After repeatedly claiming that Tesla will not allow owners to transfer Full Self-Driving capability to new vehicles, Tesla CEO Elon Musk agreed today that Tesla will allow them to do so for “one more quarter.”
Tesla has been selling its FSD system for many years now, to the point where many early owners have been through multiple vehicles without the software actually being delivered in its full working state.
Those owners are able to use Tesla’s FSD Beta, now called FSD Supervised, but no Tesla owner has yet been able to use an actual full self-driving system that lets the car drive itself with no human intervention.
And so, there has been a constant drumbeat from many of those owners, wondering why they should have to purchase the same software again, when they get a new car, if the software was never delivered from the previous vehicle.
It was seen at the time as a way to stoke demand, rather than an example of Tesla “doing the right thing” and letting owners retain eventual access to the software they paid for but were never delivered.
But after that, on Tesla’s Q1 quarterly call, the question was asked whether FSD transfer could be made permanent, and the answer was a flat “No.”
However, at today’s shareholder meeting, one questioner once again asked Musk if we could have FSD transfer for “one more quarter,” rather than permanent. Musk hemmed and hawed a little in response, stating that it was “complex” to enable the transfers within Tesla’s sales framework. However, after some back and forth, Musk ended up saying “okay, one more quarter.”
We don’t yet have the details, as this was just announced on stage at the shareholder meeting (which has just finished), but we’ll surely hear some more details soon about how this program will actually work.
Electrek’s Take
We should not have to have this discussion every quarter.
Until FSD is able to follow through on its promise, transfers should be free for anyone who has bought the software.
Any other company that pre-sold software and then refused to deliver it would not be looked kindly upon, particularly if that software was thousands of dollars and many years late.
Yes, people can use something that Tesla calls FSD right now. It is gradually doing a better job and gaining more capabilities. But it does not fully drive the car, doesn’t work without intervention, can’t be summoned across country, can’t be used as a revenue-generating robotaxi (a promise that musk made again today), or any number of other statements that haven’t come to pass. And Musk has repeatedly stated that it will be able to fully drive the car “in about a year” – for many years now.
It’s time to stop stringing owners along. If the problem is difficult, and more difficult than you thought, that’s one thing. But making people buy additional licenses to software you already sold them and did not yet deliver is not acceptable.
Further, this is not about “doing the right thing” for owners. The right thing would be to make transfers permanent until level 5 autonomy is delivered. Even “effective permanence” of continually-rolling offers like this are more about stoking demand during end-of-quarter rushes, making customers think that a limited time offer like some sort of rug store that is perpetually going out of business.
But maybe Tesla owners won’t need to rely on Musk’s “benevolence” to grant them the ability to retain software they’ve pre-purchased a license for for long, as there are several cases in court relating to Tesla’s FSD false advertising that could have sweeping effects on how Tesla sells this software and what rights its owners might have.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk is to officially join Trump’s administration as the co-head of the new US Department of Government Efficiency – a second federal department with the goal of making government spending more efficient.
You can’t get more ironic than that.
Throughout the elections, Musk, who is already CEO of Tesla, and SpaceX, a well as the defacto head of X, xAI, Neuralink, and the Boring Company, has been floating the idea to add to his workload by joining the Trump’s administration to lead a new department aimed at making the federal government more efficient.
He has been calling it the “Department of Government Efficiency”, which spells out ‘DOGE’, a meme that Musk appears to enjoy.
Well, now Trump appears to want to be going through with this idea.
He announced the new department and Musk as head, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, in a statement today:
I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”). Together, these two wonderful Americans will pave the way for my Administration to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies – Essential to the “Save America” Movement. “This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” stated Mr. Musk.
What’s most ironic is that there’s already a federal department with the goal of cutting government waste and ensuring efficiency: the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The GAO’s main objectives are:
auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively;
investigating allegations of illegal and improper activities;
reporting on how well government programs and policies are meeting their objectives;
performing policy analyses and outlining options for congressional consideration;
issuing legal decisions and opinions;
advising Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more efficient and effective
It sounds similar to what Musk described when talking about his DOGE, but Trump hasn’t gone into many details other than it will “cut waste.”
