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FSD price increase on Jan 17

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They’re starting to make more revenue from that, but it’s still a small percentage and not what got them to the “most valuable company in the world according to the stock market”. One-time purchase iPhone sales is what got them there and what Wall Street liked/recognized.
Absolute revenue from iPhone sales have been stagnant since 2015, while services have grown from 9% to 22% of revenue:
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Apple didn’t hit the mark of worlds most valuable company until 2020 when it over took Aramco. No doubt, the gross revue from upfront sale of hardware is the larger share, but SaaS is a growing share and in line with the general shift across the industry. It’s also arguably what allowed them to get over the line to become the world’s most valuable company.
 
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Absolute revenue from iPhone sales have been stagnant since 2015, while services have grown from 9% to 22% of revenue:
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Apple didn’t hit the mark of worlds most valuable company until 2020 when it over took Aramco. No doubt, the gross revue from upfront sale of hardware is the larger share, but SaaS is a growing share and in line with the general shift across the industry. It’s also arguably what allowed them to get over the line to become the world’s most valuable company.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at. No one is saying they aren’t growing their services revenue. It’s already larger than many large companies, but that’s not what was being responded to. Apple didn’t get its Wall Street love from subscriptions/recurring payments. Their market cap skyrocketed due to hardware, namely the iPhone. Despite growing 13% in 5 years, services is not where their incoming money is mostly from. Not even close. And that Wall Street love came way before services was even on the map. Also, we are talking about Wall Street here, as in publicly traded companies. That “most valuable by market cap” landmark was reached by Apple back in 2011 before services started growing.
 
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That’s not universal, Apple being case in point.
Apple’s current valuation is precisely because of their current and ongoing transition to a services company. Most of their hardware exists these days with the primary objective of selling you a subscription and locking you into an ecosystem. They are certainly not a counterexample to the point being made.
 
Nope, once it is really available (years from now) Tesla will not be the only company to offer it. Prices will go down and most likely it will be close to free as they will need data, lots of it, to keep it working.
All of you who paid and keep paying, I thank you as you are the ones driving the industry forward with your money, but don't think this is a good investment, because it is not.
LOL - “close to free”.

Keep dreaming.
 
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No. When you can actually use it hands free, it will be on subscription. No free lunches. They need the money to keep it updated, as you say … I’m talking about 5 to 10 years from now.

Ofcourse if you are talking about 50 years from now … who knows.
You're thinking about this in a vacuum. Tesla doesn't have some secret sauce. 10 years from now every manufacturer will have hands free driving and, yes, it will be included in most vehicles and the majority of trim levels. No different than any other feature we used to pay for that is now standard.
 
You're thinking about this in a vacuum. Tesla doesn't have some secret sauce. 10 years from now every manufacturer will have hands free driving and, yes, it will be included in most vehicles and the majority of trim levels. No different than any other feature we used to pay for that is now standard.
Generally agree. The price trajectory for autonomous driving / ADAS over the long term will trend toward “included with $20/mo premium connectivity package” vs. the Elon-as-infomercial-pitch-man fantasy of “your car is now an appreciating asset, buy now for just $11,999.99 before prices increase!”
 
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You're thinking about this in a vacuum. Tesla doesn't have some secret sauce. 10 years from now every manufacturer will have hands free driving and, yes, it will be included in most vehicles and the majority of trim levels. No different than any other feature we used to pay for that is now standard.
Adaptive cruise control has been available since the 1990's but my 2011 Lexus RX350 didn't have it standard. Maybe with shorter development cycles the newer tech upgrades of today will be standard after a shorter gap, but it looks like FSD's main competitors are either looking at subscription models (Supercruise, Drive Pilot) or keeping the tech to themselves to operate their own robotaxis (Waymo, AutoX). Mobileye seems to be looking to supply automakers, in which case they'd probably be charging ongoing licensing fees which the automakers would push on to the consumers with markup as a subscription service.
 
You're thinking about this in a vacuum. Tesla doesn't have some secret sauce. 10 years from now every manufacturer will have hands free driving and, yes, it will be included in most vehicles and the majority of trim levels. No different than any other feature we used to pay for that is now standard.
Just like airlines providing checked bags at no extra cost and downtown hotels including parking with the price of rooms.
 
