Tesla’s Full-Self Driving software rises in price again

Tesla raises the price of its Full-Self Driving (FSD) software to $15,000. In a message on TwitterTesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the new price will take effect September 5 in North America, representing a jump of $3,000.

Drivers who order a vehicle before September 5 will not have to pay the newly increased price, Musk says. The price hike comes as Tesla begins rolling out FSD beta 10.69 for drivers, a version Musk calls “a big step forward.” It’s still unclear whether Tesla plans to increase the price of its FSD plan, which currently costs $199 per month.

The FSD software allows drivers to use Tesla’s Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS), Autopilot, to navigate to and from specific destinations, among other driver assistance features. FSD does not make a vehicle fully autonomous; it requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and pay attention to the road at all times.

The price of Tesla’s FSD beta has slowly crept up over the years, costing $5,000 at launch. But when Tesla began rolling out the FSD beta to a select group of customers in October 2020, it raised the price to $10,000. In September 2021, Tesla began opening the beta to more customers via a new ‘request’ button before increasing the price to $12,000 earlier this year.

In 2019, Musk called Tesla vehicles “asset valuation,” meaning they will increase in value as Tesla launches additional driver assistance features. Musk later claimed that “the value of FSD” could reach more than $100,000 “as the software gets closer to full self-driving capability with regulatory approval.”

Earlier this month, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) accused Tesla of making “false or misleading claims” about the self-driving capabilities of its vehicles. The DMV claims that the names Autopilot and FSD, as well as the language Tesla uses to describe them, could mislead users into thinking the vehicles can operate autonomously.

Last August, Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how Tesla is advertising its FSD and Autopilot software. The two lawmakers later sent a letter to Musk to “express deep concerns” about Tesla’s driver assistance system, to which Tesla responded by saying the system can help customers “drive safer than the average driver in the US.”