Drivers charge their Teslas in Fountain Valley, CA, on Wednesday, March 20, 2024.
Jeff Gritchen | Medianews Group | Getty Images
Tesla said on Friday that it’s cutting the subscription price of its premium driver assistance system for customers in the U.S.
Marketed as its Full Self-Driving, or FSD, package, Tesla customers will now pay $99 per month, down from $199 previously.
The price cut is at odds with previous promises from CEO Elon Musk, who has repeatedly said that the cost of FSD would only go up as Tesla adds features and functionality to the system.
“The FSD price will continue to rise as the software gets closer to full self-driving capability with regulatory approval,” Musk wrote on Twitter, now known as X, on May 18, 2020. He said at that point “the value of FSD is probably somewhere in excess of $100,000” per car.
Despite its brand name, the company’s FSD option today doesn’t make Tesla vehicles autonomous or functional as robotaxis.
Musk has promised shareholders and customers a robotaxi for years, and has said their existing vehicles would soon become self driving after an over-the-air software update.
He told investors on a call in 2019 that autonomous driving would transform Tesla into a company with a $500 billion market cap, up from around $42 billion at that time. (The company is worth over $500 billion today even without having developed an autonomous car.) Tesla raised over $2 billion through debt and equity after the call.
In a notice that’s now shown to some drivers through the touchscreen displays in their cars, Tesla says:
“Full Self-Driving (Supervised) can drive your Tesla almost anywhere. It will make lane changes, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects, and make left and right turns. It must be used with additional caution and an attentive driver. It does not make your vehicle autonomous. Do not become complacent.”
The company uses sensors in the steering wheel and cabin cameras, positioned…
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