Last Sunday, Elon Musk announced a 25% price increase for the company’s premium driver assistance system, which is marketed under the name Full Self-Driving, or FSD. The price will increase to $15,000 from $12,000 on Sept. 5, according to the CEO’s tweet.
At the moment, Tesla is charging customers $12,000 upfront for FSD, or $199 per month on a subscription basis.
All new Tesla vehicles come with a standard driver assistance package called Autopilot which keeps the Tesla vehicle centered in its lane and traveling at the speed of surrounding traffic.
Tesla’s highest-priced driver assistance option, FSD, is “Traffic and Stop Sign Control” and “Navigate on Autopilot” among the rest.
However, the company instructs the drivers to be always ready to gain control of the vehicle for steering and braking as these features do not make the car entirely autonomous.
Smart Summon is also a feature in the car that allows drivers to use a smartphone and Tesla mobile app like a remote control to call their car from across a parking lot.
There are a few FSD features in the lower-priced option called Enhanced Autopilot, or EAP, only Tesla customers who buy or subscribe to the premium option can request access to FSD Beta, an experimental version of Tesla’s system.
Tesla’s approach has drawn criticism and regulatory scrutiny from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the California Department of Motor Vehicles alike.
Earlier, Musk wrote on Twitter, “There are many major code changes, so this will be an extra cautious rollout. Releasing on 8/20 to ~1000 Tesla owners, then 10.69.1 next week to accommodate feedback & release to ~10k customers, then 10.69.2 week after & release to rest of FSD Beta.”
Owners who gain access to FSD Beta can send feedback to the company via their cars when the system fails or acts glitchy. Tesla said that 100,000 drivers had already installed FSD Beta.
At the Tesla 2022 Annual Shareholder Meeting on August 4, Musk said that FSD Beta will be available to anyone who requests it by the end of this year. Here’s a quote from Thomson Financial’s transcript of the meeting:
“We’re still tracking very much to have a widespread deployment of FSD Beta this year in North America. So, I should say basically, FSD will be available to anyone who requests it by the end of this year.”
Among those who are receiving the limited-release update this weekend are widely followed social media influencers who sell Tesla merchandise and run ad-supported videos on YouTube channels where they review Tesla’s latest releases and more.
Since 2016, the NHTSA has opened 38 probes into collisions that involved a Tesla vehicle where driver assistance systems including Autopilot and more advanced systems were thought to be a factor.
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s director of Autopilot software, said on Twitter this weekend that “Autopilot prevents ~40 crashes /day where human drivers mistakenly press the accelerator at 100% instead of the brakes.”