When I purchased my Tesla Model 3 Long Range in 2019, Full Self Driving was $6000. I am living on a fixed retirement income and had to refinance my house to purchase the car. My interest rate was a great 3.5%, so I sprung for FSD as well because I knew I couldn’t come up with that much money later.
Also, Elon Musk promised that FSD would become more expensive as it improved on its way to completely automated driving. At first, he was right, the price of FSD went from $6,000 to $10,000, to $12,000, to $15,000. Musk promised numerous times that FSD would become completely automated within the next 12 months. However, those of us using FSD could see that the progress was slow and full automation might only come far in the future.
Furthermore, Tesla has also dropped the prices of its vehicles dramatically to keep demand up. This is fantastic for new car buyers, but it has also dramatically reduced the price you can get for your Tesla when you sell it. The latest version of FSD V12 is no longer called FSD Beta, it’s now called FSD Supervised. It is a big improvement. It is much smoother and handles things like rotaries and speed bumps much better. However, it still has serious flaws. For example, it doesn’t recognize and blasts through 20 mph school zones.
Arthur Frederick Hasler, PhD, former leader of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization & Analysis Laboratory , and avid CleanTechnica reader. Also: Research Meteorologist at NASA GSFC, Adjunct Professor at Viterbo University On-Line Studies, PSIA L2 Certified Alpine Ski Instructor at Brighton Utah Ski School.