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- Tesla has lowered the price of its driver assistance software, FSD Supervised, from $199 to $99 per month.
- Elon Musk once said that the cost of Tesla’s FSD will only increase as it improves.
- The discount comes after Tesla missed first-quarter profit estimates.
Tesla on Friday announced price cuts for its driver-assistance software amid lower-than-expected car sales in the first quarter of 2024.
Subscription to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Software (now called FSD (Supervised)) The system constantly reminds drivers that their attention is required, and is currently available for $99 per month, down from $199 per month.
This is just one of the latest moves Tesla has made to connect more people to the company’s Level 2 self-driving system, which requires drivers to constantly monitor the vehicle.
Elon Musk recently issued an internal memo requiring all Tesla employees to allow new customers to take a “short test drive” of the FSD before handing over the vehicle during the delivery process.
His argument, according to a memo seen by Business Insider, was that “few people actually understood how well[monitored]FSD actually worked.”
The company announced in March that it would offer a one-month free trial of the FSD beta to all U.S. customers.
Now, a newly announced discount could make Tesla’s controversial driver-assistance software more accessible to customers, as the company continues to work to improve the software, defying investor expectations. Now this would be beneficial.
Tesla announced in early April that deliveries would decline in the first three months of 2024, with sales of 386,800 vehicles, about 90,000 fewer than investors expected. BI reported that the company’s first quarter results showed that sales decreased year-on-year for the first time in about four years.
According to TechCrunch, as more customers use Tesla’s FSD, the company could collect more data to improve its software.
The discount also marks a departure, if only temporarily, from Mr. Musk’s prediction that Tesla’s fully self-driving system would only become more expensive.
Musk told X that FSD’s value could reach $100,000 in 2020 as it “gets regulatory approval and moves closer to full self-driving capabilities.” It’s unclear whether Musk mentioned the price per vehicle.
That prediction came true in an instant when Musk increased FSD’s lifetime service price from $12,000 to $15,000 in 2022 and offered a $199 monthly subscription option. But last year, the company lowered the lifetime price to $12,000.
A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
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