Tesla has officially launched a fully automated driving subscription package recently. New users are $199 per month, while users who have previously purchased Enhanced Autopilot (currently discontinued) cost $99 per month. Previously, Tesla sold a fully autonomous driving package with a one-time full payment of $10,000, including the following autonomous driving assistance functions:
- Automatic navigation on Autopilot
- Automatic lane change
- Automatic parking
- Summon
- Fully autonomous driving computer
- Traffic lights and stop signs control
But in the end, Tesla hopes to provide a true Level 5 fully autonomous driving system, and the people who buy the package are betting on Tesla to achieve this goal. Last year, there were signs that Tesla was developing a pay-as-you-go subscription service for its fully autonomous driving (FSD) package. This will enable people to test these features without much commitment.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla plans to release such an option at the end of 2020. This never happened, and the time of the later announcement was pushed to early 2021 by the CEO. In March, Musk said that this will “definitely” happen in the second quarter of 2021.
In April, the CEO said that the subscription would be definitely in May, but that did not happen. Now Musk has attached the subscription option to the v9 release, and v9 has also been postponed. Last week, Tesla has begun to push its FSD Beta v9 software update to its early access program, and now the company is also releasing its fully autonomous driving subscription service.
Tesla described this new product in a message sent to car owners under the heading Introduction to Fully Autonomous Driving Capability Subscription.
Fully autonomous driving capabilities can now be ordered on a monthly basis. Upgrade your Model 3, VIN ending in ******, 199 USD per month (not including tax), to experience functions such as autonomous driving navigation, automatic lane change, automatic parking, Summon and traffic light and stop sign control. The functions currently enabled require the active supervision of the driver and cannot make the vehicle autonomous.
For those who own a vehicle without an FSD computer (HW3.0), they can still order a monthly subscription, but they have to pay $1,500 for the computer upgrade, which is already included in the $10,000 price of direct purchase.
