According to credit card data, only about 2% of the Tesla owners who used Full Self-Driving in the free month trial ended up buying it after.
Starting in March, Tesla offered a month of free trial of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) package to all its owners in North America.
At the same time, the automaker slashed the cost of the package from $12,000 to $8,000 or $99 per month for the subscription model. Interestingly, that goes against what Elon Musk said. The CEO previously said that Tesla would keep increasing the price of the FSD package as it gets better.
Yet, Tesla slashed the price just as it released the new v12 version of the system, which is a significant step forward.
The automaker tried to increase the take rate of FSD with the new version by making more people try it with the free trial, and then tempting them to buy or subscribe to it with the price reduction.
However, some data indicates that Tesla wasn’t really successful with the strategy.
YipitData accessed credit card data from about 3,500 Tesla owners who participated in the trial and found that only 50 bought or subscribed to FSD after the trial (via moomoo):
According to YipitData’s latest figures, nearly 3,500 Tesla owners trialed the company’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) service over the past month. However, only about 50 of these trials converted into FSD subscriptions or purchases, translating to a conversion rate of just under 2% as of May 5th. The data reveals a cautious approach among Tesla drivers towards paying for subscriptions to its autonomous driving technology.
In order to improve the take rate, Elon Musk also asked Tesla employees who deliver cars to give a FSD demonstration with every delivery.
Electrek’s Take
3,500 owners is a limited dataset, but it’s the best we have right now and to be honest, 2% sounds about right to me.
Top comment by Damon Ekstrom
I was thankful for the trial, but I think the trial highlighted for many (like it did me) that it isn't worth $12k. Even after dropping the price to $8k, it's still far too expensive for a level 2 system that you have to monitor at all times.
Tesla tells us that we need to keep our eyes on the road and hands on the wheel at all times, and until we get a price that properly reflects the driver's aid that "Supervised FSD" is, then buy rates will continue to remain low.
Despite the recent price cut, it’s still a very expensive product and the value is not clear to most people.
As I previously stated, I’ve been impressed by v12, but it doesn’t necessarily make it useful. v12 limits the speed in many areas and still makes mistakes. I think that it has value on the highway by reducing your workload and allowing you to focus more on the road, but on city streets, it is more stressful than driving without it.
Therefore, I think most people see themselves better off with Autopilot for now.
Tesla still has some work to do prove itself with FSD and increase that take-rate.
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