Tesla is charging owners $1,500 for hardware they already paid for
Summary
These include automatic lane keeping, traffic-aware cruise control, and other standard safety features like emergency brake assist. But to get that subscription, Tesla is demanding that those owners pay $1,500 upfront for the hardware upgrade that was previously given to all Full Self-Driving purchasers for free. In fact, even before the aforementioned events, many early Model 3 owners purchased their vehicles with Full Self-Driving, even though the software didn’t do anything yet, because they thought doing so would obligate Tesla to upgrade their computers for free if they later found out the hardware was not capable enough. Someone within the company should have remembered that this promise was made and should have noted that it would be unethical and unwise to charge your loyal, early customers $1,500 for a product they already purchased. But that employee probably quit working at Tesla a while ago because the company overworks everyone, which leads to high turnover and little institutional memory, even for things that are still up on the website.