Tesla moving Full Self-Driving to a monthly subscription
cnbc.com

・

55 points

・

leopoldj

・

2 days ago

38 comments

pavel_lishin ・ 2 days ago

Is "Full Self-Driving" still the term they use to describe a mode that does not actually fully self-drive the car?

  • JumpCrisscross ・ 2 days ago

    > Is "Full Self-Driving" still the term they use to describe a mode that does not actually fully self-drive the car?

    To be fair it's appended with "(Supervised)".

    • IvyMike ・ 2 days ago

      This is very forthright (misleading)

    • UltraSane ・ 2 days ago

      That is extremely (dis)honest

    • adammarples ・ a day ago

      Fully Edible Cakes (Poisonous)

    • FireBeyond ・ 2 days ago

      Yes, after being battered by everyone from NHTSA to the FTC to threats from class action lawyers, that was added, several years later. To be fair.

      • JumpCrisscross ・ 2 days ago

        Sure. Was just responding to OP's "still."

  • CursedSilicon ・ 2 days ago

    Hey! I'll have you know that trillionaire-because-he-absolutely-deserved-it Elon of Musky promised Full Self Driving in 2017. That's next year! /s

    • gdulli ・ 2 days ago

      Sounds like you're using an LLM as your calendar.

      • CursedSilicon ・ 2 days ago
        ・ 2 more

        The joke was meant to be that next year is actually 2027. Which means Elmo's promised FSD is almost a decade late

        • gdulli ・ 2 days ago

          I know, I was adding on the joke that LLMs can't get the year right.

hnspirit95 ・ 2 days ago

I can't help but think of an absurd situation where your subscription ends mid use and results in a crash. Like I'm sure the engineers have thought of this but the image of someone cruising down the road and getting a popup to enter their payment info before careening off a cliff is just so humorous... until the horrifying possibility that it could be reality sinks in.

darkteflon ・ 2 days ago

What happens to people who paid for it as part of the sticker price? Are they grandfathered permanently?

  • olyjohn ・ a day ago

    Doesn't matter, they'll be buying new cars before they get full self driving.

    • spwa4 ・ a day ago

      Buying consists of paying and receiving a good or service.

      Clearly they'll be doing half of buying, and not the other half.

  • graemep ・ 2 days ago

    It sounds as though they are from the wording, but who knows what a future update may bring?

    • amlib ・ a day ago

      Ad supported self-driving mode for the grandfathered in customers, of course.

JumpCrisscross ・ 2 days ago

Make hay while the sun shines. BYD will force self driving to table stakes in a few years.

  • blackoil ・ 2 days ago

    Not just BYD, huawei solution is almost at par with Tesla. German, Korean, Chinese all will be there in few years.

  • rchaud ・ 18 hours ago

    Not if they remain banned to prop up the domestic infant industry.

  • graemep ・ 2 days ago

    Once they are established they will require a subscription, or they will stop support after a few years so you have to buy a new car or pay more to get extended support.

    Whatever it takes to extract more money from you.

    • JumpCrisscross ・ 2 days ago

      > Once they are established they will require a subscription, or they will stop support after a few years so you have to buy a new car or pay more to get extended support

      Not how competition and commoditisation works.

      • graemep ・ 2 days ago
        ・ 3 more

        No, its how vendor lock in and deceptive pricing work.

        • JumpCrisscross ・ a day ago
          ・ 2 more

          > its how vendor lock in and deceptive pricing work

          Which doesn’t work for a commodity. If self-driving fails to commoditise, you’re right. It currently looks like it’s going to be commoditises, with every car-industrial cluster having a couple options for manufacturers.

          • graemep ・ a day ago

            Self driving is not a commodity, because it is not fungible - you cannot take BYD's self driving and put in in your Tesla. Cars themselves are not fungible either although at the moment they are reasonably competitive markets for cheap cars (luxury cars less so).

            If in two years time Tesla decides they are going to charge a subscription for self driving to work on cars sold before they decided to make it a subscription what do people who have those cars do? They can sell the car (hopefully), give up self driving, or pay up.

            There are not that many manufacturers. Maybe few enough for pricing to be oligopolistic rather than perfect.

            They may all adopt a subscription model which will let them sell cars cheaper. Maybe even at a loss - in much the same way that smart TVs are sold as a loss because of the value of the income generated by data collection. Most people do not understand the true cost of ongoing subscriptions so its quite likely to win if cars to cheap as a result.

jmpman ・ 2 days ago

I paid for FSD the first month it was offered monthly. Was so bad I wanted my money back but couldn’t figure out how to get Tesla to refund. Feel worse for those who paid the full $8k

  • jerlam ・ a day ago

    It was $15k at the peak of Tesla hype. That's the cost of subscribing for 12.5 years.

m463 ・ 2 days ago

Their cars become less and less attractive.

No dashboard, later no turn signals, no drive stalk, defrost on touchscreen, now car is becoming subscription-based...

  • sam_goody ・ 42 minutes ago

    I have never driven a Tesla, so this is all anecdotal.

    Some of my (extended) neighbors are members of a family that live near each other. One sister bought a Tesla. The brother who lived down the block laughed at her because politics. Despite that, within a year he had bought one as well. Their parents test drove it a few times and were critical about how it drove weird. But now, after about 9 months, their father mentioned in passing that he ordered one. Another brother mentioned that he would sell his Maxus for a Tesla if he could afford to.

    Until recently, one had a Chevy, one a Hyundai, one a Maxus and one an ancient Subaru.

    I have never seen such buy-in with any other brand, and that is despite the toxicity of the Tesla CEO. I wouldn't be so quick to write them off.

toomuchtodo ・ 2 days ago

Ran out of suckers to pay the lump sum.

calmbonsai ・ 2 days ago

I mean, at least in the U.S., an "FSD System" can't (yet) be held fully liable and there's not enough legal precedent for it (atm) even if it could.

Thus, if you drive in the U.S., you're both stupid and irresponsible if you utilize any "FSD" system while you're behind the wheel. Note that this legally distinct from "autonomous self-driving" like Waymo.

I have zero doubt we'll eventually get there, but it's going to be quite some time (over a decade?) for real FSD to be ubiquitous enough for the requisite traffic law changes and for this stuff to have gone through enough legal challenges in the various state courts.

  • qwerpy ・ 2 days ago

    Stupid and irresponsible driver here. It drives quite well and saves me considerable mental energy on every drive I make now. If it gets into a wreck I know I’m liable, but in years of using it, that hasn’t happened. So why not enjoy the more relaxing drives now?

    • everfrustrated ・ a day ago

      All rental cars should have FSD. I would argue FSD drives considerably better than the average tourist. Wins for everyone.

rsynnott ・ 20 hours ago

I mean, if you've got an audience who are willing to pay upfront for vapourware, might as well try having them pay monthly for vapourware instead, I suppose.