Will Tesla punish their supporters, or refund $3,000?

[Ludalicious]

I purchased a 2014 SRT jeep in 2013. The dealer wouldnt even show me the invoice. I had to over pay and every other dealer was also doing the same. I overpaid by 10k and allot of people that wanted one needed to pay a premium too at the time. You agreed to a price.... and now feel as if they owe you something?

Why not just be happy for others getting a discount. Millions of people who would of been financially stretched can now afford a Tesla.

If you purchased a Tesla and didn't believe in Elons vision of anyone being able to afford one. You probably should just sell it now.

 

[Dutchie]

Give people who already got FSD an FSD credit which is transferable. You can use it for your next car or sell it to someone else. That way it doesn't cost Tesla a dime now.

 

[run-the-joules]

Why not just be happy for others getting a discount. Millions of people who would of been financially stretched can now afford a Tesla.

If you purchased a Tesla and didn't believe in Elons vision of anyone being able to afford one. You probably should just sell it now

I’m not upset about the pricing personally but, someone doesn’t have to subscribe to someone’s vision or mission to be a customer. I don’t particularly give a damn who can and can’t afford something, nor am I out to save the world or stick it to BIG OIL (omg! I said the name of the deeeeeemon), or any of that stuff.

I wanted a car that would improve my happiness by making me stress less in traffic. I got it ‍

 

[C141medic]

I paid the $8k upfront. Not expecting any refund. That said, free unlimited supercharging or extended warranty would be a nice bone to throw at us.

Give people who already got FSD an FSD credit which is transferable. You can use it for your next car or sell it to someone else. That way it doesn't cost Tesla a dime now.

Exactly. There are many ways that Tesla can do right for the people who paid for FSD early on without it costing the company anything.

 

[Ezri10]

Let’s just keep our voices heard.

 

[TheLocNar]

Uh- they'd only need to refund the people who bought FSD.

Which is a small fraction of only buyers from the last 2 years.

Probably not a very different # from the number of P3D buyers who got much larger $5000 performance upgrade package refunds from Tesla when the price dropped. Including all the P3D- buyers who didn't even BUY the performance upgrade package in the first place

Not every P3D owner asked for $5k back.

I paid for EAP/FSD when I placed my order a year ago in March. Not expecting any refunds. I’ll get the free upgradecto HW 3. That’s fine by me.

And yes. Tesla sure could sweeten the pot. But for a struggling business, writing refund checks isn’t the way to go.

 

[cybergates]

tesla has another option which would not really cost them anything (at least in terms of cash): Free supercharging. They used to give lifetime charging for referrals (non-transferable so it would stop once the car is sold which is fine). I wouldn't be surprised if elon takes this route. (maybe he could program it so the stations which are constantly overcrowded are exempt from free charging)

 

[happyzod]

tesla has another option which would not really cost them anything (at least in terms of cash): Free supercharging. They used to give lifetime charging for referrals (non-transferable so it would stop once the car is sold which is fine). I wouldn't be surprised if elon takes this route. (maybe he could program it so the stations which are constantly overcrowded are exempt from free charging)

Free supercharging actually costs them quite a bit of money. Not in free cash flow but in gross margins and earnings. It is an expensive perk, I estimate to be worth at least $3k.

 

[run-the-joules]

Free supercharging actually costs them quite a bit of money. Not in free cash flow but in gross margins and earnings. It is an expensive perk, I estimate to be worth at least $3k.

If I paid $3k for unlimited supercharging my car would need to keep running for 30 years to break even.

 

[gilscales]

If I paid $3k for unlimited supercharging my car would need to keep running for 30 years to break even.

Only 15 years for me, I seem to be in the $200 a year range.
This car will be someone else's long before that.

 

[chimerasaurus]

So whoever bought Tesla until recently will get EAP+FSD for $5,000!
Either you paid $5k and will get free FSD, or you didn't, and can buy both for $5k!
Tesla punishing whoever trusted them the most, and paid for EAP+FSD!!!
Wouldn't it be appropriate to REFUND $3,000 for those customers just like Tesla refunded $5k the Performance+ buyers???

So, a few things about this post are factually inaccurate based on my experience from this past week.

I took delivery of a M3D mid-week last week. The following day the changes to EAP/AP/FSD were announced, along with the changes to pricing. In my case the price difference was $2,900. I contacted two service centers, spoke with six delivery specialists and none of them offered a refund (which made the most sense to me from a cost/benefit.) A few offered the promise to FSD, but refused to mention costs, what was specifically included, or time-frames.

Ultimately, I was told if I really wanted the 2.9k, I had to return and re-order the car - which is exactly what I did. Personally, I saw it as a very silly outcome for Tesla, because they're going to lose much more than that on the whole transaction; it would he been easier to just credit me the difference.

Point being, though, they generally refused to budge (at least in my case) when I could just return the entire thing. Others may have gotten different "promises" but they are just IOUs.

 

[run-the-joules]

Only 15 years for me, I seem to be in the $200 a year range.
This car will be someone else's long before that.

