Tesla Full Self Driving

Tesla has, for several years, allowed customers to purchase a “Full Self Driving” (FSD) option on their cars. The price has ranged from $5,000 to $7,000 over the price of Autopilot, with some occasional price reductions. Customers who purchase this option do not receive full self driving, but rather they receive the promise that once that product is ready, they will get it without extra charge. In 2019, customers also received a few enhanced Autopilot functions, and some participate in a special Tesla beta program.

Elon Musk has declared that FSD will be “feature complete” in late 2019. It was later clarified that this does not mean it will drive without supervision, but rather that it will be able to handle general streets with supervision. He has declared that by 2020 it will be able to act without supervision, but may not be deployed because of problems with getting regulatory approval. Most press and experts believe these dates are extremely aggressive, if the car can do it at all with its current sensor suite. It is central to the FSD plan that it can be done with the hardware on currently shipping Tesla cars, as long as they are the newer models featuring Tesla's dedicated neural network processor. Older cars will be retrofitted with that processor.

Once Tesla ships a working FSD product, they plan to operate a Robotaxi service called Tesla Network. This service will be a typical cell-phone hailed ride service, similar to traditional Uber but with no human driver. Vehicles will be both Tesla owned cars and the cars of private Tesla owners who have agreed to hire their cars out via this service. Tesla's contract does not allow Tesla FSD cars to be used in any other ride hail network.

Tesla is currently leasing Model 3 cars, but has announced that at the end of a 3 year lease they plan to take back those vehicles rather than let lessees buy them back for a residual price as is normal practice. They will use them as fleet-owned cars in the Tesla Network.

Musk predicts rides in Tesla network will cost $1/mile, about half the price of human driven services, and that this will return enough money back to private owners that they could make as much as $200,000 back in earnings over the life of their car, even though the car cost only $35-50,000.