Tesla has been continuously working on improving its autopilot features. As they should with all the regulators breathing down their neck. The frequent accidents that happen with Tesla cars don’t really help the situation either. People just don’t get it when Tesla tells them that their autopilot system requires constant driver supervision. Tesla is looking to remedy most of the complaints with their Full Self Driving package, which is now going for $199 per month.
The FSD package wasn’t a monthly subscription before. Tesla used to sell it as a one-time purchase of $10,000. Although the subscription will make them more money in the long wrong, it’ll also allow the customer to check out the new features that come with FSD without paying the $10,000 premium. The people who bought Tesla’s Enhanced Autopilot package can also get the FSD package for $99 per month.
Only Tesla cars that have the supported hardware are eligible for the FSD upgrade. Meaning they must have FSD computer hardware 3.0 (HW3) or above. They also should have the Basic or Enhanced Autopilot configurations. Owners that don’t meet the requirements will have to fork over an additional $1500 to get their cars FSD ready. It is to be noted that Full Self Driving doesn’t mean full self-driving in the literal sense. While the name may be misleading, the car will still require constant driver supervision.
According to the company’s website “With Full Self-Driving (FSD) capability, you will get access to a suite of more advanced driver assistance features, designed to provide more active guidance and assisted driving under your active supervision”. Basically, you’re getting a better autopilot system but not good enough to be able to drive on its own without any hiccups. The current version of FSD is version 9 and it is still in beta.
Updates for version 9 had been promised for a while before they finally started rolling out earlier this month. Tesla has been having problems with their FSD software with Elon Musk admitting that it’s a harder problem than he initially thought. He said in a tweet that “Generalized self-driving is a hard problem, as it requires solving a large part of real-world AI. Didn’t expect it to be so hard, but the difficulty is obvious in retrospect”. He further added that “Nothing has more degrees of freedom than reality”.
Full Self-Driving capabilities include navigate on Autopilot, Auto Lane Change, and Summon.