Just like airlines providing checked bags at no extra cost and downtown hotels including parking with the price of rooms.
To be fair, those are services with non-zero marginal cost to provide an additional unit to a customer. Once FSD and rival software have been developed, addition of another user to the system costs effectively nothing, and price competition drives the market price to the marginal cost. I just don't think true price competition will come into play that quickly, with high barriers to entry (having an effective data pool to train the AI) keeping just a few players for at least a decade. Though open source projects like Comma Openpilot may change that calculus.
 
Again, I think the disconnect is how we view the bigger picture of FSD endeavors (not just Tesla’s). Yes, we were the EAP $5k + FSD Capability $3k group, but like I said the $12k (on top of the included/“free” basic AP) still seems worth it to us. We aren’t saying it’s the same prospect as the past (AP improvements, introduction of NoAP, included HW3 upgrade, etc.), but we also couldn’t have predicted where we would be now with our old Model 3. We don’t see it as paying for what it can do now, just like 4 years ago we didn’t see it as paying for what it could do then. FSD beta has been a great experience for me. I use it everyday on almost every drive, except when I’m in a rush to drive faster or just want to have some fun on California’s rarely wet roads. Every time I’m driving our old gas car or rental cars, I miss AP/FSD beta. I don’t think we’ve been fooled by Elon marketing, because we’ve never been convinced level 5 is possible soon. We have tempered expectations by imagining what steps are in between current capabilities and be-driven-while-asleep-in-the-backseat.

There’s actually a lot in between and it’s not a linear progression/path. Tesla is taking one (sometimes meandering) path, and I’m also interested in seeing the progress of the other players. But for now, Tesla is the easiest to acquire (as in, what you can actually purchase and use now). FWIW, GM Supercruise doesn’t add any value over Tesla’s current offering in my opinion Slightly torquing the wheel isn’t any worse than having to look straight ahead. Heck, with FSD beta we now do have to keep eyes up mostly and Supercruise being limited to a small percentage of my time diving makes Tesla’s hand-on-wheel requirement a small cost.

I think it comes down to what your expectations are for the $12K.

What do you expect at the beginning of ownership, and at the 2 year mark? What does it have to accomplish for it to tip the scales in your favor?

I agree that there is a lot of in-between, and whether I keep my Tesla behind the 5 year mark (from when I bought it in 2018) depends a lot on the in-between.

It doesn't have to be autonomous as autonomous requires a lot of sign off. But, it does have to deliver an L2 experience far beyond what it is today. Unlike you my experience with FSD beta has been rather poor. Sure I've seen some improvements in some areas, but other areas are just atrocious. I don't even bother using it if there is someone behind me for example. It's just too slow to do things.

For what you can compare it against?

GM Ultracruise (assuming it gets released when expected)
Volvo with L3 capabilities (assuming it gets released in a year or two in Cali)

I'm likely going to go from Tesla to Rivian, but Rivian doesn't make any promise behind AP+TACC+Autolane change (user initiated). I'll be perfectly content with this as long as the functionality works well. With Tesla I've never been happy with TACC+AP+Autolane change. It's always had issues (phantom braking, maps issues, autolane change canceling due to freaking out about a semi trailer in the far lane). The requirement to have hands on the steering wheel wouldn't be a big deal if the torque sensor wasn't so annoying. This has become a bit less annoying lately since the driver monitoring addition seems to have lessened the "please apply torque to the steering wheel" messages. I don't think my last 400+ mile drive even had a single one.
 
To be fair, those are services with non-zero marginal cost to provide an additional unit to a customer. Once FSD and rival software have been developed, addition of another user to the system costs effectively nothing, and price competition drives the market price to the marginal cost. I just don't think true price competition will come into play that quickly, with high barriers to entry (having an effective data pool to train the AI) keeping just a few players for at least a decade. Though open source projects like Comma Openpilot may change that calculus.
Software costs real money to develop and maintain. The computing requirements to run FSD are far above what is required for basic automotive needs. FSD, like any software that can kill you, has a liability exposure per copy as well. Those costs, plus profit, must be borne by the users. It is possible that FSD will be included in the price of a future vehicle, but it won't be for free (or very low cost). And, unless there is a government mandate to provide some level of FSD in all automobiles, the desire for auto companies to advertise a lowball price provides plenty of incentive to separate out the cost of optional services.
 
