Tesla Is Heading Into Multi-Billion-Dollar Iceberg of Its Own Making
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Tesla is facing a potential multi-billion-dollar issue due to its Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology not meeting customer expectations, with many customers feeling misled by the company's promises.
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While this might sound like a lot”
It would add up to a lot of money for Tesla, but for customers? Some of these people paid $15.000 years ago for something that hasn’t been delivered, and now, they would be able to get $10,000 ‘back’, only if they commit to spending way more again, in the hope to eventually get what they bought years ago, or, more likely, in the hope of eventually being able to subscribe to get the features they already paid for years ago.
Would they buy them again? Probably not but thats because of politics.
That’s the article’s point.
Politics, FSD overpromises, Elon, whatever the reason.
Tesla deliveries are down and people aren’t coming back.
I can't fathom wanting a Tesla unless the politics are not merely a turn-off for you, but you want to support them directly.
What are these features that tie people to Teslas that the competition is unable to deliver on?
1) sufficiently long track record of reliability (I might consider Ford and Rivian now)
2) free remote start and unlock
3) camera recordings - how is this not standard in all cars by now?
4) not having to buy via dealership (this is worth a lot to me). Bought a Tesla on my couch in 15 minutes and picking it up took 15 minutes. Dealerships take hours and hours, and try to upsell you.
5) $35k to $40k price point - if BYD were to come to America, I would drop Tesla in a heartbeat
I don't think Ford is in the running.
FSD is pretty sweet especially compared to volvo's woefully poor autopilot efforts.
Why else would you put up with this nonsense?
If nothing else, Musk is a Svengali extraordinaire ...
If the “fsd” wording is present in the purchase agreement, then Tesla owners have a class action lawsuit.
If they said "$x gets you y", ran ads saying "$x gets you y", held press conferences saying "$x gets you y", then gave you an invoice showing you pay "$x for y", a backing contract saying "$x does not get you y" will not stand up in court.
So in addition to not being legally okay, it's obviously not "ethically questionable." Taking people's money and not delivering value you promised to them in exchange is bad.
When reading the above, think: the opposition lawyers have incentive to present the case that way. Judges rarely stop them. Juries tend to accept the above presentation. Of course the other side has lawyers that will try to pick apart that argument. It is anyone's guess what the jury (and thus court) will decide.
There are many different legal systems in the world. The above is a US perspective. I cannot comment on other countries, just know that each is different. Even if Tesla wins in court in the US, they can still lose a lot of money in other countries that work different.
Under U.S. federal law, perhaps.
That's where "Tesla’s current FSD expansion in international markets" gains salience. I doubt courts in "China and now Australia and New Zealand," or states with strong lemon laws [1], will let a manufacturer off the hook on a just-kidding clause.
[1] https://www.autosafety.org/in-new-lemonlaw-rankings-illinois...
In recent years the leader of a cult in Turkey known for being filthy rich died and when cult split the new factions summoned the believers to re-do their inauguration ritual, which involves money collecting, since the old one expired within the death of the leader. And they went and did that, because although its not the members that are rich they still benefit from being in the community and the business connections.
Tesla has a similar thing, they are on a mission and many make money from being part of the community as they collect referrals, make content and sell accessories. Even if not doing any of that they ysually have Tesla shares and even if that’s not the case they want to keep the value of their vehicle high. Also in comes with the emotional baggage of having told everyone how their tesla drives autonomously etc.
how ironic
It's not perfect, and probably oversold, but it's amazing and useful. You find within days of using it where your trust and comfort level are with the technology. When I get in a car without it (or worse, with a steering wheel and console covered in confusing buttons and dials!), I feel like I'm steering an Amish hay wagon.
nb. I subscribe to the service, I don't have an FSD investment to justify.
Most people just don’t want new troubles in their lives, its juts money long gone.
Sounds like fraud.
Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again? The guy can't help himself but lie and make deliberately misleading half-truth (at best) statements in investor meetings and presentations. Textbook fraud.
An ethical steward of capital he is not. We've gone through 4+ US presidential administrations with him as the CEO, and not once has he been effectively taken to task let alone held accountable for his bullshit.
