Tesla increases Full Self-Driving package price to $12,000, but not its monthly subscription service

Tesla has increased the price of its Full Self-Driving Capability (FSD) package to $12,000 as previously announced last week.

Interestingly, it looks like the automaker decided not to increase the price of its FSD monthly subscription service.

CEO Elon Musk has made Tesla’s pricing strategy clear when it comes to FSD: Tesla is going to increase the price of the package as it introduces new features. But, since the package doesn’t actually do what the name says (which is for the vehicle to fully drive itself), people have criticized Tesla for increasing the price, which gradually went up to $10,000 in October of 2020.

The automaker has refrained from increasing the price since launching the Full Self-Driving Beta program, but Musk announced last week that Tesla will increase the price to $12,000 on January 17.

A day late, Tesla updated its online configurations on January 18 to reflect the price change:

Last year, Tesla also launched its FSD subscription service at $199 per month.

We expected that Tesla would also increase the price of the subscription service since the automaker previously made clear that it wants the one-time purchase to be the best economic option when acquiring the Full Self-Driving package.

However, Tesla is still listing the same prices for the FSD subscription on its website following the price increase to $12,000:

Although the situation with the subscription service is a little more complicated.

The price of the package gives you access to future capabilities while you pay for what you get now with the subscription package. At the same time, Tesla said that the price of the package would increase with new capabilities and that hasn’t been the case with this price increase for most people.

The vast majority of Tesla owners who bought the FSD package still don’t have access to the FSD Beta.

As we previously reported, Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) is an early version of Tesla’s self-driving software that is currently being tested by a fleet of Tesla owners selected by the company through its “safety test score.” The software enables the vehicle to drive autonomously to a destination entered in the car’s navigation system, but the driver needs to remain vigilant and ready to take control at all times.

Since the responsibility lies with the driver and not Tesla’s system, it is still considered a level-two driver-assist system despite its name. It has been sort of a two steps forward, one step back type of program, as some updates have seen regressions in terms of the driving capabilities.

Recently, Musk said that Tesla could potentially achieve level 4 autonomy with the program by the end of 2022, but he has gotten that timeline wrong more times than there are levels of autonomy.