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You're thinking about this in a vacuum. Tesla doesn't have some secret sauce. 10 years from now every manufacturer will have hands free driving and, yes, it will be included in most vehicles and the majority of trim levels. No different than any other feature we used to pay for that is now standard.

I think there is confusion over what is being talked about.

Hands free L2 driving itself doesn't really warrant a subscription model. There isn't much in terms of liability cost, SW improvement cost, or even needing to continue to map things. Certainly a manufacture like GM can if they want, but there isn't anything that necessitates that.

But, autonomous driving carries reoccurring cost along with a chance that older vehicles in the fleet will no longer have the necessary hardware meet the requirements in some jurisdiction. The combination of these two means it makes more sense to have a subscription model than having a huge upfront cost.

Autonomous driving also reduces the need for as many vehicles. So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a manufacture to innovate themselves right out of business.

My expectation is that actual autonomous driving will be provided by fleet services.

Where some fleet services like Tesla will allow you to own the vehicle, but the customers won't own the autonomous driving. There will be some kind of reoccurring cost to cover the fleet service. Private insurance won't cover autonomous driving at all, and all the provides will clearly state that they won't cover the vehicle during autonomous driving.
 
Software costs real money to develop and maintain. The computing requirements to run FSD are far above what is required for basic automotive needs. FSD, like any software that can kill you, has a liability exposure per copy as well. Those costs, plus profit, must be borne by the users. It is possible that FSD will be included in the price of a future vehicle, but it won't be for free (or very low cost). And, unless there is a government mandate to provide some level of FSD in all automobiles, the desire for auto companies to advertise a lowball price provides plenty of incentive to separate out the cost of optional services.
So roll comprehensive/collision insurance into the cost of an FSD sub and get people hooked on the product and or offer a discount on said insurance product if someone bought the FSD.
 
I wouldn't necessarily say that it's for people who don't know how to drive, or that they're bad/scared driver. I definitely agree with the screaming part though.

For the sake of argument lets say FSD worked really well, but due to regulatory issues it still has to be supervised.

Who does it benefit in this case?

I think it comes down to special use cases.

Whether they admit or not a lot of drivers are intimidated by stop sign controlled intersections that have a lot of cars arriving at the same time, and people going all sorts of directions. It's just too many cars for the human brain to keep track of. Heck half the time that I arrive I don't even know when the other cars to one side of me arrived as my vision is blocked by a car in the lane next to mine. I'd love for FSD to work as well as could be expected here.

The other case is areas where the driver isn't familiar with. There are a lot of intersections that aren't well thought out, and its not always clear about what lane goes where. It would be nice if FSD had pre-mapped knowledge of the intersection, and knew exactly how to handle it.

There are also other cases where I simply don't have the patience for an intersection. Like I tend to avoid unprotected lefts across multilanes of traffic because there is too much traffic. So I simply take a right and I go around. The total time is probably about equal.

I'm not particularly keen on roundabouts either. I enjoy the singe lane ones, but beyond that I start to get nervous quick.

Where I hope to use an FSD component the most is parking. I wish I could just exit my car and have the car go park itself. I'm the kind that will park blocks from where I want to go just so I don't have to deal with people/parking.

Even Tesla had a good reverse summon I might even go to Costco.

Obviously once they get to automated driving the use cases go up considerably. I'd love to have an autonomous camper van that would autonomous drive to the next camping spot as I hiked/biked down the coast. Now I know other people get these things called spouses and/or they pop out a kid. But, can't a robot do this? I don't really have much to say and spouses generally want someone to talk to. :)
I am fine if it works well, and I need to supervise it, but it needs to work 100%. Try picking up your kids at school when people make 3 lanes out of 2 lane roads. FSD is super confused when people bend/break the laws. As a human you can navigate this and understand what every car is doing. FSD also don't give gaps and act like a jerk. As a human, we would leave a gap to allow cars to make left turns in front of you.