Tesla is extending an exclusive offer to all American customers, granting a complimentary trial of its advanced Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature, as announced by CEO Elon Musk via a social media post on X, previously known as Twitter, this past Monday.
"Every FSD-capable vehicle in the U.S. will have access to a one-month trial starting this week," Musk shared on X.
Musk has instructed Tesla staff to showcase the FSD capabilities to both prospective customers and current owners during service appointments, as reported by Reuters, which referenced two authenticated emails from a reliable source.
"The effectiveness of FSD is vastly underestimated," Musk conveyed in one of the emails distributed to Tesla's workforce, as per Reuters.
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The push for increased FSD subscriptions is part of Tesla's strategy to counteract shrinking operating margins, which saw a decline from 16.8% in 2022 to 9.2% in 2023 amidst intensifying competition and decreasing prices for electric vehicles (EVs). According to a report by Yahoo Finance, citing an analysis from Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney in November 2023, FSD could potentially contribute an additional $10 billion to $75 billion annually to Tesla's revenue by 2030.
FSD, along with the Enhanced Autopilot, represents the more sophisticated tiers of Tesla's Autopilot options, available as optional enhancements for Tesla cars. The standard Autopilot feature is included with all Tesla models, but customers have the option to upgrade to Enhanced Autopilot for $6,000 or to the full FSD package for an additional $12,000, as listed on Tesla's official website. For those driving Tesla models equipped with the FSD computer 3.0, there's also the choice of subscribing to FSD for either $99 or $199 monthly, depending on their existing Autopilot package.
Despite offering a broader range of functionalities than the standard Autopilot, both Enhanced Autopilot and FSD are categorized by SAE International as Level-2 autonomous driving systems, necessitating continuous driver vigilance and supervision over the vehicle.
Tesla promotes the FSD system with the assurance that "your vehicle will gain the capability to navigate almost any route with minimal input from the driver and will keep evolving."
As Tesla continues to refine its FSD software for broader release, it has provided customers with beta versions for trial. Nonetheless, safety concerns persist among regulators, highlighted by a series of lawsuits and reported incidents. Since 2019, Tesla's Autopilot has been implicated in over 700 accidents and linked to at least 19 fatalities, as analyzed by the Washington Post using data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In response to safety concerns, Tesla initiated a recall of 362,000 vehicles in February 2023 to implement updates to its FSD Beta software. This action was a consequence of an NHTSA investigation, which concluded that the vehicles equipped with the software were not fully compliant with traffic safety regulations, posing potential risks for accidents.
