Tesla started its rollout of the next big release of FSD Beta on August 20th. And alongside its many improvements, Elon Musk announced that Tesla will be raising the price of FSD to $15,000 - a 20% increase. The price increase will go into effect in North America on September 5, 2022 "after a wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2."
“Current price will be honored for orders made before Sept 5th, but delivered later,” Musk adds.
After wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2, price of FSD will rise to $15k in North America on September 5th.
Current price will be honored for orders made before Sept 5th, but delivered later.
Musk followed up with a tweet that added how easy it was to upgrade your existing vehicle to FSD via the Tesla mobile application.
“Note, you can upgrade your existing car to FSD in 2 mins via the Tesla app,” Musk writes.
FSD Beta’s sudden and large increases in price over the last year has drawn criticism from the Tesla community. After more than 100,000 Tesla owners were added to the FSD Beta program, the software has gotten a lot of hands-on experience from owners who are having some doubts about its hefty price tag.
Tesla owner and YouTuber James Locke (@arctechinc) shared an echoed recommendation via Twitter to Musk. He asked that the license for Tesla be looked into since FSD is in development and is not a finished product yet. He suggested that a “commercial license” be used when owners place their vehicles into the robo-taxi fleet.
“.@elonmusk I humbly recommend it’s time to rethink the way the FSD license works,” Locke writes. "While FSD is still in development and not a finished product you should have a personal use and commercial use license. Personal use should be much cheaper to allow for maximum safety /1."
“When the robo-taxi fleet is a reality you could offer an upgrade to buy into the commercial license which is more expensive and offers higher profits for putting the car into the fleet. Or owners could let Tesla take a great [chunk] of the robo-taxi profit for personal license.”
.@elonmusk I humbly recommend it's time to rethink the way the FSD license works. While FSD is still in development and not a finished product you should have a personal use and commercial use license. Personal use should be much cheaper to allow for maximum safety /1
Locke adds that everyone who purchases a Tesla should have FSD included with their purchase because its features are tantamount to the vehicle’s safety.
“IMHO @elonmusk everyone who buys a Tesla should get FSD included for personal use to ensure the safest cars on the road are affordable to everyone.”
IMHO @elonmusk everyone who buys a Tesla should get FSD included for personal use to ensure the safest cars on the road are affordable to everyone.
If someone wants to put their Tesla into a money making robo-taxi fleet, that's when the cost for a license should be higher. /end
In January of 2022, Tesla raised the price of Full Self-Driving from $10,000 to $12,000. At the time, many were discussing FSD’s price and stating that $10,000 was too much for the software in its current state.
Last year, Tesla launched its Full Self-Driving subscription. Owners could pay $99 per month or $199/month for the FSD subscription, depending on whether their vehicle already has Enhanced Autopilot.
At the time Tesla's FSD package cost $10,000 and you'd have to subscribe for more than four years (at $199) before it made sense to buy the FSD package.
However, with the upcoming price increase, you'd now need to subscribe for more than six years before buying the package outright was the better deal.
There's no word whether Tesla will also increase the monthly subscription, which is starting to look like a better deal for new owners.
A monthly subscription certainly has a lot more flexibility as you can cancel or renew whenever you'd like without any penalties.
It's certainly possible that Tesla is trying to shift users toward a subscription model.
Tesla's FSD monthly subscription has remained the same price since its introduction.
As Full self-driving becomes better with each update and Tesla gains more data, we can anticipate the price of FSD to continue to go up. With the continuous sudden and large price increases, it’s becoming more difficult to justify such a large price tag.
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So, with Halloween all squared away, the next big holiday coming up is Christmas. Each year, Tesla releases a big Holiday update packed with features. Last year’s update included some awesome features, including alternate routes, the Vision upgrade for Park Assist, Speed Cameras and Traffic Light icons, and the Automatic Blind Spot indicator, among others.
We already know that update 2024.44 - the Holiday Update Branch - is coming with Blind Spot Monitoring while Parked, Supercharger Improvements, and more. But, we’ve got a ton of good ideas that we hope will make the list, so put down your pumpkin spice, and grab your egg nog. It’s the holidays, and it’ll be Cybertruck’s first Christmas, so let’s celebrate!
Apple Watch App
First up—the Apple Watch app. This has been a highly requested feature over the past couple of years, and it looks like Tesla is listening. Tesla has apparently already begun development to support the Apple Watch in app update 4.38, so we’re expecting this to arrive as part of the big Holiday update. We’d love to see an equivalent app for Android-based watches, too.
Phone Left on Charger Alert
It’s easy to forget your phone inside of the vehicle, especially if it’s on the phone dock. A simple app alert that a phone has been left in the vehicle would be really useful. Tesla could potentially even tell the difference between a driver’s phone and a passenger’s phone, depending on the vehicle’s profile being used or which doors were open and closed.
