Tesla raises the price of the full autonomous drive to $12,000 due to falling demand.
Tesla continues to raise the price of its full self-drive feature as demand continues to decline.
CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter on Saturday to announce that the price of the FSD will increase to $12,000 on January 17.
Musk also said that FSD prices will continue to rise and that subscription prices for the feature are also on the rise. In 2021, Tesla began offering the feature as a subscription price starting at $199 per month for cars with Basic Autopilot and $99 for cars with Enhanced Autopilot. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time.
Despite its name, FSD offers only basic automated driving functions and requires constant driver monitoring because it is far from perfect and makes mistakes that need to be corrected. As a result, FSDs rank only Level 2 on the SAE scale of automated driving capability. Level 3 is the first stage where eyes-off functionality is available.
Tesla continues to improve and add features to this functionality, but it could be a decade or more before FSDs are actually able to drive themselves 100% unsupervised, assuming the appropriate regulatory environment is in place. In addition, FSDs cannot be replaced with new vehicles, so owners who purchase FSDs must continue to drive their old vehicles or risk losing their FSDs.
The market is no longer buying the hype, and as a result, demand for FSDs has dropped significantly. Forbes reported in December that the acquisition rate for 2021 is only 12%, up from 22% in 2020 and 37% in 2019.
Tesla expects both FSD capabilities and the regulatory environment to improve over time. The company is already testing a version of FSD that can automatically handle turning in urban environments while maintaining driver monitoring. Some customers have received beta versions of this feature.
Tesla is also preparing for a future in which cars can be driven without anyone in them. The company has already announced the Tesla Network, which will be a driverless cab network that will allow Tesla owners to have their cars provide lifts when not in use, creating a potential revenue stream for both Tesla and owners. Musk has stated that at this time, the FSD alone is worth $100,000.
