It's deliberately deceptive, and I'm real tired of tech people tripping over each other to defend it. Technically correct? Sure. But deliberately phrased to obscure the fact that this is a hypothetical future capability that the product does not possess today. And please spare me your "well actually, the showroom attendants will clarify exactly what it means" -- they are framing this in a misleading way to generate public interest.
so how do anyone actually know what the hardware is capable of if the software is not ready? I mean there is no way to verify that hardware is ready for anything on its own.
Or are you suggesting that there are Tesla owners who are (a) sitting in their driveway wondering why their car isn't driving them to work or (b) returning their cars upon finding out many of the features on the Autopilot page require regulatory approval?
Tesla driver caught turning on autopilot and leaving driver’s seat on motorway
Culprit admits he knew what he had done was ‘silly’ but that the car was capable of something ‘amazing’
It's exceedingly clear to me that they're talking about hardware that can support future capabilities -- additional features via software upgrades is something they talk about a lot. And they're very explicit about what their Autopilot system does and doesn't do on their site. There's basically no situation in which someone is buying a $70,000+ car without knowing how the Autopilot works.
It's really not that deceptive. People would have to be a lot dumber than they actually are to be confused about it.
I'd say that if they're claiming to be able to deliver full self-driving autonomy to existing cars via purely a SOFTWARE upgrade, then that's pretty deceptive, since I am pretty sure not even Tesla knows exactly what hardware might be required for such capability. They'll know when they build it, but not before.