He also has a confusing message as he compares the initiative, which is supposed to cut government spending, to “The Manhattan project”, a massive and expensive government project.
Trump said that DOGE will help the government “drive large scale structural reform”:
It will become, potentially, “The Manhattan Project” of our time. Republican politicians have dreamed about the objectives of “DOGE” for a very long time. To drive this kind of drastic change, the Department of Government Efficiency will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government, and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before.
The statement also noted that DOGE will only operate until July 4, 2026.
Musk has previously claimed that he could cut at least $2 trillion dollars of the $6.5 trillion dollar US federal budget.
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A pump jack in Midland, Texas, US, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024.
Anthony Prieto | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oil prices may see a drastic fall in the event that oil alliance OPEC+ unwinds its existing output cuts, said market watchers who are predicting a bearish year ahead for crude.
“There is more fear about 2025’s oil prices than there has been since years — any year I can remember, since the Arab Spring,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at OPIS, an oil price reporting agency.
“You could get down to $30 or $40 a barrel if OPEC unwound and didn’t have any kind of real agreement to rein in production. They’ve seen their market share really dwindle through the years,” Kloza added.
A decline to $40 a barrel would mean around a 40% erasure of current crude prices. Global benchmark Brent is currently trading at $72 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures are around $68 per barrel.
Oil prices year-to-date
Given that oil demand growth next year probably won’t be much more than 1 million barrels a day, a full unwinding of OPEC+ supply cuts in 2025 would “undoubtedly see a very steep slide in crude prices, possibly toward $40 a barrel,” Henning Gloystein, head of energy, climate and resources at Eurasia Group, told CNBC.
Similarly, MST Marquee’s senior energy analyst Saul Kavonic posited that should OPEC+ unwind cuts without regard to demand, it would “effectively amount to a price war over market share that could send oil to lows not seen since Covid.”
However, the alliance is more likely to opt for a gradual unwinding early next year, compared to a full scale and immediate one, the analysts said.
Should the producers group proceed with their production plan, the market surplus could nearly double.
Martoccia Francesco
Energy strategist at Citi
The oil cartel has been exercising discipline in maintaining its voluntary output cuts, to the point of extending them.
In September, OPEC+ postponed plans to begin gradually rolling back on the 2.2 million barrels per day of voluntary cuts by two months in an effort to stem the slide of oil prices. The 2.2 million bpd cut, which was implemented over the second and third quarters, had been due to expire at the end of September.
At the start of this month, the oil cartel again decided to delay the planned oil output increase by another month to the end of December.
Oil prices have been weighed by a sluggish post-Covid recovery in demand from China, the world’s second-largest economy and leading crude oil importer. In its monthly report released Tuesday, OPEC lowered its 2025 global oil demand growth forecast from 1.6 million barrels per day to 1.5 million barrels per day.
The pressured prices were also conflagrated by a perceivably oversupplied market, especially as key oil producers outside the OPEC alliance like the U.S., Canada, Guyana and Brazil are also planning to add supply, Gloystein highlighted.
Bearish year ahead for oil
The market consensus is that there’ll be a “substantial” oil stock build next year, said Citibank energy strategist Martoccia Francesco.
“Should the producers group proceed with their production plan, the market surplus could nearly double… reaching as much as 1.6 million barrels per day,” said Francesco.
Even if OPEC+ doesn’t unwind the cuts, the future ofl prices is still looking break. Citi analysts expect Brent price to average $60 per barrel next year.
Further fueling the bearish outlook is the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, whose return is associated by some with a potential trade war, said analysts who spoke to CNBC.
“If we do get a trade war — and a lot of economists think that a trade war is possible, and particularly against China — we could see much, much lower prices,” said OPIS’ Kloza.
For that to happen to retail gasoline prices, oil would need to drop to “below $40” per barrel, said Matt Smith, Kpler’s lead oil analyst.
Right now, retail gasoline prices are at a “sweet spot” at $3 per gallon, where consumers do not feel the pinch and input prices are still sufficiently high for producers, Smith added.