Tesla started its rollout of the next big release of FSD Beta on August 20th. And alongside its many improvements, Elon Musk announced that Tesla will be raising the price of FSD to $15,000 - a 20% increase. The price increase will go into effect in North America on September 5, 2022 "after a wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2."
“Current price will be honored for orders made before Sept 5th, but delivered later,” Musk adds.
After wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2, price of FSD will rise to $15k in North America on September 5th.
Current price will be honored for orders made before Sept 5th, but delivered later.
Musk followed up with a tweet that added how easy it was to upgrade your existing vehicle to FSD via the Tesla mobile application.
“Note, you can upgrade your existing car to FSD in 2 mins via the Tesla app,” Musk writes.
FSD Beta’s sudden and large increases in price over the last year has drawn criticism from the Tesla community. After more than 100,000 Tesla owners were added to the FSD Beta program, the software has gotten a lot of hands-on experience from owners who are having some doubts about its hefty price tag.
Tesla owner and YouTuber James Locke (@arctechinc) shared an echoed recommendation via Twitter to Musk. He asked that the license for Tesla be looked into since FSD is in development and is not a finished product yet. He suggested that a “commercial license” be used when owners place their vehicles into the robo-taxi fleet.
“.@elonmusk I humbly recommend it’s time to rethink the way the FSD license works,” Locke writes. "While FSD is still in development and not a finished product you should have a personal use and commercial use license. Personal use should be much cheaper to allow for maximum safety /1."
“When the robo-taxi fleet is a reality you could offer an upgrade to buy into the commercial license which is more expensive and offers higher profits for putting the car into the fleet. Or owners could let Tesla take a great [chunk] of the robo-taxi profit for personal license.”
.@elonmusk I humbly recommend it's time to rethink the way the FSD license works. While FSD is still in development and not a finished product you should have a personal use and commercial use license. Personal use should be much cheaper to allow for maximum safety /1
Locke adds that everyone who purchases a Tesla should have FSD included with their purchase because its features are tantamount to the vehicle’s safety.
“IMHO @elonmusk everyone who buys a Tesla should get FSD included for personal use to ensure the safest cars on the road are affordable to everyone.”
IMHO @elonmusk everyone who buys a Tesla should get FSD included for personal use to ensure the safest cars on the road are affordable to everyone.
If someone wants to put their Tesla into a money making robo-taxi fleet, that's when the cost for a license should be higher. /end
In January of 2022, Tesla raised the price of Full Self-Driving from $10,000 to $12,000. At the time, many were discussing FSD’s price and stating that $10,000 was too much for the software in its current state.
Last year, Tesla launched its Full Self-Driving subscription. Owners could pay $99 per month or $199/month for the FSD subscription, depending on whether their vehicle already has Enhanced Autopilot.
At the time Tesla's FSD package cost $10,000 and you'd have to subscribe for more than four years (at $199) before it made sense to buy the FSD package.
However, with the upcoming price increase, you'd now need to subscribe for more than six years before buying the package outright was the better deal.
There's no word whether Tesla will also increase the monthly subscription, which is starting to look like a better deal for new owners.
A monthly subscription certainly has a lot more flexibility as you can cancel or renew whenever you'd like without any penalties.
It's certainly possible that Tesla is trying to shift users toward a subscription model.
Tesla's FSD monthly subscription has remained the same price since its introduction.
As Full self-driving becomes better with each update and Tesla gains more data, we can anticipate the price of FSD to continue to go up. With the continuous sudden and large price increases, it’s becoming more difficult to justify such a large price tag.
Tesla wants everyone on its payroll to pitch in and help with a frantic end-of-quarter push. An internal email leaked to Electrek indicates that employees, even those not tasked with sales and delivery, to assist in getting as many vehicles out the door as possible. The email says there is “a very high volume of vehicles,” and management requests additional support.