Perhaps you just answered your own question. But are you sure he's the only big tech CEO who does it, or does he just do it the best?
You are reading the literal meaning right: everyone is doing it.
But you are reading the intent wrong, which is to point out the extent of fraud and deception in boardrooms and markets.
Your reply of "everyone is doing it" definitely could a logical answer to the question of "Why is Musk allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars again?" instead of just a moral justification.
I would agree that Tesla's stock price is as high as it is because investors are betting that there are plenty of other suckers who will be convinced by Musk's unfounded claims.
Because he founded a company that turned into PayPal, single-handedly launched the Western EV revolution and single-handedly secured American access to space. He's been a fuckup for the last few years. But he's "allowed" to be worth a lot because if he were doing what he's doing elsewhere, he'd facilitate a multi-trillion dollar wealth transfer from America to that place.
he is the ultimate right place right time person, managed to turn innovative historically doomed-to-fail ventures into very highly valued mature(ish) businesses.
it's unlikely that someone without his micromanagerial madness could have done these. (and of course in a better world he would have gotten help, employees wouldn't have been fired on a whim, and the market wouldn't reward liars. not to mention that ideally the market would price in the consequences of enriching someone with so loose morals.)
If you mean Tesla Roadster, that came out in 2008, 4 years after Musk's involvement. Or were you trying to say something else?
These are also hard businesses, dealing with physics, chemistry, and regulations. Unlike SaaS businesses one spins up on cloud services. Which lends some more credence to not just being lucky.
Obviously, he has a reprehensible agenda, but there is clearly a case to be made about his ability to execute.
This strikes me as more of an indictment of money in politics.
Musk didn't need half a trillion dollars to influence the election and trash our government. He needed a few hundred million. We should be able to create a system where a man, even a very rich man, cannot rent the most powerful position in the history of humanity with a few hundred million dollars.
That was the argument against Massachusetts taxing millionaires. Instead, it made double even the optimistic estimates. https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2024-05-21/millionaires-t...
Turns out there's usually a good reason people settle in a place.
(And the US government gets a big say if you try to move a critical national security asset out of the country, too.)
It would require substantial punitive taxes and penalties to prevent this accumulation. Would founders and investors still develop in the USA if their upside were curtailed? Would Musk Found spaceX if they were not allowed to profit from it?
Also, it is not as simple as taxing profits. Almost all of this value is simply equity in controlled companies. What is the mechanism here? If you are too successful, the government seizes your company? Dont you think that would be disruptive to investment and growth?
Yes. Unified consumer market. Incumbency. Deep and international access to risk capital.
China only has the first two. It's still got a thriving start-up ecosystem.
> Almost all of this value is simply equity in controlled companies. What is the mechanism here?
Selling equity. This is a theoretical question for e.g. a closely-held family business. It's not for a public or mature private company.
> the government seizes your company?
Guess who ushered in the administration that's embraced this option!
Do you actually endorse confiscation of companies, or are you just taking a reactionary copy cat stance?
Start by banning or curtailing these techniques they utilize to borrow against that equity or put it in tax advantaged accounts. https://www.propublica.org/article/billionaires-tax-avoidanc...
And perhaps a 1-2% wealth tax.
After $100mm. (I guess if you want to get the evangelicals on board you could do $39 or $390mm.)
Yeah. No single individual needs that much money. especially in this day and age where politicians are cheap as fuck to buy and the markets will reward any and all regulatory capture in the name of increasing short-term value of stock....while not giving a damn about the long-term ramifications of how it perverts our entire economic system.
>100 Billion?
That would too. Let me ask you - if you had $99 billion USD, would you whine that you don't have $100 billion, or would you, y'know, go out and use the money to enjoy your life and take care of people?
I know which I'd do. Hint: I'd be extremely fucking happy with what I'd have and I'd do all I could to spread the wealth around as far as I could. I wouldn't whine, I'd be overjoyed that I'd have more wealth than all but approximately 30 people on the planet.
The only "work" I'd do at that point is to figure out which diseases could likely be eradicated with enough money, and figure out how to give enough money to get it done. Gates, for all his faults, did pretty much just that. His money kicked malaria's ass.
