Tesla Offers FSD Trial in End-of-Year Sales Push

Tesla has an extremely limited special offer for customers ordering before midnight December 31 – three free months of the Full Self Driving option. 

Tesla Chief Executive tweeted about the offer Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1344044584712728581

The FSD option currently costs $10,000 and Tesla intends to roll out a monthly subscription service next year. The new offer may give owners a chance to trial the sophisticated self-driving tech before selecting the pricey option. 

According to Tesla’s October release notes for the option:

“When Full Self-Driving is enabled your vehicle will make lane changes off highway, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects, and make left and right turns. Use Full Self-Driving in limited Beta only if you will pay constant attention to the road, and be prepared to act immediately, especially around blind corners, crossings, intersections and in narrow driving situations.”

Musk has said that an investment in the FSD option could eventually make owners money by joining a robotaxi fleet. There’s no set timeline for that service, but Tesla continues to make advances with its vehicles’ self-driving capabilities. 

 

[Big Dog]

Not true, it costs more than $0.10 to administer such a trial, make sure the software is written and tested to handle such trials, make sure it's enabled on all applicable cars, handle calls from customers who might have not gotten it in error, etc, etc. Unless Elon runs this entire trial on volunteer developers, customer service reps, delivery reps, service center staff, I am willing to bet you it costs more than a dime.

Wait, what? Tesla answers phone calls from customers? Is that some new 2021 resolution?

 

[whitex]

Wait, what? Tesla answers phone calls from customers? Is that some new 2021 resolution?

Perhaps it was true while I wrote it, wasn't true before and stopped being true right after I posted, kind of like some of Elon's statements like "everyone serving their Tesla is getting a P100D loaner"). Or perhaps their phone systems are capable of answering calls, they just didn't staff it, again like Tesla other statements, such as "Your motor is capable of 691hp we showed in the spec, but the rest of the car limits it to 463hp (which we neglected to mention when selling you the car)".

 

[CapeOne]

Free trials are common practice for subscription products, which FSD will soon become. It costs little for the company to implement and therefore is typically worthwhile especially in this case if it pushed some people to take delivery by December 31st instead of holding off until January. It wouldn't surprise me to see Tesla offer a 30-day (or more) free trail as standard practice once the FSD subscription model is announced.

As far as "incentives" go, it was fairly minor compared to the retail/sticker price reductions from earlier in the year e.g., $10k base price reduction on MS LR+. It was also minor compared to most of the discounts (on top of the sticker price reductions) on new inventory cars. Tesla has been using a lot of price reductions to help generate more sales.