And this turned out to not be true, because if it were, they would have released FSD on this hardware.
Just imagine if Microsoft sold you PC hardware that they claimed would support windows 11 back in 2016, but now require a processor upgrade to support it. This is exactly the same situation.
the original can (theoretically) play games, but no one with a license wrote any.
They probably won't get there with any hardware package in the next 10 years. But this is a present admission that older generation cars are not currently capable of what Tesla considers FSD without a hardware upgrade.
They continually seem to draw a very prominent line between "Full Self-Driving" and "Autonomous", where what Tesla defines as autonomous is the much higher standard (i.e summon your car from one coast to the other).
I would in that light, argue that Tesla's hurdle for saying a given car is FSD capable is really low, because imo, it seems like they are comfortable saying Level 2 is like, Full Self-Driving (Beta).
If the promise boils down to the blog announcement on their blog, the line is 'all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.'
IMO (not a lawyer), it feels like they didn't tell you it would be the latest, greatest, continually supported in perpetuity, never changing hardware. They told you it had hardware that could support a full self-driving system that is safer than a human. Hardware that they do not support now.
I haven't interacted with any Tesla sales folks, but I feel like if you asked about a commitment like this, even before this subscription service, no one is going to commit to that.
They made it clear it's up to you to purchase the self-driving software, and that is where all the magic is. And to boot, the available agreement when people purchased the car is still on the table; if you give them $10k, they will give you hardware. If you want the subscription, you need to have/acquire the supported hardware.
If they had a contract like a phone (which dislike that business model) where you commit to X months, I could see it. But I too wouldn't want to be handing these out to have people cancel after a month.