Tesla changes meaning of 'Full Self-Driving', gives up on promise of autonomy

Summary

Tesla has changed the meaning of “Full Self-Driving”, also known as “FSD”, to give up on its original promise of delivering unsupervised autonomy. Since 2016, Tesla has claimed that all its vehicles in production would be capable of achieving unsupervised self-driving capability. CEO Elon Musk has claimed that it would happen by the end of every year since 2018. Tesla has even sold a software package, known as “Full Self-Driving Capability” (FSD), for up to $15,000 to customers, promising that the advanced driver-assist system would become fully autonomous through over-the-air software updates. Advertisement - scroll for more content Almost a decade later, the promise has yet to be fulfilled, and Tesla has already confirmed that all vehicles produced between 2016 and 2023 don’t have the proper hardware to deliver unsupervised self-driving as promised. Musk has been discussing the upgrade of the computers in these vehicles to appease owners, but there’s no concrete plan to implement it. While there’s no doubt that Tesla has promised unsupervised self-driving capabilities to FSD buyers between 2016 and 2023, the automaker has since updated its language and now only sells “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” to customers: The fine print mentions that it doesn’t make the vehicle “autonomous” and doesn’t promise it as a feature. In other words, people buying FSD today are not really buying the capability of unsupervised self-driving as prior buyers did. Furthermore, Tesla’s board has just submitted a new, unprecedented CEO compensation package for shareholders’ approval, which could give Musk up to $1 trillion in stock options pending the achievement of certain milestones. One of these milestones is Tesla having “10 Million Active FSD Subscriptions.” At first glance, this would be hopeful for FSD buyers since part of Musk’s compensation would be dependent on delivering on the FSD promises. However, Tesla has changed the definition of FSD in the compensation package with an e...