Tesla, for years, has been offering a feature called Full Self-Driving option - this despite the technology not being ready for the masses to indulge in. Needless to say, this made some people very unhappy for shelling out quite a lot of money for this feature, but now they are getting a perk to hold them over.
According to Ars Technica, the perk is an early access to software updates, but take note it's only offered to those who paid for Full Self-Drive before March 1 this year. "Customers who previously purchased Full Self-Driving will receive an invitation to Tesla's Early Access Program (EAP)," Tesla said in a statement. "EAP members are invited to experience and provide feedback on new features and functionality before they are rolled out to other customers."
The idea is to compensate the buyers for having bought features that Tesla never delivered and that are now sold for less than they paid.
This move came after Tesla released a blog post offering Tesla owners the chance to add this feature at a reduced cost -- less than the price people paid to option it when ordering their vehicles -- and then took it down.
Tesla has been granting early access programs for select drivers for years now. This is how the company's software engineers test out products and services before they are released fully for public consumption. The new early update program will reportedly be separate from the early access program so that the updates going out to these customers will be slightly less bug-prone.
However, we're not saying that the updates will be completely free of bugs and errors - it's not even fully developed yet. A portion of the delay between members of the early access program getting an update and it going out to the general public comes from the need to fix bugs. That means this new opt-in for FSD adopters is a double-edged sword.
We're not quite sure yet if the latest move by Tesla is enough to appease those who have paid a whole lot of money for technology that's not even ready yet. The company may even cause further backlash from this initiative for all we now.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk clearly is keen on making quick decisions, even if that leads to more mistakes being made. For now, we'd have to wait.
