Electric Car Company Tesla Plans To Offer Monthly Self-driving Subscriptions

WASHINGTON — American electric vehicle and clean energy company Tesla has announced that it is offering a monthly subscription for its Full Self Driving package at $199 per month.

Tesla owners who previously bought the now-discontinued Enhanced Autopilot package can get the Full Self Driving subscription for $99 per month, as suggested by Tesla’s support page.

Full Self Driving capability subscriptions are currently available to eligible vehicles in the United States, the support page said.

Until now, the automaker had sold its Full Self Driving package for a one-time fee of $10,000, but the monthly subscription lets users literally test-drive the Full Self Driving features without a long-term commitment. 

Users can also cancel their monthly Full Self Driving subscription at any time, according to the terms on the Tesla website.

However, only Teslas that have the Full Self Driving computer hardware 3.0 (HW3) in their system or above with either Basic or Enhanced Autopilot configurations are eligible to subscribe to the Full Self Driving package. Other Tesla owners can purchase a hardware upgrade for $1,500 to make their vehicles Full Self Driving-ready.

“Car as a subscription service Tesla is a bundle of hardware & software; I would argue that the value of the software in Tesla is much higher than H/W. S/W should naturally be a subscription service. H/W is anyway available on monthly EMIs. Interesting pricing innovation!” tweeted Rajesh Sawhney, Founder, GSF Accelerator India, a leading Indian startup accelerator.

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has been promising a subscription option for Full Self Driving for a few years now. 

The company finally began sending out over-the-air software updates for the beta of version 9 of Full Self Driving earlier this month. The Full Self Driving software does not enable a Tesla vehicle to drive itself without input from the driver.

“Tesla has finally released a “Full Self Driving” (FSD) subscription for $199 a month. That’s compared to $10k one time purchase. I’m betting the monthly sub-price point will change at some point,” tweeted Mark Hamrick, Former President, American National Press Club. 

An owner shared a notice they had received from Tesla with a media outlet. The notice said the user received the Full Self Driving subscription including “features like Navigate on Autopilot, Auto Lane Change, Auto Park, Summon and Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control,” as per a media report.

The notice also said that “the currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”

(With Inputs from ANI)

(Edited by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Praveen Pramod Tewari)