"Please note, customers who choose leasing over owning will not have the option to purchase their car at the end of the lease, because with full autonomy coming in the future via an over-the-air software update, we plan to use those vehicles in the Tesla ride-hailing network."
Elon once again promising fully autonomous vehicles in 3 years.
Also, isn't this a rental? A lease normally has a residual, so you can choose whether to buy the car.
We don't even have "full autonomous" trains, planes, or trucks yet.
Unfortunately, it seems many people are not going to accept auto-cars with less than airplane like safety levels. Of course that will never happen. So yes, "full autonomous" vehicles are a long way off (probably forever), unless someone (Waymo?, Tesla?) can show they are much safer and some kind of national or state level laws are passed to restrict the legal liability of the makers and owners of such vechiles. Sort of like how ski resorts would not exist without special laws restricting liablity.
Some people think of it as being able to drive anywhere at any time in any condition. This is unlikely to ever happen before AGI. What matters in Tesla's case is more likely being able to drive in some small number of places in specific circumstances without a physical driver in the vehicle (but possibly a remote one to handle unusual circumstances).
Now I don't think Tesla is going to even get to that in 3 years, but it wouldn't surprise me to see Waymo there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...
This seems like a scheme to both boost future new car sales and effectively “sell” the same car twice.
Doesn't mean anything here, other than it is really hard to predict what "dumb" choices companies will make.
There's so many indicators that FSD is ages away from being safe, and so many stories of Tesla's just randomly steering in towards barriers and needing quick action from their drivers, even as recent as last month.
Comparing something to Theranos only works if that something doesn't have a working product. You can see that Tesla's autopilot works. It isn't perfect yet but it is a real thing.
Weirdly, this hasn't seemed to tarnish the reputation of tesla in the eyes of it's fans.
It's yet another red flag for buying a Tesla, as if you have something happen that is an uninsured liability to the car, or won't be resolved in the timeframe at the lease, you're stuck.
I agree that it seems to be a rental. If the business expects to continue to make updates to the car's software assuming that it will be determining factors for its value, it will be difficult to determine the residual value at the end.
Does that mean that leases will cease to exist? That we will find a way to price the software updates? or that older cars will stop being updated the same way cellphones & OS systems are?
If only it were like software. Producing another marginal unit of software is trivial.
It's one way to double dip on the same vehicle and get more than 100% in revenue in respect to the original MSRP.
But sure throw that line in to cash in on the hype of ride sharing IPOs and FSD so they can raise a nice equity round in the near future.
This is all probably moot, as I imagine Tesla's lease has a clause allowing it to unilaterally change the rules at any time, and it has displayed no reticence in doing so over other issues.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-our-vehicle-lineup
"Given the popularity of the Standard Plus relative to the Standard, we have made the decision to simplify our production operations to better optimize cost, minimize complexity and streamline operations. As a result, Model 3 Standard will now be a software-limited version of the Standard Plus, and we are taking it off the online ordering menu, which just means that to get it, customers will need to call us or visit any one of the several hundred Tesla stores. Deliveries of Model 3 Standard will begin this weekend."
"Its range will be limited by 10%, and several features will be disabled via software (including our onboard music streaming service, navigation with live traffic visualization, and heated seats). Similar to other software-limited vehicles produced in the past, Standard customers will have the option to upgrade to a Standard Plus at any time. Similarly, anyone who has already bought Standard Plus and wants to convert to Standard is welcome to do so, and we will provide a refund for the difference in cost."
It's pretty confident to offer both upgrade and downgrade options between the two.
edit: I did read the link and I still don't understand.
The update is that they won't be making a physically distinct Standard Range model, it will be physically the same as the $39k model with software limitations.
I know they really want to make the Model T of electric cars, but it took about a decade of development for Ford to deliver one under $500. And I don't think Tesla has quite mastered the science of car production yet.
plus the added bonus is that you can yourself choose to buy features you skipped out on earlier. It also would be a boon for resale as well. Letting the buyer decide to add options you passed on.
35k base model should probably been adjusted for inflation but Musk's ego boxed Tesla. Let alone that its one thousand or twelve hundred in delivery plus taxes on top of that 35k price so there never really is a 35k car. In the end I look at it this way, if your budget is so inflexible that less than a five percent change in price is make or break you should not be buying it in the first place.
I wonder if there will ever be a sub 30k car by Tesla someday. The average new car is around 37k now, so about half the market is under that.
