Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com A judge has ordered Tesla to upgrade users 'self-driving computers for free so they can subscribe to Tesla's fully autonomous driving service at no extra cost.

Tesla has previously claimed that all vehicles it has produced since 2016 have "all the hardware required" to support autonomous driving through future software updates. Tesla hasn't delivered on that promise, though, and the company has actually had to upgrade the hardware of vehicles it has built since 2016, including in-car computers running self-driving software, known as Hardware 3.0 or FSD computers.

In keeping with its 2016 promise that future production vehicles will have "all the hardware needed" to be autonomous, Tesla is offering free computer upgrades to owners who order fully autonomous packages, eliminating concerns about the need to update hardware for autonomous driving.

Things got complicated last year, however, when Tesla introduced a fully autonomous driving (FSD) package for $199 a month. For owners who don't have a fully autonomous computer, Tesla requires them to pay $1500 (later reduced to $1000) to get the computer before they can subscribe to the FSD plan.

This appears to run counter to Tesla's promise to upgrade hardware for free if needed to achieve the autonomous driving capabilities promised since 2016.

CTOnews.com has learned that Tesla Model 3 owner Ian Jordan decided to take his complaint to Washington State's Small Claims Court after his request to Tesla to resolve the issue was ignored. His Model 3 uses a Hardware 2.5 computer, and Tesla wants to charge him $1000 to upgrade to the new computer before ordering the FSD. Jordan challenged the charge in small claims court.

Tesla didn't come forward to defend himself, so Jordan won. However, the judge's ruling is still interesting. In his conclusion to the case, he called Tesla "false propaganda."

Jordan also filed a separate claim against Tesla for the loss of functionality in another of his Tesla cars equipped with the original MCU1 media unit. Even though it's still under warranty, Tesla says it can't fix the problem and instead recommends paying for an upgrade to a next-generation media computer (MCU2).

The judge deemed this a warranty violation and ordered Tesla to pay Jordan $1,657.50-the cost of upgrading to a new computer. He even ordered Tesla to pay $500 for the loss of the AM radio, because Tesla upgraded to a new computer instead of restoring the original computer's functionality, resulting in the AM radio being cut because the MCU 2 computer castrated the radio function, and Tesla later introduced the radio upgrade function separately for $500.

Jordan told Electrek that Tesla quickly paid the damages awarded by the court.

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