>Also, it is not as simple as taxing profits. Almost all of this value is simply equity in controlled companies. What is the mechanism here? If you are too successful, the government seizes your company? Dont you think that would be disruptive to investment and growth?
It most certainly is quite easy.
If you have over a certain number in net worth (say, $100 billion), you can't take out loans against your stock portfolio - you have to sell stock or assets. The loans-against-portfolio system was designed to help middle class individuals buy homes, not to help centibillionaires buy $500mm yachts. If you are the sole founder of a multi-trillion dollar organization, your business expenses should cover quite literally anything you could ever need.
The mechanism isn't the government taking away a company, and it's certainly not disruptive to investment nor growth. In fact, as a founder myself, I'd take it as a badge of honor if the government came in and said "hey bro you are now worth a hundred billion dollars, you've won capitalism, go enjoy time with your friends and family". My investors, who invested small amounts of capital at a valuation in the low single digit millions, would be thrilled at a 100 billion dollar exit. That's nearly a 100,000x multiple ROI. If you, say, as an investor, dropped $10,000 on an investment. It gave you a return, after a decade, of 100,000x, or a billion dollars. Your reaction to that would be to complain that the government is discouraging and disrupting growth?
This is nonsense. It wasn't "designed" to help the middle class. Portfolios are clear collateral assets and a natural backstop that doesnt need a "designer". It will arise in any financial system that allows free contracting and doesnt explicitly prohibit it.
> In fact, as a founder myself, I'd take it as a badge of honor if the government came in and said "hey bro you are now worth a hundred billion dollars, you've won capitalism, go enjoy time with your friends and family...".
This is such a contrived example it isnt worth discussing. The realistic outcome is the government taking it and giving you nothing. We aren't discussing the government "buying" anything.
On a technical level, sure. On a practical level, he'd still be fabulously rich and powerful, and the comment you're responding to would be asking why he's allowed to be worth hundreds of billions of whatever.
The problem isn't that Musk was "allowed" to become wealthy. It's that a trivial fraction of that wealth let him corrupt not only himself, but also his government.
I think this is the critical point. It's kinda the foundation of why all extremely rich people are "allowed" to get so rich.
For the rest, not so much. Partly:
Much as I was impressed with him successfully turning the disaster that was Eberhard and Tarpenning's era into a viable business, I would not describe "noticing and fixing Eberhard and Tarpenning's mistakes" as "single-handedly" launching anything. The booster version is the opposite side of the same wrong coin as those who insist Musk was worthless because Eberhard and Tarpenning came first.
SpaceX similarly, for all I'm impressed by how he's used his charisma and vision and drive to get people organised, he's definitely not "single handed" on this.
But also, my understanding is that for valuations such as Tesla's share price, the "what it should be" is usually based on what they're likely to return in the next 20 years or so. Tesla's stock price is obviously disconnected from the business returns, at best speculation based on what Musk might be able to organise people to do eventually, and given he has been, as you say, "a fuckup for the last few years", the expected return for the Musk group should be lower, not higher.
No he didn't. He co-founded (with several other people) a company that merged with a company founded over a year before (that he had no involvement in) which eventually became PayPal. He didn't found jack shit on his own.
> single-handedly launched the Western EV revolution
Say what now? Are we talking about Tesla? You know Toyota had a working hybrid on the market in 2000, correct? The West was already well on its way to electric vehicles when Musk bought himself a board seat at Tesla.
>single-handedly secured American access to space.
Americans had not only already gone to space, but had landed on the moon over 2 years before Musk was born. Yes, you read that right - he was quite literally not even conceived when Americans had not only sent rockets into space, but literally went to and landed on a moon.
Because the US abandoned a number of years ago the idea that the law should apply equally to everyone. At least since the Reagan years, and to an increasing degree recently, "Greed is Good" has become the economic motto, and net worth is treated as if it's synonymous with one's moral worth.
This is all part and parcel of the devaluation of ethics that has led to a corrupt president whose election has serious questions around it wantonly flouting the law and treating the country like his own personal playground.
You answered your question! Capitalism does not optimize for ethical stewards, and has nothing at all to say about morality or ethics. If a scam is profitable, capitalism says "that's okay!". Doesn't matter if it's illegal, immoral, amoral, destroys the environment, or even decapitates people leaving their head bouncing down the highway.
