Tesla has reduced the price of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, dropping it from $12,000 to $8,000 for customers in the United States and from CA$16,000 to CA$11,000 in Canada. This move follows the recent 50% reduction in the subscription price announced on April 12.
Enhanced Autopilot Changes
The cost to upgrade from Enhanced Autopilot (EAP) to FSD has also been cut and is now a $2,000 upgrade for U.S. customers and CA$2,750 in Canada. EAP has also been removed as an option completely from Tesla’s site. Customers’ only option to get more advanced driver assist features in the U.S. and Canada is to now buy FSD.
In 2016, Enhanced Autopilot started at $5,000 while FSD was an extra $3,000. At the time, Enhanced Autopilot included features including Autosteer, Summon, and AutoPark, while more recently it also added Auto Lane Change and Navigate on Autopilot, which has the vehicle change lanes for you to remain on route to your destination.
Earlier this month, Tesla implemented a 50% price reduction for FSD subscriptions in the U.S. and introduced the subscription model in Canada at a great value of CA$99 per month.
FSD Price History
In April 2019, Basic Autopilot was added to every Tesla vehicle, which included Autosteer and Tesla restructured their Enhanced Autopilot and FSD offerings. The price of FSD slowly climbed from $5,000 USD in 2019 to a high of $15,000 USD in September 2022 before trending downward.
Date
FSD Cost
April 2019
$5,000
May 2019
$6,000
August 2019
$7,000
July 2020
$8,000
October 2020
$10,000
January 2022
$12,000
September 2022
$15,000
September 2023
$12,000
April 2024
$8,000
Subscribe or Buy?
With the previous pricing of $12,000 in the United States, Tesla customers who subscribed to FSD for $99 a month would need more than 10 years to reach the purchase price. With the updated price of $8,000, that drops to about 6 and a half years. It’s worth noting that the average length of car ownership in the U.S. is about 8 years.
This decision follows Elon Musk’s recent initiative to offer FSD demonstrations to all customers in North America upon vehicle delivery. In a recent communication, the Tesla CEO emphasized the importance of FSD, stating that it had become mandatory in North America to conduct a brief FSD test ride with customers before handing over the vehicle.
In the same email, Musk added that “almost no one actually realizes how well (supervised) FSD actually works” while recognizing that the measure could “slow down the delivery process”.
Price Cuts
On Saturday, Tesla also cut prices by nearly $2,000 on the Model S, Model X, and Model Y in the U.S. The Model Y now starts at $42,990 before government incentives. Tesla has also begun reducing finance rates in various markets, which could make their way to North America in the near future.
It looks like Tesla may soon be replacing its archaic voice commands with something much more useful — a voice assistant.
Greentheonly, who often takes deep dives into Tesla software by decompiling the firmware and looking for changes, has now found the early integration of a voice assistant.
Voice Assistant Already Available in China
Tesla has already replaced its voice commands in China with a voice assistant that can not only control certain aspects of the vehicle using more natural language but can also answer common knowledge questions such as the current weather, stock quotes and more (video below).
Tesla Creating Own Assistant
According to Green's findings, it looks like Tesla may be rolling its own solution instead of integrating something like Amazon Alexa like Rivian has. Tesla created their own solution in China by using some of their own technology and several existing software solutions. However, some of them are only available in China so they don’t scale to support additional regions.
Grōk
The first thought that comes to mind is Tesla leaning on AI efforts by Grōk and xAI, which could help it support common knowledge questions and search the web for answers. However, that only gets Tesla partly there, as Alexa and Google Assistant already support a large ecosystem, one that may not be available if Tesla creates their own voice assistant. With Tesla’s solution, a driver may be limited to what devices they can control through the voice assistant, at least initially. Either way, just a more natural way to activate certain vehicle solutions will be an improvement over what’s available today. The ability to ask the assistant common questions will be the icing on top.
Wake Word
According to Green, the source code hinted at the voice assistant using a wake word, which would replace the need to press the scroll wheel on the steering wheel. Tesla has begun to use the left scroll wheel button for additional things lately such as wiper controls and a multi-function mode, so this may fit in with their plan.
