Tesla’s Elon Musk confirmed that the company’s Full Self-Driving suite would increase by around $1,000 on July 1, citing new features as the reason behind the price increase.
The announcement made over Twitter supports Musk’s tweet from April 7, wherein he stated that a price change would “probably” occur on July 1.
Tesla Full Self-Driving option cost rises by ~$1000 worldwide on July 1st. Order a Tesla online in less than 2 minutes at https://t.co/qJm9uPBCX5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2020
Interestingly enough, after Tesla performed a mass rollout of the Traffic Light and Stop Sign detection feature, Musk fielded a variety of questions that had to do with the new FSD characteristic.
One of them had to do with the price increase, and Musk noted that with additional features comes a new price. He eventually expects FSD to be worth more than $100,000 thanks to regulatory approval of self-driving capability, newly released features, and because of its continually improving nature with Tesla’s Neural Network.
The FSD price will continue to rise as the software gets closer to full self-driving capability with regulatory approval. It that point, the value of FSD is probably somewhere in excess of $100,000.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 18, 2020
Musk has said in the past that a Tesla equipped with a completed FSD suite could be worth in excess of $100,000, especially when the company rolls out its Robotaxi ride-sharing program that will allow owners to make money with their cars through autonomous transportation. Robotaxi could be released as soon as next year.
Price increases for FSD are certainly understandable because Tesla continues to add features every few months. After Smart Summon was released in the latter portion of 2019, the company only had City Street driving left until the FSD suite was “feature complete.” Tesla initially planned to finish FSD by the end of 2019, but improvements were needed within the software before it could be safely released to the public.
Tesla’s FSD capabilities have aimed toward creating a safer driving environment for everyone. While the company continues to improve upon already released features and works on releasing new ones, the cars seem to increase in value over time. A fully-functional Self-Driving Tesla could be worth more money when it is five years old compared to its price when it was brand new and rolling off production lines in Fremont.
