In a surprising move, Tesla has purged all posts prior to 2019 from the official website’s blog section, one being maintained since its website online. One of the main posts that fell under the axe, is the post regarding all Tesla cars having self-driving hardware. It was named “All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Ful Self-Driving Hardware”.
The post was shared on the 19th of October, in the year 2016. One can look at the post through the wayback.archive.org or archive.org, though it’s been taken offline by Tesla. Tesla had initially made this post in order to formulate a strong stance in order to attract & retain consumers interested in purchasing Tesla Cars. The point of this post was to set these cars apart from other cars available in the market & make in-roads into the EV market, during its inception.
The company aimed to highlight the full driving autonomy the system would possess, upon receiving the FSD update. This post was made in connection to the assurance that Tesla provided to its consumers and stockholders, which highlighted the fact that, if someone buys a Tesla then it will eventually be able to drive itself in the upcoming future.
The post remained on the website until a few days back, leading consumers to believe that the capability would be enabled on Tesla cars via an on-the-air (OTA) update. Tesla & its founder Elon, have long been heralding the time of autonomous cars, using it as a sales pitch to sell newer generations of the company’s products. Subsequently, cars have received various levels of self-driving capabilities enabled by hardware & software modifications.
As the FSD (supervised) crawls out of its Beta program, it remains to be seen if older generations of car will get the upgrades, which owners have paid for before-hand with a fee of $1500, later educed to $1000, a model which tesla has been keen on using to fund its long- delayed list of products. Since its last blogpost, in 2016, Tesla has refrained from making any comments, neither denying nor confirming, if the company has realigned its goals, away from its earlier-intended target for fully-autonomous vehicles.
The concern has found its way into small claims court in the U.S. with some plaintiffs being able to claim a full refund of costs involved in their pre-paid packages for the same. As of today, the post is not accessible through the official tesla website along with a plethora of several landmark posts before 2019, neither has Tesla come forward with any comments, concerning a clarification to its existing customer-base and potential buyers, further cementing its reputation as tight-lipped corporation.
