The only people he’s going to have to upgrade are those who purchased it. In the past there’s been some small claims court cases where someone won about being upgraded for a subscription, but if that is truly a concern, Tesla could stop the subscriptions for a few years and let the cars age out. They have no obligations to offer a subscription.

Also, they only need to upgrade cars when it’d actually capable. The promise is to upgrade cars to capable hardware, not upgrade cars with every hardware iteration, so as long as hw4 can’t actually do it, they’re likely in the clear as well.

Given most people don’t think they can actually make fsd work, then they’re in the clear.

If they somehow make it work, the upgrade cost is going to be peanuts compared to the insane amount of money they’d start printing.

So it’s not much if a story.