Tesla tells HW3 owner to 'be patient' after 7 years of waiting for FSD

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Legal, refunds, and class actions

  • Many argue early FSD buyers should seek to void contracts or demand refunds, especially after years without promised functionality.
  • Some note that in many jurisdictions, voiding a contract could imply returning the car for a full purchase refund; others question if that’s realistic for a 7‑year‑old vehicle.
  • EU and Australian class actions are mentioned; one Dutch site coordinates HW3-related claims.
  • Several expect regulators or courts (especially in the EU) to eventually force refunds or sanctions; others point out US arbitration clauses make redress harder.

HW3 vs HW4 and regional restrictions

  • Broad consensus that HW4 FSD is substantially better; HW3 suffers from phantom braking and appears to be hitting hardware limits.
  • Many believe HW3 cars will never get feature‑parity FSD, yet pay the same subscription price as HW4, which some call insulting.
  • EU regulations limit lateral acceleration and require lane‑change cancellation, leading to “nerfed” behavior on earlier systems.
  • Latest FSD, running only on HW4, is said to be approved in the Netherlands without some earlier EU constraints, but still requires driver supervision.

User experiences: impressive vs dangerous / stressful

  • Positive reports: long highway trips (hundreds to thousands of miles) with minimal or no interventions; some find FSD vastly better than weak human drivers.
  • Negative reports: phantom braking, erratic lane changes, poor city performance, failure on curved streets, stopping mid‑intersection, and nearly hitting pedestrians.
  • Several say the need to “babysit” an unpredictable system is more mentally exhausting than manual driving; comparisons are made to supervising a junior coworker or an LLM that can catastrophically fail.

Automation level, safety, and trust

  • Multiple comments emphasize Tesla’s system is still Level 2 ADAS: driver is responsible 100% of the time.
  • Debate over whether thousands of miles without intervention have actually been achieved and whether anecdotal cases are meaningful evidence.
  • Some see FSD as uniquely capable among consumer systems; others say rivals (Ford, GM, Hyundai, Rivian, comma.ai, etc.) are comparable or better for their use cases.

Critique of marketing and Musk

  • Many view “Full Self-Driving” branding and past promises as deceptive or “puffery,” with frustration that regulators haven’t acted more forcefully.
  • Tesla’s pattern of promising “next version will fix it” and repeated hardware revisions (HW2→3→4→5) fuels cynicism that early buyers will never get what was advertised.