Tesla is getting ready to start giving every customer in the US a one-month trial of the $12,000 driver-assistance system, which it calls Full Self-Driving Beta, provided they have a car with the compatible hardware. The company is also reportedly mandating, at the request of CEO Elon Musk, that prospective buyers be given a demo of the software before purchasing a new Tesla.
The full court to promote the FSD Beta software, an upgraded version of the Autopilot system that comes standard in all Tesla vehicles, comes at an interesting time for the company. It’s the end of the first quarter of 2024, and Tesla is typically pulling out all the stops — including providing executives to help deliver cars to customers — to meet or exceed its sales targets. Enticing customers with a new incentive could be one way to boost sales, though it could backfire if potential customers are turned off by Tesla adding extra steps to its usually streamlined purchase process.
It’s also just weeks before Tesla goes to trial in a civil lawsuit brought by the family of Walter Huang, who died in a 2018 crash while using Autopilot. Huang was distracted at the time — investigators eventually discovered he was playing a mobile game shortly before the crash — but the lawsuit focuses on how Tesla represented Autopilot’s capabilities and whether it did enough to prevent drivers from misusing it . (The NTSB investigation into the crash, which concluded in February 2020, decided that Tesla did notalthough it can only issue safety recommendations.)
The decision to temporarily increase access to the FSD Beta software comes as Tesla released a new ‘V12’ version of the software that removes the previous code in favor of a system that runs entirely on neural networks. Many of Tesla’s most ardent supporters praised the new version, as did some of its employees and executives, including chief policy officer Rohan Patel, who was posted to X that he feels “very comfortable telling my family to try FSD anywhere.”
But not everyone had a smooth experience with the software.
By expanding access to the FSD Beta beyond the few hundred thousand or so customers who have already paid the $12,000 price (or, if they got it a few years ago before the price cut, $15,000), Tesla will have access to more video data on which to train its neural nets. But it also means that the software could end up in the hands of many more people who may not pay as much attention to the company’s instructions that drivers need to monitor the software at all times and be ready to take over if something goes wrong.
