Autopilot and/or FSD subscription - SAAS? Likely? Not likely?

[calisnow]

It occurred to me this morning, reading the predictable complain/moan/groan threads over in the Model 3 forum (pricing/value moaning - predictable) - that perhaps SAAS is viable as an option? All the business software I own is served up as SAAS - from accounting to ERP to CRM. I was briefly doing some media stuff on a hobby level 2 years ago and Adobe's entire suite was offered as SAAS. My music software (Google Play Music) is a subscription.

Why not Autopilot? There's endless discussion of car sharing networks, subscriptions, etc. A vehicle lease is itself a subscription of a kind. Why not turn Autopilot into a recurring revenue stream? Don't get me wrong - I'm glad mine is paid for up front - but from Tesla's POV I would think it could make sense.

Thoughts? If this is a dead horse lemme know but I have not seen this topic before.

 

[bswn1]

Sure at $140 / mo. to break even on just EAP on a 3 year subscription!

 

[calisnow]

Sure at $140 / mo. to break even on just EAP on a 3 year subscription!

Hmmm - now that you put it that way it sounds expensive to me lol. Very odd, psychology. Strange stuff.

 

[pjoseph]

Maybe the analogy is the own vs lease philosophy.

Glad i paid upfront for EAP. It is the feature i enjoy the most whether in crawling local traffic or on the open road.

FSD (being where it is at) would be a good candidate for SAAS. No more over-promises and a nice recurring revenue stream when it finally materializes.

 

[whitex]

SaaS works well with product which people continue to love, cannot live without, or it's somehow difficult to switch out (for example music streaming, transferring all your purchased content is a pain on purpose). AP/EAP is not such a product, heck there are people actually suing for their money back. Surely almost nobody would be stupid enough to pay for FSD monthly subscription today. Subscription service without term commitments don't work for overhyped, underdelivered products - those require payment up front. The added benefit of a large up front payment is human psychology - once someone has bought the product for a good chunk of money, they will continue to justify their decision to purchase it almost no matter what, for their own mental sanity. With a monthly subscription, they'd just cancel. Of course then there are Comcast style retention methods, to make customers stay on hold for hours, often past business hours only to tell them to call again the next day (Google Comcast cancelations for details), but governments started cracking down on such methods, plus they landed Comcast on the bottom of customer satisfaction list for years now.

If Tesla really can make FSD work as they say it will (use it for car sharing and ride hailing, where the car will drop you off at work and go pick up your kids from school), Tesla will have no problems whatsoever to sell that for $10K, no need for subscriptions (unless at that point the subscription ends up getting Tesla more money, like in the case of Adobe).