It also appears they have removed the option for purchasing the "Full Self Driving" functionality.
I suspect they're finding the shipped hardware isn't enough to accomplish what they want with the necessary reliability. Elon has already hinted that shipped 3's will need a computer upgrade to support full self-driving. They are probably wisely backing off on guaranteeing full self-driving on hardware that hasn't been proven to succeed to specification.
Total speculation, but I'd bet a chocolate chip cookie that they'll find they need to make changes to the sensor array as well. (If I were designing this from scratch, I'd want a wide stereoscopic baseline between cameras for optical ranging. They have multiple cameras, but they are narrowly spaced, and may have fields of view that differ too much for stereoscopic fusion. I'd aim for "larger number of shittier/cheaper cameras.")
It's still available for the Model X and Model S. The disclosure when you pay for it is very clear. They are not acting sketchy when they sell it to you. I'd guess it has more to do with not enough people ordering it, so removing the option streamlines fulfillment.
> I suspect they're finding the shipped hardware isn't enough to accomplish what they want with the necessary reliability.
Yeah they already admitted to this. Anyone who has paid for full self driving is getting a Hardware 3.0 (HW3) upgrade for free. They said full self driving will require HW3.
> Total speculation, but I'd bet a chocolate chip cookie that they'll find they need to make changes to the sensor array as well.
Yeah, as an owner I'm pretty worried that will be the case but I guess we will see. I doubt they will admit to this publicly though - they seem adamant that the sensors today should be sufficient.
IMO their marketing probably leads customers to be more optimistic about the expected payout of their $x,000 investment than is justified. Though that is not necessarily deliberate deception, they may be unrealistically optimistic themselves.
Misleading marketing or not, I'd say it's sketchy in the sense that it's an over-promise. If they eventually have to face a reality where their hardware doesn't it cut it, they might be on the hook for thousands of customers' respective thousands of dollars of pre-orders, which is a huge capital liability. Quite possibly 10 figures.
White paint is now $2k instead of $1500
White interior is now $1k instead of $1500