD entirely modified in the description during sale to explicitly be an L2 only product with aspirations to maybe do more some day but no promises.
I know we've covered this before- with you specifically, but they promised at least L4. As I said before, and just above in this post, L5 would be a tougher (though not impossible) haul to convince a jury of.
But if Tesla delivered you a reasonably wide ODD L4 system I suspect you'd lose any lawsuit you tried over "only" getting that.
Of course they don't have any such a thing to deliver to you.
boonedocks
MS LR Blk/Blk 19”
I was part of they lawsuit with my 2nd Model S. The amounts paid to the actual owners of Teslas was a mere pittance.
If a class action law firm gets involved they’ll make bank but owners will get a couple of bucks and a “we are done with you, bye”.
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
The payout was small, because the damages were small.
You got exactly what you paid for, you just got it roughly 12 months late.
Here, you'd have gotten nothing you paid for, 8+ years later.
Completely difference scenario for figuring damages.
boonedocks
MS LR Blk/Blk 19”
After dealing with Tesla since early 2015 concerning their stand on advertising of features from HW1 and forward, I am not blind at all to what will happen. The BEST that will happen is a refund of a partial amount of FSD and removal of FSD from the car or keep it and be happy.
What Tesla SHOULD do is offer FSD transfer to any new car bought with removal from a previously owned car until all of the liability is behind them. Elons quip about "this is a one time amnesty" is the only hope us 2016 - (maybe 2018) owners have that that one time offer may come again or that be the option ordered by a court in lieu of a cash option.
This is always such an amateur take on class actions.
The action in 2018 was about a delay on EAP features, not a complete failure to deliver. The lawsuit was never about a full refund on EAP, or FSD. Which is why payments were tied to when you bought your car, and were not huge.
There were 33,000 class members. Tesla was required to pay $5.4M in damages. So the reason you didn't get much money is because the court itself didn't find massive damages here.
The court assigned $1M of that to the lawyers. That's less than 20%. More importantly, it's $30 per class member. When was the last time you could hire a lawyer for $30? It should be noted that normal lawyer contingency fees are 20%-50%, so this was very cheap.
Would you seriously prefer that nobody had sued Tesla? Would you have sued Tesla yourself? Do you think you could have gotten a full refund for EAP, while paying less than a few thousand in lawyer's fees, which would have been required to net $280 or more?
People always focus on how much the lawyers make, but it's actually the courts that set these fees, and they pay reasonable rates for the hours of work put in. And of course, the lawyers are doing this at risk- if they lose, they don't get paid at all. If you ever wonder why there aren't more class actions against Tesla, one might look at this and see that the lawyers didn't make bank, and maybe future lawyers don't really see it as worth it to go up against Tesla.
The reality is that for damages related to most consumer transactions like from some $10 item to even $6,000 EAP, it's really hard for an individual consumer to sue over those and not have any recovery of damages be completely overwhelmed by lawyer fees. Without class actions, there would be zero way to hold major companies to any kind of appropriate behavior. If every single person had to sue individually, they could just run around stealing $3,000 from every customer and make even more bank than the lawyers.
Remember, Tesla here is the one that has done wrong, not the lawyers. Be annoyed that lawyers had to sue Tesla because Tesla misbehaved, not annoyed at lawyers or courts for the minimum payments you got. Be happy that at least someone with more initiative than yourself is doing their best to hold Tesla to account for their promises.
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