Elon Musk’s raising the cost of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to $15k

Tesla’s increasing the price of its Full-Self Driving (FSD) software to $15,000. In a post on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the new price will go into effect in North America starting September 5th, representing a $3,000 jump.

Drivers who order a vehicle before September 5th won’t have to pay the newly-increased price, Musk says. The price hike comes as Tesla begins rolling out FSD beta 10.69 to drivers, a version Musk calls “a big step forward.” It’s still unclear whether Tesla plans on raising the price of its FSD subscription, which currently costs $199 per month.

The FSD software lets drivers use Tesla’s advanced driving assistance system (ADAS), Autopilot, to navigate to and from specific destinations, among other driver-assist features. FSD doesn’t make a vehicle fully autonomous; it requires drivers to keep their hands on the wheel and pay attention to the road at all times.

The price of Tesla’s FSD beta has slowly crept up over the years, and cost $5,000 upon launch. But when Tesla started rolling out the FSD beta to a select group of customers in October 2020, it upped the price to $10,000. In September 2021, Tesla began opening the beta to more customers via a new “request” button before increasing the price to $12,000 earlier this year.

In 2019, Musk called Tesla vehicles “appreciating assets,” meaning that they’ll increase in value as Tesla launches additional driver-assist features. Musk later claimed that “the value of FSD” could reach over $100,000 “as the software gets closer to full self-driving capability with regulatory approval.”

Earlier this month, California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) accused Tesla of making “untrue or misleading claims” about its vehicles’ self-driving capabilities. The DMV alleges that the names Autopilot and FSD, as well as the language Tesla uses to describe them, could deceive users into thinking that the vehicles can operate autonomously.

Last August, Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the way Tesla advertises its FSD and Autopilot software. The two lawmakers later sent a letter to Musk to “express significant concerns” over Tesla’s driver-assist system, which Tesla responded to by saying its system can help customers “drive safer than the average driver in the U.S.”