Since 2016, Tesla has claimed that all its vehicles in production would be capable of achieving unsupervised self-driving capability.
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.
That article is itself misleading, and the author needs to calm down and re-read what the comp plan is saying, which ironically is actually in the article itself!
As the article quotes the comp plan:
“FSD” means an advanced driving system, regardless of the marketing name used, that is capable of performing transportation tasks that provide autonomous or similar functionality under specified driving conditions.
The marketing name being used today is “FSD (Supervised)”
They’re not the same - yet anyway.
That FSD will “provide autonomous functionality” is what we want. So, what’s the problem?
I think the author is suggesting that the rest of the language you didn’t quote - the “or similar functionality under specified driving conditions” - basically opens it up so broadly that even FSD (supervised) meets the definition. That even if FSD never improved beyond what it is today, a really good ADAS, that it would meet this very broad definition.
I’m offering to sell a Flying Carpet®. It doesn’t fly yet, but every carpet I sell will be able to fly someday as soon as we work out the technical bugs.
In five years, however, my secret plan is to change the name to the “Movable Carpet®”, which will accurately describe the attributes of all the carpets I sold under different branding, and I will make millions. Billions, even, if I can get those dunderheads on the Board to OK this quite reasonable plan.
Inquiries accepted at Goofyhoofy’s Magic Flying Carpet Store and Storm Door Company, LLC. Bitcoin only, please.
I don’t think so. The lawsuit in Florida was based on the difference between Tesla’s marketing and the more carefully crafted legalistic disclaimers. A change in the legalistic disclaimers’ language won’t really change that.
I don’t think Tesla’s giving up on autonomy. What they are doing is making it much clearer that people are not getting an assurance that these cars that have all of the physical hardware necessary to achieve Level 5 autonomy or a very broad Level 4 autonomy. Or that Tesla is in any way promising that they will ever deliver the software to do those things. Giving up the promise of autonomy is exactly that - they’re still pursuing the goal of autonomy, but they’re no longer making a promise to their customers that they’ll ever get there with the cars that are being bought today.
I think this is less about the issues raised in the Florida lawsuit, but rather the consumer practices/fraud in the inducement lawsuits where people are claiming that Tesla lied to them in promising them that their cars were sufficiently equipped with hardware that would allow “self driving” one day. By defining the promise of “FSD” to be little more than “a very good ADAS,” they give themselves more of a defense in the event that HW4 can’t actually support autonomy.