Tesla FSD Subscription: Price and Release Date Expectations

Elon Musk said back in December 2020 that a FSD subscription would be made available next year. He has recently said that it’s coming this month and that it won’t be tied to the wider release of the FSD v9 beta which is expected in May or June. You can probably guess why these two features have similar timelines as Tesla expects FSD v9 to help sell the FSD subscriptions. The new FSD v9 release is also expected to have brand new vector-space visualizations.

We’re now in May and the FSD subscription should be falling upon us any day now. In our initial reporting of the FSD subscription, we talked about why it was smart for Tesla to also offer a FSD subscription in addition to a one-time purchase package. You can read more about those reasons here, but they mostly have to do with the hefty price tag of $10,000, which is a tough pill to swallow for most and also that there are some instances where buying the FSD package outright doesn't make sense, for example if you’re leasing your car.

Here’s what to expect in Tesla’s announcement

The average new car length ownership in the US is 8.4 years. The FSD package currently costs $10,000 USD. So if you take the cost of the package and divide it by the length of car ownership, you get a price of $99/month.

Now, there are probably a few reasons why Tesla wouldn’t want to create a $99/month FSD option, even though it’s a very attractive price.

First, if Tesla were to release a $99/month option, they’d be sure to annoy a whole lot of loyal supporters who spent $10,000 up front when they bought their cars and only had a fraction of the FSD features available. Secondly, Tesla would much rather you buy the FSD package up front instead of paying for it monthly. By doing that, not only do they have $10k to invest into resources right away, but they also essentially got you to commit to pay for FSD every month for 8-plus years.

So what is a good price? $149 seems plausible. For drivers who have leased their cars for three-years then it’d be a total cost of about $5,300 over the course of the three-years instead of their only other alternative right now, which is the full $10,000 package. This may tip the boat in Tesla’s favor for many.

You can certainly bet that Tesla is closely analyzing the percentage of buyers who currently buy the FSD package today and how many of those buyers they would lose if they were to offer a monthly subscription. The answer to that question lies in whether they would make more through FSD subscriptions than what they’d lose in upfront payments.

If we look at the possibility of a $199/month subscription then we’re looking at someone paying $7,200 over three-years, which seems just way too close to the full price of $10,000 to make sense. That’d be paying over $20k over that 8 year period.

Now, if Tesla were a traditional company, I would feel pretty comfortable with expecting a $149/month FSD subscription becoming available this month. But if there’s one thing that Tesla has taught us over the years, is that there is always a price early adopters pay.

The price of Tesla’s cars has dropped dramatically in some cases. Some folks paid more for an AWD Model 3 then what the Performance model ended up costing later on. Elon Musk has often commented on this; saying that technology gets cheaper and early adopters are often helping pave the road for the future.

Whether Tesla releases a $99/month or $199/month FSD subscription completely depends on how many buyers are buying the FSD package today. I have a feeling it’s rather low or Tesla wouldn’t be considering a monthly subscription in the first place.

As a reader has pointed out, it's possible that Tesla may require a minimum commitment in order to subscribe to FSD at $99/month. This could be used to prevent owners from only subscribing during roadtrips. It could also help offset the costs of any hardware needed to allow FSD, such as upgrading the car's Autopilot hardware from 2.5 to 3.0. Elon Musk has already said that the FSD subscription would cover any hardware needed. A minimum commitment could be one or two-years.

A FSD subscription has the advantage that it is not tied to a particular vehicle, you could subscribe to it in one vehicle, then switch it to another a year or two later. That may be the biggest issue early adopters will have who paid full price for FSD at $7,000 or $10,000. Tesla may allow a one-time transfer of the FSD license for these owners as this has become a popular topic that has yet to be addressed by Elon. It's also possible that Tesla may limit FSD subscriptions to personal use and they would not be able to be used for robotaxis in the future.

We expect Tesla to announce a FSD subscription as low as $99, or as high as $149, in the US very soon.

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Tesla’s Optimus Robot Learns to Walk Without Vision [VIDEO]

Optimus Falls - but catches itself!

Not a Tesla App

Tesla recently showed off a demo of Optimus, its humanoid robot, walking around in moderately challenging terrain—not on a flat surface but on dirt and slopes. These things can be difficult for a humanoid robot, especially during the training cycle.

Daily walks help clear your mind pic.twitter.com/dUsW58trS6

— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) December 9, 2024

A Look Behind the Curtain

Most interestingly, Milan Kovac, VP of Engineering for Optimus, clarified what it takes to get Optimus to this stage. Let’s break down what he said.

Optimus is Blind

Optimus is getting seriously good at walking now - it can keep its balance over uneven ground - even while walking blind. Tesla is currently using just the sensors, all powered by a neural net running on the embedded computer. 

