“Full Self Driving” has been Tesla’s proverbial carrot on a stick since the company first offered it to customers in 2017. Since then, the reality of “FSD” has been a series of unkept promises and missed deadlines, as some Tesla owners waited half a decade to see the first real FSD Beta, and others longer still who weren’t able to get into the earlier Beta program in 2022. This upcharge was billed as an investment in the future, and a promise that buyers would one day see their cars able to drive fully autonomously, and later, a promise that their cars would function like autonomous ride-hailing cars dubbedRobotaxis.
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Over the past few years, this software package has been priced as high as $15,000 as Tesla saw fit to increase the price as it delivered and launched new features as part of the FSD software. In 2021 and 2022, Tesla CEO Elon Musk even teased FSD price increases to encourage those on the fence about buying a Tesla to hurry up and buy one, while paying extra for the FSD package, since it was implied it would only go up over time. Well, the times they are a changin', and this week Tesla slashed the price of FSD from $12,000 to $8,000, and cut subscription costs from $200 a month to just $100 a month. So is it worth buying now? After all, it’s now the same price it was in 2020. I still don’t think so, and I’m saying that as someone who bought it for $8,000 back in 2020.
Full price, half baked
When I added FSD to my Tesla Model Y order in 2020, the additional software added the following features to my car.
In the three and a half years since I bought my Model Y, and across the 80,000+ miles I’ve put on it driving as far as Florida from Texas, let me tell you how many times I’ve used these features. I’ve used AutoPark exactly once; the car made about 10 steering adjustments to park in a spot that I could have parked in using one smooth movement.
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I used Smart Summon to make my car move in an empty parking lot a handful of times mostly for the novelty of it, until I quickly realized it was going about 1 mile per hour and was extremely embarrassing if another car came up behind it. The auto-navigate feature always tries to move me over for an exit 2 miles before, which is really annoying when you just want to stay in the left lane as long as possible, and the auto-lane change I swiftly stopped using as it had a penchant for changing lanes with no regard for the blind spot of other vehicles.
I used Smart Summon to make my car move in an empty parking lot a handful of times mostly for the novelty of it, until I quickly realized it was going about 1 mile per hour and was extremely embarrassing if another car came up behind it.
Now, in the years since, I will admit every single one of those features has gotten smarter, better, and more accurate. But even with that said, the only ones I really use are auto-navigate and lane change, and even those I only use for about 1% of my overall miles. The strongest argument against buying FSD, however, isn’t talking about what features FSD brings to your Tesla. It’s talking about what features come standard with your Tesla.
(TACC) Traffic Aware Cruise Control
Let’s face it, true level 5 autonomy or “Full Self Driving” is not yet available on any Tesla, or any production vehicle for that matter. So for now, you’re left to ask, what is the highest value thing that a Tesla can actually do for me as far as “Autopilot” goes.
The answer is precisely what I do for 90% of my driving miles, and that is to move into the left lane, engage “Autosteer,” and rest my brain a bit by keeping an eye on the road while my Tesla handles the space from the car in front of it, maintaining speed, braking and accelerating as needed, letting people in who are trying to signal into your lane, and maintaining this with zero or close to zero driver interventions needed until I have to get over for my exit 150 miles later. The thing is, every Tesla model can already do that without spending a single penny extra.
The strongest argument against buying FSD, however, isn’t talking about what features FSD brings to your Tesla. It’s talking about what features come standard with your Tesla.
This is something I didn’t fully understand before I bought my Model Y, and it’s something that I endeavor to tell every would-be Tesla buyer that I come across. The thing you’ll do the most, the best use case for Autopilot, handling those really long stretches of monotonous highway driving in your lane for over an hour non-stop, does not require the FSD software package.
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Tesla FSD simply does not bring enough value-add to justify spending almost 20% of the vehicle purchase price on what amounts to additional software, at least not in its current form. At a minimum, I would certainly say anyone even considering making that purchase should instead try out the FSD subscription for a few months before making a final decision on the full purchase. I certainly hope that one day FSD reaches its full potential, and hey, I spent the $8k, so for me that day can’t come soon enough. For now, however, the carrot seems affixed to the end of that stick, just held ever so slightly out in front of us.
