Tesla Quietly Drops 'Full Self-Driving' Option As It Adds $45,000 Model 3 (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Elon Musk took to Twitter on Thursday evening to inform his followers of a new addition to the Model 3 lineup. This is not the long-awaited $35,000 version, however; the mid-range Model 3 starts at $45,000. Musk also revealed that the Model 3 ordering process has been simplified and now has fewer options. One that's missing -- from all new Tesla orders, not just the Model 3 -- is the controversial "full self-driving" option. The reason? It was "causing too much confusion," Musk tweeted. The mid-range Model 3s will be rear-wheel drive only, prompting some to wonder if the company was using software to limit battery capacity on existing RWD inventory in order to get it out of the door. But Tesla says it's able to build these slightly cheaper cars by using the same battery pack as the more expensive, longer-range cars but with fewer cells inside (so no future software upgrades can increase their range at a later date). While Tesla is promoting the car as costing as little as $30,700 by factoring in "gas savings" and all federal and local tax incentives, it did also announce last week that any new Tesla delivered after October 15th might not ship before the beginning of next year. As Ars Technica notes, "Any new Tesla delivered after January 1st 2019 (but before July 1st 2019) is only eligible for a $3,750 IRS credit."

Comments

Too much confusion?

[110010001000]

You mean "it doesn't work". Autonomous driving is a joke and will never happen. I can't wait until the new Tesla "AI chip" arrives though.

Re:Too much confusion?

[Spy Handler]

Elon is correct, it was pulled because of too much confusion. The autopilot kept getting too confused by white colored objects and pedestrians.

Re:Too much confusion?

[alvinrod]

The real issue was that the name was a poor choice. People put far too much confidence in it. Maybe that was going to happen no matter what since people are lazy, stupid fools, but the name probably exacerbated this greatly. Call it “Driver Assist” or something like that. It’s not supposed to drive you around or be flawless, but to react to a dangerous situation before you can when it’s capable of that.

Re:Too much confusion?

[Rei]

It was an option, it was never "pushed", and it was in no way shape or form "almost fatal for the entire company". Furthermore, contrary to bad reporting (including this article), you can still get FSD. What you can't do anymore is preorder it for a $2k discount; you can only add it in your Tesla account for the full $5k.

As a full self-driving pessimist, I have no interest. But of course it's always ever only been an option for optimists. If you think there haven't been endless discussions on the Tesla forums between the pessimists who think the optimists are dumb for giving money for a feature that's still in development, and the optimists who feel they're taking part in leading the way to a self-driving future.... well, drop by some time.

Re:Too much confusion?

[Rei]

Additionally (apart from noting that Slashdot hasn't bothered to report on Tesla's land purchase, hiring spree, and capital raise in China for the Shanghai Gigafactory): The $45k price includes PUP, which was from the very beginning announced as $5k. That slots the base price of the MR in at $40k (vs.the SR at $35k and the LR at $45k). PUP is, of course, non-optional at present, but they're steadily working their way down through the list.

I do however fully expect the same people who previously were shouting "WHERE ARE THE CHEAPER MODEL 3S???" to now start shouting "SEE, DEMAND FOR MODEL 3S HAS COLLAPSED", because of course, no scenario will ever make them happy, even when Tesla takes steps in the direction that they've been demanding.

The reason for this change is obvious, and the introduction of smaller battery pack Model 3s this fall had been a big topic of speculation on the Tesla forums. The reason is that Tesla's main limiting factor is no longer Fremont, or pack production at Giga, but rather the Panasonic cell lines at Giga. While Panasonic is accelerating their construction of three new cell lines (adding to the 10 that already exist; these are also supposed to be a new generation of faster lines), they are the holdup. By producing smaller pack vehicles, Tesla can produce about 20% more of them. This also means about 20% more customers get the full tax credit. They make it very tempting for people who were waiting on the SR to upgrade to the MR.

I, of course, don't like them stretching out the US market; I'd selfishly rather that they come straight to Europe where they haven't even started touching the demand for heavily optioned out vehicles ;) But it's understandable, given the tax credit situation. That said, IMHO, I don't expect that situation to last. I either expected it to be repealed or reformulated (there are bills in congress to do both of those things). I think there's very few people in either party who are happy with the US credit as it stands, as it's increasingly going to be working against US companies (Tesla first, then GM, then Nissan and Ford; three of the four closest to expiry are US manufacturers).

