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IT Home reported on August 25 that Tesla promised in 2016 that all vehicles sold since then would be equipped with autonomous driving functions. However, as technology continues to develop, Tesla has found that achieving this goal faces huge challenges. Now, the company seems to have withdrawn this promise.

Tesla has deleted a blog post published in 2016 that promised to equip all vehicles with advanced self-driving features, but IT Home noted that the blog can still be accessed through the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine).

Some have suggested that Tesla could face a refund obligation of up to $380 billion as a result, but a deeper analysis suggests that the liability resulting from this policy change may not be that large.

Only a handful of vehicles equipped with third-generation hardware (HW3) have subscribed to Tesla's FSD software, and in fact, Tesla currently only has about $3 billion in unrealized revenue related to HW3. Therefore, this policy change may not have a significant impact on Tesla's overall financials.

The bigger threat to Tesla is that some owners of vehicles equipped with HW3 could sue Tesla for potential revenue lost due to the inability to enable autonomous driving features.

In addition, the court may force Tesla to upgrade all HW3 vehicles to HW4 hardware. After all, there is a precedent. In 2022, the court forced Tesla to upgrade a Washington State resident's HW2 vehicle to HW3 for free on the grounds that Tesla made a clear promise in 2016.