That's why Elon Musk is allowed to be worth half a trillion dollars. The system optimized for it; fraud, deception, and lawbreaking is a competitive advantage under capitalism. Someone has to be worth the most, and under this system, that person is going to be whomever is the most eager to wield his considerable wealth and power to commit crimes and defraud people.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=to1kDbR4L4I
PS: Bringing Star Citizen into a Tesla FSD discussion is too apt.
There is a good choice of EVs from various manufacturers.
Tesla really makes charging about as seamless as can be. It integrates into the navigation system (the car will automatically add charging stops, pre-warm the battery, tell you how many spots are open, etc.), integrates the payment, etc.
I've rented a Tesla. The most annoying thing about it was the goofy unlock (tapping a key card at the right spot on the door pillar) but I'm very wary of renting any other EV and having to dick around with finding the right charge place, determining if it has the right connection, will it charge fast enough, can I just pay by card or do I need some stupid app, etc.
Other cars have all that, too, yeah. I got a 2025 Ioniq 5 and it does all that, and it's also not restricted to just one charging company's chargers. The payment integration stuff exists, but it requires support from the charging company obviously, and IMO that's kind of a mis-feature anyway, so I never bothered to set it up.
> can I just pay by card or do I need some stupid app
In my experience, almost all chargers just use a card. 100% of the ones I've used in regular gas stations on freeway exits just use a card. Once in a blue moon you run into a stupid app one, but it's usually an older charger that was installed in a city center in the early days of EV charging. The apps seem to be mostly disappearing, thank god. Ironically I'm pretty sure Tesla's chargers require a stupid app for non-Tesla cars, but I've never used one, so not certain.
> determining if it has the right connection
Yeah, the adapters are clunky. It's just gonna take time to phase out CCS. Hopefully that's a solved problem in 10 years as everyone switches over to NACS. I did use a native NACS non-Tesla charger with my native NACS non-Telsa car once on a recent road trip. The future is... almost here!
- Charging speeds that fall short of what's advertised
- A requirement to use an app for payment (even if no account setup is needed)
- Chargers that are out of service but not flagged as such in the system
Oh, I hadn't thought of it that way, but I bet you're right! I bet denser areas got chargers earlier, so they're stuck on the stupid-app-based model that was popular 5 years ago. Where I am in the upper midwest, the rollout has been happening only over the last couple years (e.g. several of the chargers I stopped at last month are not even on Google Maps streetview yet), so the chargers are in better shape and just have standard card readers now.
Cool story bro. How is this relevant to a discussion about Tesla?
I'm glad to know that my mental model wasn't completely off-base, and happy to see that the situation is improving overall
And the parent response was a great case study in de-escalation. 5 stars, would ride again (assuming sufficient battery!)
In Europe, Tesla use the European standard Type 2 (standardized as IEC 62196-2) charger. So that's not an issue either.
> correction: I thought Tesla still used their own charger in Europe.
The EV charger standard wars are over.
There are regions of Europe with less developed infrastructure, but the situation is identical for all car makers.
Tesla lead the market for quite a while, but lost their way trying to become a software company instead of perfecting manufacturing. They don't heave a lead anymore, and trust for their brand is tanking. Between tesla and a chineese EV, i trust both about equally now.
They were innovative and years ahead in technology. Their heatpump supermanafold is still ahead of the rest of the EV industry. While the rest of the western manufacturers struggle to even make basic software for their cars.
There is plenty to dislike about tesla, (asside from musk) like their spotty quality control and questionable infotainment cost cuts. But if they spent the last few years just perfecting and maturing as a manufacturer, they would be respectful leader in EVs now.
Instead we get Cybertruck (brilliant engineering whasted on a childish design) and an insistence being a software company which it isn't.
Chineese EVs had time to catch up, and now instead of a mature innovative and trustable western EV brand alternative, we got.... Tesla led by musk.
Parking and proximity LIDAR/sensors
3d camera view
CarPlay/Android Auto
Lack of tactile controls (even Tesla has admitted removing the stalk was a mistake)
The ability to exit your vehicle if there's a power system failure
etc
I personally don't really miss the fisher-price designed CarPlay (never tried Android auto). It's alright and often better than the car manufacturer infotainment, but it's also not very good. You can't even pinch to zoom the map for example.
