Tesla CEO Elon Musk is back on Twitter again, this time to announce that the company will raise the price of its ‘Full Self-Driving’ (FSD) software to $12,000 on January 17th.
Thankfully, the price hike will not impact Canadians — Musk followed up his original tweet noting the change was “Just in the US.” It’s somewhat surprising, given the similarity in the package’s pricing between the countries — U.S. customers currently pay $10,000 USD for FSD while Canadians pay $10,600 CAD ($10,000 USD is worth about $12,645 CAD).
Regardless, it’s good news for any prospective Tesla customers in Canada (and bad news for any U.S.-based Tesla customers). Still, Musk does have a tendency to change pricing on a whim. In October, Tesla hiked the price of its supposedly more affordable Model 3 by almost $3,400 over two weeks, bringing that car to just $10 shy of the federal EV rebate limit of $55,000 (once you factor out fees for delivery, air conditioning and other items).
Just in the US
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 7, 2022
Tesla also upped the price of its Model Y in October 2021 and in 2020, dropped the price of the Model S in Canada after Musk changed the price to $69,420 in the U.S. (The Model S price has changed since thanks in part to the release of the ‘Plaid‘ version.)
Musk followed up his FSD price increase tweet by noting that the FSD price would continue to rise as the company gets closer to the “production code release.” That likely means Canadians will see the FSD price increase in the future, even if the price isn’t changing at the moment.
It’s worth noting that the FSD software is still in beta despite Musk’s various promises over the years that it would be available by now (The Verge notes that Musk said FSD would exit beta in 2018 and in 2019 said it’d be on “over a million cars” in 2020).
We’re in 2022 now and over the last few months, the FSD beta has drawn increased scrutiny and criticism from regulators and reporters. Concerns stem from the decision to let regular people beta-test the FSD software — reasonable, considering people keep posting videos of them misusing the software. There are also concerns with how Tesla represents FSD, with some calling the full self-driving name misleading.
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