"This will be painful": Musk backtracks and Tesla customers suffer

Autonomous driving. For 9 years, Elon Musk has assured Tesla customers that all marketed vehicles are equipped with it. And without warning, in January this year, the head of the manufacturer made a confession: this is far from being the case. 

At the beginning of the year, during a conference call, Elon Musk announced to the main shareholders of Tesla: the company's vehicles, equipped with hardware 3, will need to be upgraded to support the autonomous driving software currently under development, as reported by the site Presse-citron. “I think the most honest answer is that we're going to have to upgrade the Hardware 3 computer for people who bought Full Self-Driving. It will be painful and difficult, but we will do it,” he emphasised. 

The announcement shocks Tesla customers. Indeed, the promise of an autonomous driving option isn't new, and it has cost them 12,000 dollars (for the United States). 

In the midst of crisis

For some, the head of Tesla repeated so often (that this feature was going to appear), that the surprise isn't even there. The announcement passed as a sort of “running gag”. To recall, in 2019, all drivers with a car running on Hardware 2.0 and Hardware 2.5 had to switch to Hardware 3 to be able to benefit from automatic driving. At the time, legal actions were also filed for “false advertising”. 

All this suggests that the company Tesla is in full crisis management. To honour its commitments, it may need to spend millions. 

As of now, customers have only one thing to do: hope. 

(MH with Raphaël Liset - Source: Presse-citron - Illustration: ©Unsplash)