A more appropriate analogy would be if their seats were already reserved and couldn't be resold.
The hardware is already there, Tesla is just being (as another poster noted) a "Authoritarian Technocratic hell."
The hardware runs the passive safety features of the car includes as standard in all vehicles. Forward collision warning, lane departure, emergency braking. It’s not a matter of the autopilot computer only being used for autopilot
Whose fault is that? On multiple occasions, Tesla themselves have said "All vehicles are equipped with all the hardware needed for FSD, it's just a software upgrade".
_We_ are not saying the hardware is/should be free (obviously there was a cost at some point), _Tesla_ is saying it's in the baseline cost.