It’s fun to speculate what the wake word would be or whether Tesla would add the ability to create your own. It could be something as simple as ‘Hey, Tesla’, ‘Grok’, or something more humorous as Tesla has a knack for. Unfortunately, there weren't any hints on what the actual wake word would be, but being able to set a destination, play a specific song or ask the assistant for the weather will be a much-needed improvement.
Supported Models
It's not clear which models Tesla would support a voice assistant, but with the release of software v12 with update 2024.14.3, Tesla is starting to leave more features out of older Intel-based vehicles. While a voice assistant may not necessarily be computationally heavy, it may depend on Tesla's implementation and whether voice commands are transcribed on device or carried over the internet for transcription.
Voice Model
In the software, there are references to Microsoft's text-to-speech technology and specifically to a voice named “Jenny Neutral.”
The “Jenny Neutral” voice seems like an acceptable voice, bringing a natural-sounding voice to Tesla's voice assistant, although it doesn't differ much from what you find on other assistants. You can view an example of Microsoft’s “Jenny Neutral” voice in the video below.
Tesla has been more mindful lately about adding information for unreleased features to its software to help prevent leaks, so by the time something like this is found by Green, it usually doesn't take long before it becomes available, although this could also make for an exciting Christmas present.
Thanks to Tesla hacker Greentheonly, it looks like Tesla will soon offer a native experience for Amazon Music in their cars.
Green decompiled Tesla's latest update, version 2024.14.3, and found references to Amazon's music service, Amazo Music.
In this same update, Tesla added Audible playback, the audiobook service Amazon bought back in 2008.
For Tesla to add support for these music services, they need to have access to APIs that are provided by the music provider. Like everything else, there's likely a deal Tesla and Amazon struck, not only for Audible which was released in this update, but also for Amazon's other services. Given that there are already references to Amazon Music in 2024.14.3, it may not be long before we see the service launch in an upcoming update.
Prime Video
Although Green doesn't mention any references to Amazon Prime Video specifically, it's possible we may see that service added as well. Tesla's Theater "apps," are essentially links to a browser without the user interface, so detecting references for Amazon Prime Video would be more difficult to discover in Tesla's source code. Since Tesla already implemented Audible and there are now hints of Amazon Music, it’s looking like we may see support for Amazon Prime Video as well.
Not the First Time Tesla Has Hinted at Amazon Music
Back in 2020, we saw Tesla add hints of supporting Amazon Music, although the code was scrapped in a later revision. The same source code in 2020 had references to Pandora, Audible and Apple Music. Since then we've seen Tesla add support for two of those services, with Pandora being the only one left out.
Top Music Services in the World
According to Exploding Topics, Amazon Music is the fourth most popular music service in the world as of February 2024 with a 13.3% share of the market. Number one is not surprisingly Spotify, with Apple Music and Tencent (Chinese music service) taking the second and third spots respectively.
Streaming Platform
Proportion of Subscribers
Spotify
30.5%
Apple Music
13.7%
Tencent Music
13.4%
Amazon
13.3%
YouTube Music
8.9%
Who Will Get Access
Amazon Music will actually be a great addition, especially if you don't pay for a separate music service like Spotify or Apple Music, but have Amazon Prime.
In the U.S., LiveOne, previously known as Slacker is the default music service that comes for free with Tesla — although Premium Connectivity is still required to listen while driving. Tesla simply calls it "Streaming" in the vehicle since this was named before Tesla had support for multiple music services. Tesla currently supports LiveOne, Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, TuneIn and SiriusXM on the Model S and Model X.
Although LiveOne is free, it has several limitations on audio quality, music curation and song selection. It also doesn’t allow you to jump to certain parts of a song.
Amazon Music offers a much more robust solution, so it's expected to be a nice upgrade for owners who already have access to the music service.
If you subscribe to Amazon Prime and get the free version of Amazon Music, it's expected that you'll have access to it in your vehicle without any additional charges, just like you do on your phone and other devices.
Amazon also offers a premium plan for $10 per month that includes higher-quality audio and access to a larger music library. However, we don't believe the premium plan will be required to use the service in the vehicle.
Tesla update 2024.14.3 is currently rolling out to customers around the world, although it could be several weeks before most customers have access.
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