Purely as an outsider looking in it seems like there's a lot of caveat emptor about buying a Tesla: wait times seem apt to increase, models seem like they'll be arbitrarily subject to conditions, and random conditions seem to get attached about which models can and can't use chargers.
There also seems a high likelihood of waiting a long time and paying $2,500 deposit for something which never arrives. And if you do get stiffed, there seems to be an attitude of 'it's your fault' (usually for not spending even more money with Tesla).
Not the kind of consistency I'd want when making an investment in a car, to be honest.
Any examples of this? Pretty sure everything has arrived at some point, albeit a delay.
I could understand all the other carmakers being lured by the bells and whistles of "self-driving" marketing blitz over turning their cars into EVs, but I expected more from Tesla.
Making great EVs that are also affordable should have always remained Tesla's #1 priority. Last I checked, Musk said he wanted the world to switch to EVs and the way to do that is through them making cheaper EVs with each generation. The priority shouldn't be to keep adding gimmicks to those Teslas and keeping them more expensive than they need to be. Has he forgotten that?
I think all these self-driving options are being bundled into it because other car companies already add various forms of adaptive cruise/lane-keep to their base models so Tesla wants to have these things to stay competitive (prob adding the 'advanced functionality' to seem like they have a competitive edge).
I wish that Tesla did have a non-smart car option. On the flip side, that makes me sound like one of the tech late-adopters who didn't "need" a smartphone, where a regular phone could have sufficed. In 5 years time, there may not be non-AI (not necessarily full self-driving) cars.
FSD hardware is known as "HW3" (now known as "FSD Computer") and is not in any Teslas at the moment.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1111788218142216192?ref_...
For me it's like buying a base laptop. For my personal one, I'll always max the SSD and memory.
(I do like the feature where the car slows/stops when it encounters an obstacle directly ahead. As far as I know it shouldn't require machine-learning/privacy invasion, but it is harder and harder to get one without the other.)
Then you may want to check out the Nissan Leaf instead. Also Ford and Chevy have options. But bells and whistles is kinda Tesla's thing.
The main gripe I see is that Tesla misses deadlines or makes promises they cannot fulfill. Is this not super common in nearly every industry? Have none of you missed deadlines?
I remember this article[1]from last year stating GM would release fully autonomous cars with no steering wheel in 2019! Yet clearly that is not going to happen and I never heard any backlash, but I guess it's not cool to hate GM.
I also am astounded to see people constantly saying Autonomy is a decade+ away. They already have cars driving people 95% of their miles, which would've seemed impossible 6 years ago, and yet here we are, and the last 5% is going to take a decade? How many times are people going to doubt Elon before they realize they're betting against someone whose done the impossible many times over.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/12/16880978/gm-autonomous-ca...
How do you figure what they did should be something that is considered a positive? They are raising the price of the base car that was supposed to be for the masses. Now granted to a degree it was a bait and switch anyway given that most people interested in the car want the bells and whistles that they don't get on the base model anyway. Raising the base price to me seems to be something that should be considered a negative no matter the auto maker.
>astounded to see people constantly saying Autonomy is a decade+ away.
Because in all likelihood it is. What they've done in the last 6 years is impressive but wasn't impossible. Even if 95% of their miles can be done autonomously the other 5% is not to be snuffed at as being just as easy. I look at it as 80/20. They've done the 'easy' 80% of it, but the problem is now you're stuck with all the difficult next steps (ie one off situations, roads with no markers, construction, user driving mistakes, ect) as well as the potentials for legal liabilities if they go fully autonomous.
"The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."
I'm skeptical. I'd be surprised if more than 40% of my miles were freeway.
Call me when we have fully autonomous trains and then I'll start thinking about losing my skepticism about autonomous cars.
I didn't mean this was the average but I probably should have said commutes. My commute is nearly all highway and I basically don't touch the car from on-ramp to exit-ramp.
>Call me when we have fully autonomous trains and then I'll start thinking about losing my skepticism about autonomous cars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...
I plan to buy a Tesla in 2-3 years I just hope they can get their pricing and production streamlined before I do otherwise I’ll buy something German.
https://www.autoblog.com/2019/02/21/iihs-says-these-small-su...
Tesla has over-promised and under-delivered for years while maintaining a tremendous amount of hubris throughout.
The Internet is a weird and ridiculous place.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI
The podcast if you prefer:
This whole "Standard Plus model is so much more popular anyway" is a sick joke.
But reading the original Tesla announcement [1], it all seems reasonable. People were buying the Standard Plus model six times more often than the Standard model, so they got rid of it. Good.