Either way, just receiving an app notification if a phone is left in the car would be really useful, especially since your phone is your car key.
Live Activities
Not a Tesla App
iOS introduced support for Live Activities with iOS 16.1 in October 2022. Live Activities are auto-updating, persistent notifications that can provide real-time information about a certain task. Live Activities are used to provide real-time information about your Uber arrival or the status of a flight. In Tesla’s case, they can be used for instances where up-to-date information may be important, such as when Supercharging or when Sentry Mode is active.
Arrival State of Charge
A popular request among Tesla owners is the ability to set a desired battery charge percentage upon arriving at a destination. This past year, Tesla has added several features to the app’s Trip Planner, including waypoints. Although the app lets you choose a starting charge percentage, it does not let you pick the state of charge at your destination.
If you’re traveling somewhere without a nearby charger, this becomes an issue. It’d be nice if the Tesla app let users pick their desired state of charge at arrival, and the route planner would automatically recommend charging stops and durations to reach that target.
Not a Tesla App
Light Show Support
Tesla Lightshows are great, but they could be made even better with Tesla app support. At the very least, it’d be great to be able to start/schedule or stop a light show from the app.
To really make light shows shine, Tesla could add the ability to create a light show directly from the app. Right now creating a light show involves using the open-source app xLights on a computer, so a simplified version of it running in the app would make it accessible to a lot more users.
Perform a synchronized light show with multiple Tesla vehicles…and a new song 🎶
Similar to an in-vehicle preconditioning button for 3rd party chargers, the Tesla App should also have a button to precondition the battery. This will make it easy for users, especially those who don’t have home charging – to get their vehicles ready for DC Fast Charging before departing.
Garage Door Controls
Tesla owners with HomeLink can control their garage doors directly from the vehicle. However, the Tesla app currently only allows users to open the first programmed garage door and doesn’t give the user access to any of the other programmed doors. Adding the option to choose which garage door to open via the HomeLink button would be a valuable addition—especially useful when paired with Actually Smart Summon.
Drive Stats
While Tesla already records and displays charging sessions in the app’s Charge Stats section, it’d be really helpful if Tesla also added the ability to record drives. That way, you could easily track how much your vehicle was driven on a particular day, week, or over the course of the year.
If you have any other suggestions, let us know in our forums. Who knows, some Tesla product managers may even be listening.
Tesla has added payment plan options to its shop items for the first time. They’ve partnered with Klarna, a deferred payment provider, to spread the cost of items across multiple payments. For now, this appears to be limited to the Tesla Shop in the United States—no support for other regions quite yet.
Payment Options
Klarna’s primary payment option allows buyers to get 0% APR for 6 weeks, with 4 payments. The payment schedule is essentially one payment every two weeks for whichever product you buy - enabling you to buy now, and pay later with 0% financing.
For example, the payment schedule for the $420 Wall Connector is evenly divided into four portions. Of course, you’d also have to pay for shipping and taxes, both of which will be included in your first payment.
Payment 1
Payment 2
Payment 3
Payment 4
Amount
$105
$105
$105
$105
Payment Due
Day of Purchase
Week 2
Week 4
Week 6
For some of Tesla’s more expensive Shop options - like the Cybertent, this could be a fantastic means for some owners to pick up something more expensive without having to worry about interest charges on their credit card.
Klarna also offers some other payment schedules, which do have interest. While these are far more expensive and are more like credit cards, they still provide buyers a means to buy now and pay over time. These are all open loans as well, so you can pay them down at a faster rate, thereby reducing the overall interest.
Payment Schedule
Payment Rate
Interest Rate
6 Weeks
Biweekly
0%
6 Months
Monthly
7.99% to 33.99%
12 Months
Monthly
7.99% to 33.99%
FSD Payment Options?
We’d love to see an equivalent payment option available for Tesla’s FSD purchase, which is currently $8,000, even if it's bought after the vehicle purchase. The high upfront cost is likely one reason why Tesla’s FSD subscription is so popular.
It’s likely that purchasing FSD is much more popular at the time of vehicle purchase, as owners can roll the cost of FSD into their financing rather than paying the full $8,000 later on.
IPO Filing
Interestingly enough, along with today’s news that Klarna is working with Tesla, Klarna has also filed for an IPO in the United States. It is one of the first financial tech (FinTech) companies to file for an IPO in 2025 and, interestingly, one of the first European companies to conduct an IPO in the United States.
For those who trade in the financial sector, this will be one to watch—Klarna was valued at around $46 billion in 2021 and is now valued at approximately $15 billion. Partnering with a large and well-known brand like Tesla could uplift Klarna, but that’s all financial speculation.
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