A lot of people bought cars based on bad, lying, PR. Appreciating assets, $30K/year robotaxi service next year, we'll rent out your car for you. Coast to coast in 9 months, again, again, again, and again.
It's sort of the opposite of what OP praised: loud, not quiet, scrambling in public, not head's down.
I see it completely differently. Up until Tesla made it possible, no one would ever even imagine buying a car based on functionality that would be added later. It was simply never done.
Tesla pioneered the model of a unified fleet software with constant updates and new features. And with that architecture they consistently deliver incremental value to every Tesla owner on a regular basis.
I’ve been an M3 owner since 2018 running software that had barebones visualization, basic lane keeping, TACC, and not even a dash cam or sentry mode, or the ability to automatically change lanes on the highway.
Today I drive FSD beta 11.3.6 on the same car which regularly brings me door to door, drives impeccably on and off the highway, handles lane changes, off-ramps, unprotected left turns, etc.
Truly hands off, unsupervised, self-driving is the target. Owners see Tesla’s relentless drive towards this goal, and FSD Beta gets better with each release.
Elon did think he would get there sooner. He did say at the 2019 Autonomy Day he thought it would be feature complete by 2020. But Tesla never promised it would be done then, and Elon even said his biggest criticism - and he said it’s a fair one - is he gets the time wrong. “Sometimes I’m not on time. But I get it done.”
Honestly it remains to be seen if they will pull it off. The level of improvement in the last year has me more optimistic than I have been previously. In the meantime a Tesla is still the best car and by far the best value on the market.
I appreciate the scale of the challenge; what Tesla is trying to do with FSD, and what it will mean for the world if they succeed. Turing awards and Nobel prizes alike.
I personally don’t begrudge that it’s taken longer than Elon hoped to achieve one of humanity’s most ambitious and meaningful technological breakthroughs. I love being part of the process and contributing to its success.
Frankly it’s the people who would never by a Tesla who complain about the timeline. The fact is that the vast majority of actual owners are extremely satisfied with their purchase. Consumer Reports surveys found Tesla was the #1 brand for customer satisfaction several years now.
Not sure what the last paragraph is saying, but it is regrettable how consumers were led to believe that this problem would be quickly solved.
In their defense, the whole AI industry was convinced of this. It’s known as the long tail. An absurdly huge number of small edge cases to fix before it’s a solved problem.
A lot of people bought cars based on bad, lying, PR. Appreciating assets, $30K/year robotaxi service next year, we'll rent out your car for you. Coast to coast in 9 months, again, again, again, and again.
It's sort of the opposite of what OP praised: loud, not quiet, scrambling in public, not head's down.