"Why would a company delete content from its blog?"

Promises, Promises

Over the weekend, Tesla quietly pulled an October 2016 blog post from its website in which it promised that "all Tesla cars being produced" will have "Full Self-Driving hardware."

"As always, our over-the-air software updates will keep customers at the forefront of technology and continue to make every Tesla, including those equipped with first-generation Autopilot and earlier cars, more capable over time," the post read.

And it's not just that post that has mysteriously vanished from Tesla's website. As Electrek points out, everything published on the Elon Musk-led company's blog before 2019 appears to have been deleted.

"Why would a company delete content from its blog?" one Reddit user questioned. "Makes no sense unless it’s trying to hide information, whether it’s the self-driving article or something else."

Of course, Tesla's eight-year-old promise has aged like milk. Despite the company's best efforts — and plenty of chaos caused by its controversial $15,000 "Full Self-Driving" software — full autonomy is likely still many years out.

Worse yet, the carmaker's reckless approach — of using members of the public to beta test its driver assistance features — has already resulted in plenty of crashes, with overzealous drivers being lulled into a false sense of security by the brand's overconfident marketing.

Free-ish Upgrades

Meanwhile, Musk hinted that it could soon be the end of the road for the EV maker's Hardware 3 Autopilot computer. Future development of FSD would require an upgrade, seemingly contradicting the company's 2016 promise.

Recent over-the-air FSD updates have also prioritized vehicles with much newer Hardware 4 computers, highlighting concerns that customers relying on Hardware 3 could soon be out of luck.

"It takes considerable software effort to optimize the code enough to run on HW3," Musk tweeted last month.

At first, Tesla offered free hardware upgrades to those who bought the FSD add-on outright. Customers who later opted for a monthly subscription to the software, however, have had to shell out anywhere between $1,000 and $1,500.

Now that most of the company's older blog posts have been deleted, we don't know where Tesla stands when it comes to its original promise. Has the carmaker given up on claiming that its entire fleet will imminently be capable of full autonomy, regardless of hardware? Is Tesla trying to delete evidence of its promise of free hardware upgrades?

It certainly wouldn't be the first time the company has made misleading claims or gone back on its promises. Case in point, its CEO has promised that full self-driving will become a reality "next year" every year since 2014.

More on FSD: If You Pay Attention to Tesla's FSD Map on the Dashboard, Crucial Problems Quickly Appear


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