> 3d camera view
The illustrated overhead view is sufficient that I do not miss a 3D camera view.
>The ability to exit your vehicle if there's a power system failure
This is not true, at least in my 2024 Model Y.
Not having carplay/android auto sucks, but I haven’t missed it enough. And there are enough tactile controls, in my model at least, that it hasn’t been an issue.
All in all, I wouldn’t pay $60k for a Tesla, but sign me up @ $41k.
Is it just me, or does that seem backwards? If I purchased something with a specific feature, or promised future feature, and 5 years later it's still nowhere to be seen, I don't want a coupon for "my next purchase", why would I buy from the same place after they already lied to me before? The only acceptable solution would be to get back the extra money spent for that feature.
Waymo assumes liability for crashes. Tesla doesn't. That should tell you all you need to know.
Are you predicting that Tesla will never get rid of their safety drivers in their Robotaxis? Because as soon as that happens, won't your prediction be incorrect? That seems unlikely to me. Tesla is definitely behind Waymo when it comes to self-driving capabilities, but it seems like they'll eventually succeed.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU16hXSSGKs
2. https://www.tesla.com/support/insurance/fsd-discount
"Are you predicting that Tesla will never get rid of their safety drivers in their Robotaxis?"
That is exactly what I'm saying. Because vision only non-redundant technology stack is never going to be reliable enough.
"Because as soon as that happens, won't your prediction be incorrect? "
yes, that is how predictions work.
Are you willing to stake money on your prediction? I'll bet you any amount up to $1k that Tesla will have self-driving vehicles on public roads without a safety monitor in the car by the end of 2026. This could be in the form of their robotaxi service or FSD unsupervised (since many Teslas are insured by Tesla).
Here's a handy compilation of Musk's self driving broken promises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
You are smarter than the repeat Tesla buyer.
You must be new here. Kidding aside, the only reason they would do anything would be if Tesla doesn't sufficiently kiss the king's ring, which they did to the tune of $250 million quite recently. More payments will likely be required, but it's a cost of doing "business" these days.
A "multi-billion-dollar iceberg" is literally referenced in the headline.
Like, yes, if Tesla pays back all HW2 and HW3 FSD buyers their purchase plus interest, they should be fine.
You too, as otherwise you surely would have at least skimmed the article before commenting :)
> As we recently reported, thousands of Tesla owners have now joined a class action lawsuit in Australia[1] over Tesla misleading customers with its self-driving promises.
> It adds to similar ongoing lawsuits in the US[2] and China[3] .
1 - https://electrek.co/2025/10/13/thousands-of-tesla-owners-joi...
2 - https://electrek.co/2025/08/19/tesla-loses-bid-to-kill-class...
3 - (https://electrek.co/2025/09/22/tesla-being-sued-china-over-n...)
Reminds me of "No, money down!" (https://imgflip.com/memetemplate/382750775/Simpsons-Lionel-H...)
There are, in fact, laws about this kind of thing
But of course, blaming the victim is much easier because it lets the person doing the blaming pretend they're morally and intellectually superior in some way.
You don't need any particularly deep due diligence to see that, in fact, not living under a rock is more than enough.
> There's multiple decades of fawning articles and reviews of Tesla to the point where the average person can't be blamed for assuming they're a reputable company.
There's multiple decades of articles highlighting, in various levels of detail, how exactly bad Tesla is and Teslas are. Checking for bad reviews and deciding how applicable they are to you in particular is part of rudimentary check
Sorry, but knowingly and deliberately buying a Tesla vehicle is entirely on the customer and they get in some sense even more than what they had ordered. Similarly, if you buy a ${brand-you-don't-like} you have no right to complain about ${common-problem}, because that's the state vehicles leave the factory.
From May 2025: https://cleantechnica.com/2025/05/05/us-consumers-dont-trust...
OP bought their Tesla in 2024, so customer sentiment was actually favourable to Tesla at that point.
In March 2024, brand loyalty was really high according to Experian: https://inspiramarketing.com/when-a-brand-becomes-its-own-wo...