One last note is that their margin target for Q4 is 20%. With a 50:50 mix of MR:LR and a $2k manufacturing cost difference, and reasonable ASP assumptions, that means Tesla expects about 0% margin on an unoptioned MR, about 10% at the MR's ASP, and about 30% at the LR's ASP.

Re:Too much confusion?

[saloomy]

Well, lets get a few things strait. Autopilot and Full Self Driving are two completely different products Tesla sells.

Autopilot: Is available today, you can pay for it still, and it will work just as advertised. It is getting better and better with software updates (lane merging is smoother since 9.0, it detects objects around you more accurately, and will soon have "Drive on Nav" which will enable the Tesla to move between freeway to freeway intersections, weave through traffic to get around slow drivers, and find your Freeway exit.

Autopilot (for those of you who have never been in a cockpit), is a perfectly valid name for what the technology does, almost too perfect. Why?

1. Like autopilot, the actual pilot is required to be at the controls and aware 100% of the time. Pilots do this. They do not turn on autopilot on a 12 hour flight and go to schmooze with the hot flight attendants.

2. Like autopilot, its primary use is major causeways for the majority of the trip, not all of the trip. Sure. Autopilots could handle takeoff and landing, but pilots do this manually. Just like Tesla. Tesla say to use Autopilot on freeways. Tesla Autopilot doesn't handle stop signs and red lights yet, so surface driving (like when a plane taxis around the airport and takes off) is specifically in the hands of the pilot. See the similarities?

3. Like autopilot, it can help you avoid impacts. It isn't perfect, and can warn the pilot of impending crashes ("Pull up!", "Terrain").

Full Self Driving: This is a separate and independent feature of making the Autopilot handle self recharges (through equipped Supercharging stations), allowing it to handle itself on the vast majority of roads (including surface streets), and ultimately allowing someone to call their car to them from across the country with no driver required. This is the product Tesla took out of their "new car ordering" system, but allows you to add later (just as those who purchased a Tesla without the FSD option were and are still able to do.

Just thought I would clear all that up :)

Re:Too much confusion?

[drinkypoo]

They Prunella probably realised that the upgrades they need to add to the cars are going to cost more than 2k.
Plus the date keeps getting pushed back,

The latter is a real problem, but I suspect that more than the price of the hardware, the elimination of the discount is about having enough money to pay for the R&D phase they were in at the time.

Re:Too much confusion?

[misnohmer]

The real issue was that the name was a poor choice. People put far too much confidence in it. Maybe that was going to happen no matter what since people are lazy, stupid fools, but the name probably exacerbated this greatly. Call it “Driver Assist” or something like that. It’s not supposed to drive you around or be flawless, but to react to a dangerous situation before you can when it’s capable of that.

You obviously never read the feature description for Full Self Driving feature (FSD) described here. It was not a poor choice of a name, it was actually named very accurately for what it was supposed to. Here are some quotes of the said description which appeared when ordering it:
"All you will need to do is get in and tell the car where to go."
"Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densly packed freeways with cars moving at high speed. When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you."
"Please note that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine,"

Then Elon added tweets saying how you will be able to sleep on the back seat while the car drives you, or how you will be able to summon your car from across the country.

I would not call the ability for my car to drive by itself from Boston to L.A. a "driver assist".

Re: Too much confusion?

[MachineShedFred]

Except for every product that has had an option to pre-order, ever.

You are not a lawyer or law enforcement officer. Don't act like you know things you clearly do not.

Re: Too much confusion?

[Rei]

Giga = Gigafactory 1 = The factory in Sparks, Nevada. The one they're building in Shanghai is Giga 3, and they haven't even broken ground yet (hiring for construction and the signing ceremony was only in this past week). It has not been confirmed that Panasonic will be involved, but it's strongly suspected, as they've expressed interest.

Panasonic does already have a lot of production in Sparks - combined with their 18650 supply it makes up over half of the world's total EV battery capacity, in terms of kWh per year. But it's not enough. Tesla's been having to rob cells that were allocated toward Powerwalls and Powerpacks just to be able to do 5k vehicles per week.