Essentially, Tesla is building Optimus from the ground up, relying on as much additional data as possible while it trains vision. This is similar to how they train FSD on vehicles, using LiDAR rigs to validate the vision system’s accuracy. While Optimus doesn’t have LiDAR, it relies on all those other sensors on board, many of which will likely become simplified as vision takes over as the primary sensor.

Today, Optimus is walking blind, but it’s able to react almost instantly to changes in the terrain underneath it, even if it falls or slips. 

What’s Next?

Next up, Tesla AI will be adding vision to Optimus - helping complete the neural net. Remember, Optimus runs on the same overall AI stack as FSD - in fact, Optimus uses an FSD computer and an offshoot of the FSD stack for vision-based tasks.

Milan mentions they’re planning on adding vision to help the robot plan ahead and improve its walking gait. While the zombie shuffle is iconic and a little bit amusing, getting humanoid robots to walk like humans is actually difficult.

There’s plenty more, too - including better responsiveness to velocity and direction commands and learning to fall and stand back up. Falling while protecting yourself to minimize damage is something natural to humans - but not exactly natural to something like a robot. Training it to do so is essential in keeping the robot, the environment around it, and the people it is interacting with safe.

We’re excited to see what’s coming with Optimus next because it is already getting started in some fashion in Tesla’s factories.

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Is Tesla Close to Licensing FSD? GM Quits Cruise, BMW Praises Tesla

Not a Tesla App

In a relatively surprising move, GM announced that it is realigning its autonomy strategy and prioritizing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) over fully autonomous vehicles.

GM is effectively closing Cruise (autonomous) and focusing on its Super Cruise (ADAS) feature. The engineering teams at Cruise will join the GM teams working on Super Cruise, effectively shuttering the fully autonomous vehicle business.

End of Cruise

GM cites that “an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” and “considerable time and resources” are required for scaling the business to a profitable level. Essentially - they’re unable to keep up with competitors at current funding and research levels, putting them further and further behind.

Cruise has been offering driverless rides in several cities, using HD mapping of cities alongside vehicles equipped with a dazzling array of over 40 sensors. That means that each cruise vehicle is essentially a massive investment and does not turn a profit while collecting data to work towards Autonomy.

Cruise has definitely been on the back burner for a while, and a quick glance at their website - since it's still up for now - shows the last time they officially released any sort of major news packet was back in 2019. 

Competition is Killer

Their current direct competitor - Waymo, is funded by Google, which maintains a direct interest in ensuring they have a play in the AI and autonomy space.

Interestingly, this news comes just a month after Tesla’s We, Robot event, where they showed off the Cybercab and the Robotaxi network, as well as plans to begin deployment of the network and Unsupervised FSD sometime in 2025. Tesla is already in talks with some cities in California and Texas to launch Robotaxi in 2025.

GM Admits Tesla Has the Right Strategy

As part of the business call following the announcement, GM admitted that Tesla’s end-to-end and Vision-based approach towards autonomy is the right strategy. While they say Cruise started down that path, they’re putting aside their goals towards fully autonomous vehicles for now and focusing on introducing that tech in Super Cruise instead.

NEWS: GM just admitted that @Tesla’s end-to-end approach to autonomy is the right strategy.

“That’s where the industry is pivoting. Cruise had already started making headway down that path. We are moving to a foundation model and end-to-end approach going forward.” pic.twitter.com/ACs5SFKUc3

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2024

With GM now focusing on Super Cruise, they’ll put aside autonomy and instead focus solely on ADAS features to relieve driver stress and improve safety. While those are positive goals that will benefit all road users, full autonomy is really the key to removing the massive impact that vehicle accidents have on society today.

In addition, Super Cruise is extremely limited, cannot brake for traffic controls, and doesn’t work in adverse conditions - even rain. It can only function when lane markings are clear, there are no construction zones, and there is a functional web connection. 

The final key to the picture is that the vehicle has to be on an HD-mapped and compatible highway - essentially locking Super Cruise to wherever GM has time to spend mapping, rather than being functional anywhere in a general sense, like FSD or Autopilot.

Others Impressed - Licensing FSD

Interestingly, some other manufacturers have also weighed into the demise of Cruise. BMW, in a now-deleted post, said that a demo of Tesla’s FSD is “very impressive.” There’s a distinct chance that BMW and other manufacturers are looking to see what Tesla does next. 

BMW chimes in on a now-deleted post. The Internet is forever, BMW!

Not a Tesla App

It seems that FSD has caught their eyes after We, Robot - and that the demonstrations of FSD V13.2 online seem to be the pivot point. At the 2024 Shareholder Meeting earlier in the year, Elon shared the fact that several manufacturers had reached out, looking to understand what was required to license FSD from Tesla.

There is a good chance 2025 will be the year we’ll see announcements of the adoption of FSD by legacy manufacturers - similar to how we saw the surprise announcements of the adoption of the NACS charging standard.

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