Tesla FSD Cost and Price Increase History

By Kevin Armstrong
Tesla's FSD and its historical prices
Tesla

The cost of Tesla's Full Self Driving has increased since it was revamped in 2019. Those lucky enough to buy FSD in April 2019 got it for the price of $5,000. Since then the price has risen as high as $15,000 only to be lowered later.

Elon Musk warned consumers through X/Twitter that FSD would be more expensive. On August 21 2022, he tweeted: After wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2, price of FSD will rise to $15k in North America on September 5. Current price will be honored for orders made before September 5 but delivered later.

Tesla reorganized its Autopilot and FSD packages three years ago; basic Autopilot was introduced and became standard on every vehicle, while FSD was priced at $5,000. Enhanced Autopilot was removed as an option at the time, but was later reintroduced as a $6,000 option in June of 2022.

Before 2019 FSD was an add-on that required also buying Enhanced Autopilot. Enhanced Autopilot cost $5,000 and FSD was a $3,000 option on top of that if ordered with the vehicle. If you ordered FSD after taking delivery then it cost $4,000, which later went up to $5,000.

It can only be assumed that there were a lot of buyers for FSD when Tesla rearranged their offerings in 2019, as the price for FSD went up the following month and has been on the rise since.

In fact, Tesla raised the price again three months after the first release, and eighteen months later, it had doubled to $10,000. 2022 started with another jump to $12,000 in January, and nine months later, the price went up again.

However, it looks like the buy-rate may have dipped as Tesla started dropping the price of FSD in September 2023.

Historical FSD Prices

Historical prices of Tesla's Full Self-Driving add-on since the revamp in 2019.

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

Tesla's CEO has made no qualms about the value of the program. At a shareholders' meeting in August, he said Tesla's engineers are producing breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. "We're solving a very important part of AI and one that can ultimately save millions of lives. And prevent 10 of millions of serious injuries by driving just an order of magnitude safer than people," said Musk. Since its inception and to this day, Musk believes that Teslas will be fully autonomous. He sees a future where your car would drive you to work, then operate as a ride share until you need to go home.

While Musk said the price would increase to $15,000 in North America, it skyrocketed to $19,500 in Canada, more than a 50% boost from what it cost in August. Although there is a monthly subscription offered in the U.S., there currently isn't one offered north of the border.

Although the price of FSD has continued to climb since Tesla revamped their FSD pricing structure in 2019, we witnessed Tesla's first price drop in the driver assist feature in September 2023. On the first of September, Tesla lowered the price of FSD by 20% in the U.S., down to $12,000. This brought FSD back to the price it was back at the start of 2022. However, in April 2024, Tesla once again lowered the price of FSD to $8,000, making it much more affordable, although the trend is unlikely to continue. Tesla may be testing the waters to find the optimal price. It'll be interesting to see where Tesla goes from here.

Smart Assistant 'Grok' Coming to Tesla, Demo of Grok 3 Tonight

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

xAI’s Grok AI Model has been receiving rapid updates, similar to Tesla’s FSD. After waiting for a major update, the latest version—Grok 3—is set to launch with a live demo on February 17th.

Grok 3 is supposed to bring big improvements, as xAI has changed its approach to training the Large Language Model (LLM). Unlike many other LLMs, Grok can access real-time information and adapt its answers based on the latest news and discussions happening on X’s platform, making it more suited for current events or breaking news.

At the World Governments Summit in Dubai, Elon also mentioned that Grok 3 is already outperforming its competitors, so there is a lot to look forward to. Let’s dig into the new capabilities and then see why they matter to Tesla drivers.

New Capabilities

This time, Grok is set to feature self-correction, reinforcement learning, and synthetic datasets. Self-correction allows Grok to identify and fix its own mistakes, with human oversight ensuring that the process is guided. This helps refine Grok’s future responses as part of its ongoing training.

Reinforcement learning, meanwhile, rewards or penalizes the AI based on its actions. When it performs correctly, it receives a reward, reinforcing that behavior; penalties reduce the likelihood of undesirable actions. Combined with new synthetic datasets, xAI can accelerate Grok’s training process, much like how Tesla’s AI team has been refining FSD. There’s definitely a lot of overlap between the two.

Voice Support

Grok is one of the few remaining publicly available AIs that doesn’t have a live-voice mode. Its competitors - including Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT - both have live voice response and reasoning and will also integrate and hook into 3rd-party services over voice.

That’s going to be a key feature as Tesla looks to Grok to power its upcoming voice assistant in their vehicles.

Tesla Demo

Musk has previously stated that all Tesla vehicles will eventually receive Grok as a Smart Voice Assistant—one far more capable than the current voice command system.

With changes to the Navigation Voice globally, as well as the “Hi” command finally returning a response, we’re on the verge of Tesla’s integration of a voice assistant.

Tonight’s demo, at 8 pm PT is expected to be live, potentially showing off the integration into Tesla vehicles. Millions of existing Tesla vehicles worldwide could soon take advantage of Grok as a voice assistant. There’s even a rumor of a wake word for the feature — potentially Grok.

Grok’s real-time capabilities mean you could ask it to add a stop to your route for food at the highest-rated local restaurant with minimal wait. Grok would gather and process that information while your car drives itself, then update your route, allowing FSD to take you directly there. You’ll also be able to ask general knowledge questions, such as the weather for tomorrow or the price of Tesla stock.

Controlling the vehicle will also be greatly upgraded. While the current voice command system can handle simple tasks like “Open Charge Port” or “Turn on Defrost,” the new system should be able to handle more complex requests and allow drivers to ask things in a more natural way.

We expect to find out more about Grok in Teslas tonight. Even if the demo tonight doesn’t specifically mention Tesla, a look at Grok’s new abilities could be a first look at what we’ll soon be able to experience in our Teslas.

Tesla Executives Confirm Robotaxi on Track for June

By Karan Singh
Not a Tesla App

At the Tesla Q4 2024 Earnings Call, we found out that Tesla now has a firm date and set location for the first deployment of its Robotaxi fleet. Now, several of Tesla's executives have re-iterated that deployment date and location in several different places.

Like most Tesla fans and investors, we’re excited to see Cybercab make its official debut on the streets of Austin, Texas, sometime in June. That’s potentially less than 100 days away - but who’s counting, right?

Elon Confirms

Elon Musk confirmed on X that Tesla is still on track to launch autonomous ride-hailing (Robotaxi) in Austin this June. Plus, they’re also working on rolling it out to even more cities in the United States by the end of the year.

Tesla’s benchmark for expanding deployments is ensuring that Robotaxi safety surpasses the average human driver by a wide margin. Based on the latest Vehicle Safety Report, Supervised FSD is already making strong progress, outperforming the average driver by 10.5 times—a full order of magnitude.

Franz Confirms

Franz Von Holzhausen, Tesla’s Head of Vehicle Design, also confirmed that Tesla will be offering Cybercab rides in Austin starting in June. What’s key here is that he confirmed the presence of Cybercabs finally deploying - it won’t be driverless Model Ys or Model 3s - it’ll be the Cybercab.

That means an autonomy-first vehicle without a driver’s seat, steering wheel, or pedals will be on the road and driving people from point to point. Major autonomy competitors like Waymo use heavily modified EVs that still have seats and vehicle controls intact. An autonomy-first design increases passenger room and storage while also improving efficiency by reducing vehicle weight.

Are you planning on making your way down to Austin to experience the Robotaxi experience first-hand or are you planning on waiting until it’s deployed in a city near you? Let us know your thoughts in our forums or social media.

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