This week Elon Musk confirmed that Full Self Driving would be available as a subscription, which adds to the current outright purchase option. The current plan is that FSD subscriptions would be available by the end of 2020.
Given a lower monthly cost, Tesla clearly expects this will help more people try FSD. The big question is what price the subscription would be, given the outright price is currently $8,500 (inc GST) in Australia (up from the initial $7,100), I wouldn’t expect it to be less than A$100 per month and will likely rise over time.
I’m keen to understand what people think an FSD monthly cost will be worth. Before you answer the questions, here’s the basis for how I’d like your answer to be considered.
Right now, FSD in Australia includes:
- Navigate on Autopilot: automatic driving from highway on-ramp to off-ramp including interchanges and overtaking slower cars.
- Auto Lane Change: automatic lane changes while driving on the highway.
- Autopark: both parallel and perpendicular spaces.
- Summon: your parked car will come find you anywhere in a parking lot.
- Early access: Get OTA updates early.
- HomeLink Mobile: Mobile Use HomeLink via the mobile app to open/close your garage.
- Future updates: Buying FSD now is an investment in the future, locking in the price now, as new functionality is rolled out FSD owners receive it.
Upcoming:
- Recognise and respond to traffic lights and stop signs. (also known as Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control).
- Automatic driving on city streets.
The last two I expect to be completed by the end of 2020, around the time the subscription is offered, so you should include those in your estimates.
Musk has indicated that by the end of June, FSD will increase in price. We don’t know by how much, but if Tesla also uses this price adjustment to recalibrate the change in the exchange rate between the US to AUD dollar, we could see the US$7,000 become A$10,000. Note, they’ve recently adjusted the price of the cars, which makes me think FSD will also be adjusted.
Tesla continues to rollout functionality under the FSD package and Musk has said on multiple occasions the price will go up accordingly. This means by the time subscriptions option arrives, FSD may cost as much as A$11,500 in Australia.
As that number continues to climb, it puts FSD as a purchase, out of reach of more Tesla owners using the vehicle for private use. Those who look at their vehicle as a business opportunity and would register it for the autonomous Robotaxi fleet, then you could easily justify a much higher price.
Let’s take the maximum loan duration offered by Tesla on a new car, 84 months. If you imagine FSD is added over the life of the loan, that works out to be A$8,500 / 84 = $101.19 per month. If my take my estimation of $11,500 as the price at the time Subscriptions are offers – that’s $136.90pm.
Now before you vote, it’s important to remind yourself what FSD will become.
Everyone is different, we ask different things of our vehicles and attribute different values to features and functionality. A good example of this is someone who travels a lot of km per week, with a lot of highway driving, could easily justify the FSD package on Navigate on Autopilot alone.
Leave a comment with your explanation of how you arrived at / justified the number.
I maybe wrong but isn’t Homelink is a piece of hardware additional to FSD which is now purchased at about $500, early purchasers had it included in the purchase price.
As for FSD working as a subscription service I’m not sure but as the cars connected maybe a user pays and the hardware is already installed, each time you access FSD it bills your account as it does at Superchargers.
Those of us who ordered early had HomeLink hardware included by default, but now it is an optional extra.