The cost of Tesla’s increasingly controversial premium driver-assistance system, Full Self-Driving, is being bumped up to $US15,000 (just under $A22,000 converted) from early September, according to company CEO Elon Musk, who made the “announcement” in his usual fashion through Twitter.
The price of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, which can be activated in all modern Tesla EVs through the Tesla app, has been increasing steadily for the last few years – starting at $US5,000 back in May 2019, jumping to $US10,000 in October 2020, and up to $US12,000 in January of this year.
Musk said on Twitter that the cost of FSD will rise to $US15,000 in North America, starting on September 5, coinciding with the wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2022
Australians won’t necessarily need to pay too much attention to this announcement, given that our road rules exclude the use of FSD unsupervised on our roads, even though the system is available to be unlocked for $A10,100 when it does become available.
Conversely, Tesla’s ‘Enhanced Autopilot’ software option can be turned on for $5,100 and provides Australian Tesla owners with driver assist options such as radar cruise control with navigation, lane-keep assist, auto lane change, autonomous parking, and Smart Summon.
However, following changes made in June to the regulatory framework implemented by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) – of which Australia is a signatory – which increases the maximum speed allowed for autonomous vehicles to 130km/h, up from 60km/h, the full range of features in Tesla’s FSD system could be unlocked in Australia in the coming months.
Probably later this year
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 15, 2022
However, Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” nomenclature and the promise held within the name has become increasingly more controversial and problematic in recent times.
In the above Tweet, Musk responded to French software engineer and artificial intelligence researcher François Chollet’s dig at the lack of a “mass deployment of self-driving cars” by snidely suggesting Chollet “obviously” hadn’t tried Tesla’s FSD.
However, Tesla’s own ‘Support’ page dedicated to its “Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability” makes it explicit that its Autopilot, Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability systems are in no way fully autonomous or self-driving.
Specifically, the page warns that these features “are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment. While these features are designed to become more capable over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous.”
This sort of casual undermining of the feature’s nomenclature has led to a number of investigations into Tesla’s FSD systems.
The United States’ National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) officially upgraded its safety probe of Tesla’s EVs in June from a Preliminary Investigation to an Engineering Analysis and expanded it to all 830,000 Tesla vehicles with Autopilot in the United States.
The NHTSA’s concern was that US drivers were relying on the system for more than just driving assistance and moved the agency one step closer to issuing a larger safety recall.
According to the NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation, reports of 14 crashes or fires, 15 injuries, and one fatality had been reported since 2018, and that as part of its continuing probe into Tesla’s Autopilot, it had “also closely reviewed 191 crashes involving crash patterns not limited to the first responder scenes that prompted the investigation opening.”
Given all of this, it is not surprising that the United States’ National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chief, Jennifer Homendy, has described the Full Self-Driving name as “misleading and irresponsible”.
The concern, though, is not inherently with driver assist technology – as most new cars are fitted with some form of these technologies – but rather Tesla’s seemingly casual disregard for the power of its advertising and marketing.
Joshua S. Hill is a Melbourne-based journalist who has been writing about climate change, clean technology, and electric vehicles for over 15 years. He has been reporting on electric vehicles and clean technologies for Renew Economy and The Driven since 2012. His preferred mode of transport is his feet.