If you want to know who's going to be producing - and thus selling - EVs, just follow the batteries.

Re: Too much confusion?

[Joce640k]

Deliveries of items ordered delayed past the original stated date must be refunded, or at least you must seek the approval of every customer who pre-ordered to allow the order to stand.

Tesla allows you to cancel your order at any time.

Time machine

[p.g.king]

"any new Tesla delivered after October 15th might not ship before the beginning of next year."

To all those doubters as to Musk's genius he's only gone and invented a time machine, shipping cars weeks after they get delivered.

no, it was not just a naming problem, that's silly

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a flawed design from inception to execution. The idea that people "wouldn't drive, but would be ready to take over from a computer in an instant when they 'sensed' that it wasn't functioning safely" IS RETARDED, PERIOD.

In no way is that a naming problem.

Re:blind item at CDAN

[Rei]

Yes, I always get my news from "CrazyDaysAndNights.net". It's almost as good as "www.geocities.comm.cz:8081/~globalpatriot/TeslaTruthNews"

Re:blind item at CDAN

[MachineShedFred]

Until it's coming from a reputable source, and I certainly don't mean SeekingAlpha, it's shortsville FUD.

Most likely, this is about repricing the full-self-driving option to be more realistic about what it will take, now that they have to replace the computer to get it done.

Re:No one is as confused as your FUD, REI-cheerlea

[Rei]

Gotcha. The system that Consumer Reports rated as the most capable driver assist system on the market and easiest to use is, quote, "a flawed feature" causing "cars [to] pile up".

CR did mark other systems (namely, SuperCruise) as better than EAP in three categories, which were all different variants of "how much it nags you". SuperCruise was so limited that they couldn't even turn it on on their test track (they apparently liked this). Indeed, your living room couch would have rated better than EAP in this regard. But in terms of both capability and ease of use, they found EAP was the best system on the market.

This matches up with the IIHS results, which found that Model 3 was the only vehicle that they tested which never crossed the lines on any of their curve or hill tests and never required manual intervention to avoid a collision in their real-world test. It also had the gentlest braking profile, starting braking before others did. It didn't get perfect marks, mind you - it had several false negative events in the real-world, and in one of their track tests (not real world) it only reduced the severity of impact with their mockup rather than preventing it. But overall its performance was class-leading.

Note that neither CR nor IIHS were using the latest version of EAP (V9), which was a huge upgrade. All cameras enabled now, camera-agnostic processing, full resolution rather than half resolution, and 400% more processing power utilized.

FSD option gone

[crow]

The removal of FSD is probably a mix of a number of factors:

• Most people aren't buying it
• The current price doesn't cover the hardware upgrade costs
• They might be afraid of lawsuits if FSD isn't available soon

I don't see Tesla worrying about the last factor much--not because it isn't an issue, but because it's just not how the company operates. The real issue is probably that they are expecting the hardware upgrade to cost $5000, and the FSD package was only $3000. They were probably seeing a significant uptick in FSD orders after they announced the hardware upgrades would probably cost $5K for people who hadn't ordered it.

I would also note that the FSD option has gone away for the Model S/X purchasers, too, though the reporting has focused on the Model 3.

Re:Rei you need to get a life off Elon's e-peen

[Rei]

Reservations are fully refundable. The $2,5k deposit when you lock in config when it goes into production is not.

Re:Rei you need to get a life off Elon's e-peen

[Rei]

It is, of course, still offered (see above). As always, news coverage of Tesla is terrible. What Tesla removed is the $2k discount for buying it early. You can only buy it at full price ($5k) via your Tesla account.

It never had a timeline. And everyone who purchased it knew that. Some people are more optimistic than others about its timeline. I personally am not in that category.

Re:blind item at CDAN

[theskipper]

They were under investigation long before the 420 tweet, and the denial in the Q2 call was legal needle-threading to avoid disclosure to investors:

"The action by the S.E.C. is solely related to events surrounding Mr. Musk’s comments on Twitter. But regulators had been investigating Tesla even before the tweet, and are more broadly examining whether Tesla misled investors about its production goals."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...