Yup exactly. I thought I’d keep this car for 2-3 years. It’ll probably be a little longer now, maybe 5-6 at the outside if FSD actually happens and it can serve as a commute pod for me or the other half and I get something more interesting as a toy.

But over a decade? Nah.

 

[Darscot]

A few hundred in free super charging credit would go a long way. I was an early adopter and bought FSD, we had planned on going all in on a Y for my wife. If Tesla doesn’t do some sort of good will, no way I continue that level of loyalty towards them.

 

[electronblue]

The FSD purchase early on was to show support for Tesla and nothing else.

You forget/fail to mention something important that people paid for.

FSD had a feature: 8 active cameras in the software.

EAP had only 4 active cameras in the software.

This is how it was sold by Tesla, in the Design Studio, for a very long time. I get it that eventual Model 3 wordings were different but this was a very concerete reason to pay for FSD for a very long time. If you wanted 8 camera features you paid for FSD.

Then Tesla of course gave 8 active cameras for free to everyone.

 

[emmz0r]

I think you misinterpreted Tesla's promise. They stated that the price would be higher after purchase, and it was. They never stated that that would be the case forever. Software always gets cheaper eventually.

Software always gets cheaper eventually... Yeah.... after it's been released and stable for years. OR it's cheaper for everyone in the start to get the sales going. Neither is the case here.

 

[Prunesquallor]

So, a few things about this post are factually inaccurate based on my experience from this past week.

I took delivery of a M3D mid-week last week. The following day the changes to EAP/AP/FSD were announced, along with the changes to pricing. In my case the price difference was $2,900. I contacted two service centers, spoke with six delivery specialists and none of them offered a refund (which made the most sense to me from a cost/benefit.) A few offered the promise to FSD, but refused to mention costs, what was specifically included, or time-frames.

Ultimately, I was told if I really wanted the 2.9k, I had to return and re-order the car - which is exactly what I did. Personally, I saw it as a very silly outcome for Tesla, because they're going to lose much more than that on the whole transaction; it would he been easier to just credit me the difference.

Point being, though, they generally refused to budge (at least in my case) when I could just return the entire thing. Others may have gotten different "promises" but they are just IOUs.

So how far back in time do you want them to refund previous customers? One day? Two days? A week? A month? Forever? What's your rationale?

 

[emmz0r]

So how far back in time do you want them to refund previous customers? One day? Two days? A week? A month? Forever? What's your rationale?

Forever. The product is not yet delivered, it is a "preorder" so to speak. Orders also affect only HW2 and HW2.5 cars.

 

[commasign]

You forget/fail to mention something important that people paid for.

FSD had a feature: 8 active cameras in the software.

EAP had only 4 active cameras in the software.

This is how it was sold by Tesla, in the Design Studio, for a very long time. I get it that eventual Model 3 wordings were different but this was a very concerete reason to pay for FSD for a very long time. If you wanted 8 camera features you paid for FSD.

Then Tesla of course gave 8 active cameras for free to everyone.

Yep. Then with v9.0 update, Tesla announces that “all 8 cameras are now active” even for cars that didn’t pay for autopilot.

Honestly, the October 2016 FSD demo video was pretty slick, so I think a lot of people paid for FSD thinking that would be coming pretty soon (subject to regulatory approval of course).

 

[DiamondHands]

Yep. Then with v9.0 update, Tesla announces that “all 8 cameras are now active” even for cars that didn’t pay for autopilot.

Honestly, the October 2016 FSD demo video was pretty slick, so I think a lot of people paid for FSD thinking that would be coming pretty soon (subject to regulatory approval of course).

I've posted elsewhere as well that my wife and I had become enamored by that self-driving demo video. Though at the time I had written on this forum that I thought that said regulatory approval would take years, hence I wasn't going all in by paying for FSD, I also thought that drivers would soon be able to enjoy many FSD-like AP features with human oversight (i.e. the steering wheel "nag"). Like many Tesla owners and non-owners, judging from that evidently to-some-degree fallacious demo video, I had not anticipated that even rudimentary AP would be released in small, limited, mostly useless increments (i.e. max AP speed 30-35 MPH). It's been over 2 years since that video has been released, and my now-obsolete HW2 EAP-enabled X still has not yet, in my personal experience, reached parity in terms of reliability with AP1. I absolutely would not drive another vehicle besides Tesla, and so now I find myself actually thinking of paying another $3K ($2K per twitter Elon?), hoping that whatever upgrades I will be paying for will give me, at the least, reliable AP behavior.

 

[commasign]

I find myself actually thinking of paying another $3K ($2K per twitter Elon?), hoping that whatever upgrades I will be paying for will give me, at the least, reliable AP behavior.

Yeah, I’ve been wondering if HW2/2.5 has reached it’s limit in terms of ability to even handle Navigate on Autopilot. Is that why NoA was moved from the autopilot package to the FSD package for new cars? Current Enhanced Autopilot owners will be very pissed if NoA performs significantly better on HW3.