Auto pilot now an extra cost option for all new Model S

[ahaer]

$2500 at time of purchase, $3,000 after - from new order pages

I wonder how that will work for people who have auto-pilot hardware but didn't have to pay for it. Hopefully they do the right thing and enable it at no cost...

 

[Twiglett]

It was always optional, just part of the Tech package.
Now most of the tech package is rolled into the standard build and just the autopilot is left as optional.

 

[cgiGuy]

It was part of the tech package, which doesn't exist any more. So if you had tech, you should be good to go. If not, then it will probably be an upgrade cost.

(Twig beat me to it.)

 

[Haggy]

For those who got the autopilot hardware and "didn't have to pay for it," we (some of us) had to pay for it. Aside from the fact that the hardware became standard whether we got the tech package or not, and I got the tech package, I had to pay an extra $500 to get them to enable the updates for the tech package. Interestingly, had I ordered the fog lamps, there would have been no extra charge. I essentially got the new tech package, minus the fog lamps, but with no credit for the missing fog lamps. I ordered the car with the tech package and the parking sensors. Others who ordered at the same time and ordered the tech package and the fog lamps paid the same price to the penny. They got the autopilot features, and I had to apply the $500 from the parking sensors toward it. If they had ordered all three, they got a $500 refund for the parking sensors and free autopilot software. Everybody I've spoken to about this, including everybody at Tesla except Jerome thinks it makes no sense to have charged me for an upgrade that amounted to enabling software upgrades. When you consider that it was part of the tech package and we were all promised new features via OTA updates at no extra charge, it was strange that they charged me for those particular updates when Autopilot wasn't even a separate option but was essentially a promised set of free upgrades.

Only a fraction of owners fell into this hole because the hardware came out a few weeks before the announcement, and anybody whose car hadn't been built yet was able to call up Tesla and ask for the order to be changed. Tesla could have simply added the fog lamps to my car as a preemptive move since I paid for them anyway, but I ended up being among the small segment of Model S owners who had to pay for software upgrades that others got for free, and didn't really get the "new" tech package out of the deal.