Is FSD overpriced ($7,000 over AP)?

[Reeler]

Tesla has been overselling and under-delivering full self driving (FSD) for years since AP 2.0 was introduced. Self parking is pathetic and advanced summon is a joke. The lane keeping and adaptive cruise of autopilot are near perfect on the freeway, and okay off the freeway.

Then we have a comparison of OpenPilot to Tesla FSD and I see them being in the same ball park with either having pros/cons in the comparison. OpenPilot is working with one camera and anemic processing compared to all the sensors Tesla has along with their leading compute architecture. But, OpenPilot is only $1K! That gets me thinking that I have drunk too much Tesla kool-aide if I put down an extra 15% of the car cost on a feature that is snake oil.

Technology tends to get cheaper with time. Tesla has had their autopilot features in perma-beta for 5 years since they first started their snake oil salesmanship of amazing autopilot features on the horizon. I typically only own a car for a couple years and certainly not longer than the factory warranty so am unlikely to ever realize the promise of sleeping in the back seat while my car drives me to work.

Put down the Teslaquila (AKA Tesla kool-aide) and answer honestly.

 

[Birdman325]

It is $9,000 in Canada. I have EAP on my model 3 and I am thrilled to have it, but if I was buying new, it would be very tough to justify $9,000 for NoA and auto lane change. (Advanced summon is cool and works sort of well some of the time, Autopark works pretty well for me, but (modestly) I am a very good parallel parker.)

Don't get me wrong, I love being able to let the car change lanes, move out of the passing lane on its own, etc and even follow the route when I use NoA, but a material benefit of "Autopilot" on long distance trips is the combination of active cruise / maintaining steady distance behind the car in front, and keeping it in the lane, taking curves etc.

While a big part of having a Tesla is all of the cool "auto driving" tech, as noted, that is a lot of money for what it adds (right now).

 

[CrayZ1]

If the hardware is truly capable of autonomous operation, the hardware costs about that much if not more. How much does $7000 buy in the way of software even? IIRC, Catia cost more than that. My CMM software was $15,000.
Giving AP out for free was a way to boost sales, not indicative of the cost of AV hardware/software.

 

[P3dStealth]

It should be $2000. We would maybe buy it at 2k but 7 is just wrong. The car isn't driving itself anytime soon. It's just parking and changing lanes. Occasionally you can show your friends summon in a parking lot and hope it doesn't drive into something. Don't buy it at 7k.

 

[Reeler]

If the hardware is truly capable of autonomous operation, the hardware costs about that much if not more. How much does $7000 buy in the way of software even? IIRC, Catia cost more than that. My CMM software was $15,000.
Giving AP out for free was a way to boost sales, not indicative of the cost of AV hardware/software.

$1K just covers the hardware for OpenPilot. The software is open source so "free" as it is crowd sourced to the the community like Linux and Android. Even if more elaborate hardware were needed, it still would not be $7K worth of hardware. Plus, I am not sure much more is needed to be on par with Tesla anytime soon.

 

[Yang_H]

After seeing what OpenPilot can do with essentially just a cell phone, I become much less impressed by Tesla's always "coming soon" FSD. It's a shame that with so many more sensors and better system integration Tesla is not doing much more than OP does with $1k. FSD definitely sounds way over priced at $7k.

Maybe Elon should fire the FSD team and buy the OpenPilot instead.

 

[CrayZ1]

$1K just covers the hardware for OpenPilot. The software is open source so "free" as it is crowd sourced to the the community like Linux and Android. Even if more elaborate hardware were needed, it still would not be $7K worth of hardware. Plus, I am not sure much more is needed to be on par with Tesla anytime soon.

$1,000 worth of hardware will not cover the radar and cameras that are automotive quality. Most MFR's charge between $3000 and $7000+ for vehicles with enough hardware/software to do autosteering, ACC, and AEB. Note that much of that cost is embedded in the 'trim level' upgrades required for these features. So it could be much higher.

Consumers are used to free software, and commodity hardware. Neither are automotive quality.

I will agree that today's FSD features are priced towards high end of the market, but are not outside of the market. How much does AEB/ACC/Autosteering/Auto-lanechange cost in an Audi?

IIRC, Elon did fire his AP team once before.

 

[ewoodrick]

It is only overpriced until it ships

 

[VT_EE]

No it is not too high. Your car will appreciate in value with FSD.

 

[Reeler]

$1,000 worth of hardware will not cover the radar and cameras that are automotive quality. Most MFR's charge between $3000 and $7000+ for vehicles with enough hardware/software to do autosteering, ACC, and AEB. Note that much of that cost is embedded in the 'trim level' upgrades required for these features. So it could be much higher.

More like $2K to add lane assist, ACC and AEB typically. It is standard on many cars like Toyota Safety Sense so I still don't see the justification for Tesla's pricing for perma-beta features.

 

[DanCar]

Full self driving will ship in ten years. It would be easier to swallow if they went back to EAP for $4-5K and FSD to $7K.

 

[Ucme]

Thank you for this discussion. I as a hopeful Tesla owner this year am very confused by the different EAP, AP AP with Conv. & FSD options when searching for my Tesla on EV-CPO. If I need the summons feature (due to the narrow construction of my garage) where does that option start?

 

[VT_EE]

Thank you for this discussion. I as a hopeful Tesla owner this year am very confused by the different EAP, AP AP with Conv. & FSD options when searching for my Tesla on EV-CPO. If I need the summons feature (due to the narrow construction of my garage) where does that option start?

You need FSD for the summons feature with the current option scheme. In the past, it was included in EAP, which is no longer available.

 

[Cyber_Dav]

If you are thinking of keeping your car 2-4 years, it is definitely too high. I just don't expect it to add much in that time period.

I'll be keeping mine 10-20 years and expect to receive $7,000 of value from FSD in that period.

 

[DanCar]

Thank you for this discussion. I as a hopeful Tesla owner this year am very confused by the different EAP, AP AP with Conv. & FSD options when searching for my Tesla on EV-CPO. If I need the summons feature (due to the narrow construction of my garage) where does that option start?

If you are buying used then you might find this table interesting: Tesla Autopilot - Wikipedia

 

[Uncle Paul]

Wish they had an intermediate package, similar to previous Navigate on Autopilot.

 

[Reeler]

You need FSD for the summons feature with the current option scheme.

Summon is a little of a parlor trick. Some have had the car damage itself during use. On a daily basis, I would not recommend it. This is yet another feature in perma-beta which allows Tesla to avoid any responsibility when it malfunctions.

 

[Reeler]

Wish they had an intermediate package, similar to previous Navigate on Autopilot.

Now that you can pay for features in the app, it would be nice if they offered each of the features a la carte. Not sure how much summon would be worth, maybe $500? I think Tesla plans to monetize all these features using the app over time instead of the 2-3 things you can pay for at the moment.

 

[jboy210]

The reason I did not buy it is we lease and I figured it would not be in full release for most, if not all of the three years, we would have the car. Since the car will be turned in on May 31, 2021 I think I made the correct decision.

BTW, long betas are no unusually, GMail was in beta for over 7 years!

 

[Ucme]

Now that you can pay for features in the app, it would be nice if they offered each of the features a la carte. Not sure how much summon would be worth, maybe $500? I think Tesla plans to monetize all these features using the app over time instead of the 2-3 things you can pay for at the moment.

Didn't know, not recomended for daily use, which would be the case for me. Back to the drawing board.