Tesla is hiking the price of its semi-autonomous 'Full Self-Driving' package soon in anticipation of new over-the-air updates
- Tesla plans to bump up the price of its "Full Self-Driving" feature on July 1, Elon Musk said in a tweet on Friday.
- The add-on currently costs $7,000, but many of the capabilities it promises are still in development - essentially, buyers are paying for software updates that Tesla will release incrementally.
- Musk also said in a Friday tweet that he hopes to introduce traffic-light and stop-sign recognition in the US in a few weeks, but Tesla has historically failed to meet the timelines its CEO has publicly set forth.
- "Full Self-Driving," despite the name, is not currently fully autonomous.
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Tesla plans to increase the price for its "Full Self-Driving" driver-assistance feature on July 1, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet on Friday.
Musk added that upcoming in the Full Self-Driving package will be the ability to respond to traffic lights and stop signs, and the Tesla order page also lists "automatic driving on city streets" as upcoming. As for timelines, Musk tweeted that the company is "hoping" to introduce the features in the US in a few weeks, and worldwide in the third quarter of this year.
The Full Self-Driving add-on, which costs $7,000 now, is not currently fully autonomous - Tesla simply claims that "all new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances." But those capabilities aren't available yet, so people who shell out for Full Self-Driving package are signing up for over-the-air software updates that Tesla promises will occur incrementally.
The package, in addition to upcoming features, includes navigating on Autopilot, automatic highway lane changes, automatic parking into both parallel and perpendicular spaces, and Tesla's "Summon" feature that allows drivers to summon a parked car.
Tesla has upped the feature's price in the past - most recently on November 1, 2019, when the cost increased from $6,000 to $7,000 after Tesla rolled out its problematic "Smart Summon" feature, which is included in the Full Self-Driving package.
But Musk has repeatedly set and missed aggressive goals for the rollout of Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" feature. In early 2019, Musk said he was "certain" that "the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention - this year."
Back in 2016, Musk said a Tesla would be able to drive itself from Los Angeles to New York City by the end of 2017, and the company has faced criticism for the misleading nature of naming features that are not fully autonomous as "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving."
Although Tesla has come up short on its autonomous-driving timeline in the past, it did post better-than-predicted sales figures in Q1 of this year. Tesla delivered roughly 88,400 cars from January through March, a 40.3% increase over Q1 deliveries last year.