This push should come as no surprise after a disappointing second quarter. The company delivered 18 percent fewer vehicles than in the previous reporting period. Tesla delivered 254,695 compared to 310,048 just three months prior. The decline broke a two-year streak in which the company continued to break its delivery record. The drop in numbers was not due to failures at Tesla, but due to COVID-related shutdowns at its Gigafactory in Shanghai, China.
Nevertheless, Tesla is adamant about righting the ship immediately. This quarter, like no other before, has seen significant competition enter the electric vehicle space and challenge the king of the sector. As a result, Tesla would like nothing more than to get back on track with another record-breaking delivery of its highly sought-after vehicles.
According to Electrek, the company-wide email stated: We will be delivering a very high volume of vehicles to eagerly waiting customers during the final days of Q3. To help ensure we can delight as many customers as possible, the delivery team is requesting additional support with key delivery-execution tasks.
For weeks Tesla’s careers page has listed dozens of Seasonal Advisor positions. The postings say these positions are “essential support at the end of the quarter, operating alongside our Sales and Delivery team to execute record-breaking delivery results.” The jobs were expected to last for two to three weeks.
Analysts predict that Tesla will get back on track and deliver more than 310,000 cars this quarter. In fact, one analyst has gone much further than that. Trip Chowdhry with Global Equities Research has publicly stated that he forecasts the carmaker will exceed 500,000 deliveries in the fourth quarter. In addition, he estimates that the time to produce a Tesla has decreased by 10 percent, and he notes other factors like the Semi coming online and increased capacity at factories worldwide.
Tesla is expected to report its quarterly earnings in mid-October.
Tesla's rolling out another unique feature with suggested destinations in version 2022.28.2. This comes off the heels of a previous announcement where Tesla was offering alternate routes.
Tesla's new suggested destinations show up under the Recents tab when you tap on the 'Navigate' button.
Tesla will list up to three destinations before displaying your recent destinations below them. Several owners have reported seeing this new feature in Tesla update 2022.28.2, but it's not clear whether it's available to everyone yet.
Tesla's suggestions appear to be a combination of recent destinations and favorites, but it's not clear exactly how Tesla is determining these.
A user by the name of Randall on the Tesla Discord noticed the new feature.
He was offered three suggestions, but after taking a short drive he noticed that the next set of suggestions was completely different.
Tesla may be using AI to determine your suggestions, so things like the number of times frequented, time of day, day of the week, the vehicle's location and more may be taken into account when Tesla is determining your suggestions.
Like everything Tesla, this is the first iteration of this feature and we're likely to see improvements on this feature in the near future.
For example, Randall noticed that although one of his suggestions was one of his favorites, the suggestion just showed the address of the destination and not the name Randall that given the destination.
The placement of suggested destinations could potentially be improved as well, instead of being displayed under Recents. Each of these suggestions likely has a probability score that Tesla determines and Tesla then displays any suggestions that are over a certain threshold.
It could be helpful if Tesla displayed suggestions directly in the middle of the screen when you first entered the car. If Tesla thought you were highly probable of visiting one of these suggestions they could display it more prominently, making it easier for you to enter the destination.
As the Austin-based automotive company continues to address various bugs and add features, owners are gaining more data for insight into their vehicle so they can better use it.
CEO Elon Musk has stated that any input into the vehicle should be considered (as a possible) error, so by adding yet another feature that the car tries to calculate your destination is a step in the right direction in Musk’s eyes. This is why there is no gear physical shifter in the refreshed Model S and Model X vehicles.
Instead, Tesla replaced them with an “Auto Shift” feature. This function works based on your vehicle’s understanding of which direction it needs to go. For example, if you’re in a grocery store parking lot, the car will see that it’s wedged between a few cars and know that it needs to reverse, or vice-versa. This feature is reportedly coming to all Teslas.
“I think generally, all input is error,” Musk explains at the unveiling of the Model S and Model X refresh. “If you have to do something that the car could’ve done already, that should be taken care of. The software should just do it.”
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