Ok, I am just going to throw this out there, because we have seen this happen in the tech space before with "right to repair" and other examples.
Based on ZERO evidence, what is the possibility that DJI is using the same chip supplier and put pressure on the chip maker to STOP selling certain chips to Autel, effectively crippling their products? For me, seeing the way big tech companies operate, especially DJI....I wouldn't put this past them AT ALL. They have the money and influence to do this.
*any DJI fanbois, keep your flames to yourself. I clearly stated I have ZERO evidence.*
I don't see Autel getting out of this, but great suggestions going forward from
@mshmovie on how to fix this AND keep your current customers happy. Future customers will all be getting V2 hardware, so they won't be affected. I had toyed with the idea of the possibility of picking up one of the new controllers, but didn't seriously consider it.
Lets all hope smart people over at Autel put their heads together and come out with a win. My thinking is, that they already thought through this for a while now and came to the hard conclusion, based on facts today that they are dealing with....that they can't continue on the same path they have been on and have made the extremely hard decision to do this. That doesn't mean I like it one bit, so I feel the same way most of you do.
The bad press that Autel will get over this, and the issues this brings will kill them in the high end business space, I would think. No one wants to invest $$ in a company that does this to their customers without offering some sort of upgrade path to get out of it. The sensible thing for Autel to do is to offer to upgrade current owners products with the V2 line at an extreme discount, eat the loss, retrofit all the V1 products returned and re-sell them to re-coup their losses, OR offer a retrofit path, where they will retrofit and return your V1 back to you as V2. That would keep customers happy, we all would get V2 hardware with hopefully minimal out of pocket expense. I would be happy with a solution like this. This could be done for anyone wanting to buy the new V2 controller....Autel would allow you to send in your drone and either retrofit or replace with a V2 model.