Tesla’s first ever customer in Australia – and arguably its most loyal – has sounded off against the electric vehicle company on X over its handling of Full Self Driving hardware on older models.
Simon Hackett, a tech entrepreneur and battery storage investor, bought the very first Tesla EV in Australia – the original Roadster – and then was among the first customers for both the Model S and Model X EVs. He still owns seven Tesla electric vehicles (and an electric plane, see photo above).
“I don’t want a new car, I just want what I paid for,” Hackett wrote on X on Thursday, after failing to get a reply to an earlier post, in which he responded to a Tesla email offering cheaper FSD Supervised packages if customers upgraded to a new model featuring HW4 Hardware that can accommodate the technology.
“Thank you for your loyalty”? Gah. After 8+ years on multiple cars, how about just delivering me the outcome I pre-paid for, on the cars I paid for it to be on … and at least tell me *when* you’ll be doing the HW4 hardware update to make it happen, because FSD clearly needs it,” Hackett wrote.
The Driven contributor Tim Eden, another Tesla owner concerned about the treatment of early Tesla model owners, wrote last month about his frustrations, saying he might have been a lot better off had he invested the $8,500 he paid for FSD in Tesla stock.
“This. 100 times, this,” Hackett wrote on X in response to Eden’s story. “I am very much in the same situation. Our model S and X both have ‘full self driving computer 3’ to go with our 8+ year old purchase of FSD. The silence from @Tesla is deafening.”
News.com.au reported this week that the issue over FSD has developed into a lass-action lawsuit filed in Federal Court by JGA Saddler.
Rebecca Jancauskas, a director for the firm, told News Corp Australia that “thousands of Australians” have joined the proceedings.
“Tesla made promises about their vehicles’ safety, performance and features such as their ‘Full Self-Driving,’ but we have found a lot of these promises are falling flat,” she said. The email sent by Tesla offering discounts for those buying new models is seen as an attempt to reduce the number of claimants.
The Driven reached out to Tesla for comment on Hackett’s remarks but did not hear back before publication. We will update the story if we do.
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of The Driven, and also edits and founded the Renew Economy and One Step Off The Grid web sites. He has been a journalist for nearly 40 years, is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review, and owns a Tesla Model 3.