In 2019, customer satisfaction was also high: https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-model-3-customers-say-...
In 2020, they had an NPS of 97: https://customergauge.com/benchmarks/companies/tesla_motors
> Sorry, but knowingly and deliberately buying a Tesla vehicle is entirely on the customer and they get in some sense even more than what they had ordered.
Clearly, the customers were not knowingly and deliberately buying bad cars because the evidence available to the average person told them the exact opposite thing.
EDIT: Strikethrough below, it was a result of a bad search but the principle above still stands.
Hell, even on Hacker News, the bad news only seems to have started appearing 3 years ago, and I know for a fact your average consumer isn't browsing tech sites to form their opinion for their next car purchase.
This is what google spews out when I type in "tesla major problems". The first result is Wiki entry "Criticism of Tesla, Inc.", where first section is literally "Fraud allegations".
All I had to do was look if there's negative feedback and it's not something mild what you would get replacing Telsa with e.g. Peugeot, but some really troublesome issues. If you don't agree that this is basic, rudimentary overview and instead argue that this is some deep research, well I don't believe we can agree on anything much at all. I invest more effort in picking a place to eat at than some people in buying their car.
Sorry, but there's no such thing as "bought it before Elon went crazy".
Financial fraud. This isn't something the average person is going to dig up on their own because they aren't going to start reading the FT and WSJ before they buy a car.
> This is what google spews out when I type in "tesla major problems".
Be honest: have you ever done this in literally any other context? In fact, don't bother because I know you haven't. Because nobody does this.
How do I know nobody does this? Because, as I evidenced above, Tesla's public reputation only started to decline in 2024/2025 when Musk started throwing Sieg Heils, sorry, "putting his heart out to the crowd" after Trump's inauguration.
> it's not something mild what you would get replacing Telsa with e.g. Peugeot, but some really troublesome issues
Thanks for giving me a point of comparison. Apparently, the electronic handbrake can fail on certain Peugeots: https://www.service4service.co.uk/news/peugeot/the-most-comm...
I did the same thing you did. Why is this important? Just to point out that, if you do your "due diligence," you can find major issues with any car make. Again, going back to the average consumer, you can't really tell the difference between reports of one car brand being shit vs any other.
Again, this is not to defend Tesla: this is to point out that it's really fucking difficult for an average consumer to know whether a trusted car brand is actually just taking them for a ride.
I asked if a person would feel dumb that they had been conned.
Isn't the answer going to be yes even if that con is very sophisticated?
Paying a lot of money for self-driving when self-driving literally doesn't exist isn't that sophisticated of a con! They are telling you it doesn't exist! I know it doesn't exist and am paying for the hope that it will one day exist.
I mean sure make a law against this or whatever. But at the end of the day it's my money and no law can stop me from making a regrettable decision.
Thanks for proving my point.
You might’ve meant to quote the question I asked and then meant to answer it?
So it sounds like you’re saying that you’d feel smart if you were scammed out of your money?
a car is the largest purchase most people will make (after property)
people should do more due diligence on it than e.g. on a new phone purchase
I certainly looked into whether the company that built my house was prudent and known for not scamming people
but if you're not at least reading the wikipedia page on a car and its manufacturer company before buying it looking for common "issues", that's kinda your fault
Consumer protections are a very real thing in the EU, UK, Australia and elsewhere!
If you make promises about the features a product will deliver, then you are obligated to deliver those features.
If not, the consumer is entitled to a refund.
It seems fine to state one might get a free pony if it doesn't rain for 1000 days.
No, it doesn't seem fine at all. That's scam territory.
They can wrap as in many disclaimers as they want, if the law is clear that consumers had a presumption of delivery due to marketing promises which were unfulfilled they are on the hook for it.
It's why many American companies constantly complain about EU regulations, they empower consumers which is "bad for business™" since fraud becomes much harder to wrap in loopholes.
IANAL, but if it was "fine" that would still fall quite firmly under "gambling"
The other cars that also have OTA updates? (Rivian, Polestar, and more, plus quite a few that provide less-extensive OTA like Hyundai, VW, etc)
No I’d say it’s pretty clear
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