Your Guide To Deciding If Tesla 'Full Self Driving' Is Worth Buying Today

Tesla has, over time, had a number of offerings in their autopilot and “full self driving” upgrades with some fairly varying pricing.

The two products have had quite an array of prices, with EAP ranging from $3K to $5K, and basic AP at $2K or included with the base price. FSD has run $3K to $6K, with some special bargains.

Should you buy it?

As a result, many Tesla owners who didn’t buy it are asking whether they should take advantage of the short term offer to get FSD for $3K instead of the $6K it now costs new customers, possibly rising to $7K shortly.

Here are the factors which might go into the decision:

1. Value of added features for basic AP customers (Nav on AP, Summon, Autopark): Modest
2. Value of advanced features for EAP and AP customers (Advanced summon, auto lane change): Modest
3. Value of promised advance features for 2019 (traffic signals, stop signs, city autopilot): Slightly higher
4. Value of possible unannounced features for near term: Higher
5. Real full self drive: High
6. Real full self drive with Tesla Network: Very High
7. Probability of city autopilot: unknown

   8: Probability of full self drive in immediate future: You judge, but most say very low

8. Probability that price of FSD upgrade will increase significantly in price: Tesla says so, you judge.

At present, the FSD package offers only modest improvements over basic autopilot — the most useful of which is automatic parallel and perpendicular parking — and very few current enhancements over the EAP people bought before Feb 28, 2019. If you think these features are particularly valuable, you may decide it’s worth the money today, but the real driver is the promise of some more impressive features if and when Tesla implements them. In particular, Tesla promises that some day, FSD customers will not only be able to have a real robocar, but also will be able to hire the car out for money in the Tesla Network, making them money when they aren’t using it. Making them so much money, in fact, that having the car will be extremely profitable. Elon Musk has thrown around numbers like $200,000 in revenue over the life of the car, which is pretty good for a $50,000 investment. It is for this reason that he has stated the intention of greatly increasing the cost of the FSD features as they get closer to reality.

Let’s consider the features you get now as well as what I view as the likely near term features which Tesla has announced or which may be in the works.

In existing EAP (and FSD)

Highway “Navigate on Autopilot”

This lets the car take off-ramps on its own, and even merge onto other highways in highway-to-highway interchanges. I have found these merges frightening and I don’t recommend their use. This also includes automatic lane changes (with warnings) in order to get around slow cars, and move over before an exit. You must be constantly vigilant when using these features, so I consider their value only modest. You get the same thing by flicking the turn signal when you want to change. It is not big boon to have the car figure out it’s time to get around a slow driver.

Basic Summon

Basic summon can be useful if you have a garage space so tiny you can’t get out of your car after you park in it. It lets you move the car forward and back by remote control while watching it. While in theory, you can use this to get into tiny spaces in parking lots, in practice this is not a good idea because you will block in the cars next to you, and they don’t have summon. You’re more likely to get a dent in your door from their wrath.

Autopark

This is a useful feature, found on many cars. Tesla’s is better than many other cars in that it’s all automatic. Nonetheless, it still has a number of rough edges. It often doesn’t perceive a parking space. It can park badly in unusual parking spaces (such as those that are not between two other parking spaces. Worse, there are circumstances where it’s come quite close to damaging the car so you must carefully evaluate if there is a curb the Tesla’s low front clearance won’t go over, or your wheels might rub. While many drivers parallel park by making some contact between their tires and the curb, this is not advised in the Tesla, whose wheels are design in a way that the rims get scraped before the tire contacts the curb in some instances.

Nonetheless, in suitable parking spaces, this can be handy. This exists in many cars, but is not normally priced as a solo add-on; it normally comes in some “technology package” and so it’s hard to measure its market value.

Features available only if you buy FSD

Advanced Summon

This function lets the car leave a parking space in a parking lot, and navigate through the lot towards you. You must watch the car and hold down a button while it does this. It moves very slowly, so it’s hard to imagine a situation where it would not take you much less time to walk to your car than to have it come to you. This leaves its utility to a few situations:

• There is extreme weather and you don’t want to walk to your car
• You have a heavy load to take to your car and would prefer to wait for the car to come to you
• You are disabled and can’t walk to your car, and there was not close disabled parking.

Auto lane change without confirm

This function is nice. You should still check mentally that the lane change is safe, and abort it if it is not, but you no longer have to click the turn signal yourself. However, it is only mildly nice as using the turn signal is not a giant burden.

Promised in 2019 to those who buy FSD

City navigate on autopilot

major debate if Tesla can do this at all without LIDAR
without maps

Traffic light and stop sign recognition

These are useful features, necessary for city operation, and to warn a driver if they are about to run a stop sign or light.

Probable features before true self driving

Traffic jam full self drive

Driving in a highway traffic jam is one of the simplest problems in full self driving. Several automakers have announced or released such products. While there is doubt about full self driving in general situations, Tesla should be able to make this. It would let you do your e-mail (if the law allows it) or watch video in a traffic jam. As the jam cleared, you would need to take the wheel or it would stop.

More sophisticated parking lot operations

While Tesla doesn’t like maps, with a bit of map use and other advanced tools, they should be able to produce things like a parking lot valet, allowing you to just pull your car into a parking lot, and have it handle moving through it and finding a space. For the return, the lot will need a place for it to meet you if you ask it to come back to the entrance. Mercedes has announced this level of function in limited parking lots. The advanced summon function should also be able to improve to a level where it’s fast enough to be usable. At present, it is not even clear how well it will find its way to you when it has never seen the path through lot needed for that. A version could exist where you drive past the entrance on your way in to show it the way back (if there are two-way lanes.)

More advanced home garage operations also are not hard to do. For people with large lots, that can mean taking a complex path from your door to your garage, opening the garage and parking in it.

Nighttime drives to full service charging stations

Well before a car can drive all the roads at proper speeds, cars should be able to handle low-speed drives on slow streets at night. This means a car could drive itself to a “full serve” charging station or other station set up for charging cars with a self-drive ability.  I described this in the article earlier this week on charging stations

Maybe, just maybe, some “full self drive” on limited access freeways

While I’m in the camp that still recommends LIDAR for this task, I won’t declare it impossible to solve this problem with cameras and radar in good conditions and light traffic. Unfortunately, good conditions can end, with the arrival of complex traffic, construction zones or weather. The bad news is that research shows that safely handing control back to a distracted human who’s watching a movie is not a solved problem.

Getting new hardware

If you buy FSD for a car shipped prior to April, you do get more than software. While Tesla originally declared they would do all of FSD with the hardware shipping in their 2018 cars, they now wish to install their new advanced neural net processor. FSD customers will get this hardware.

The possible benefit is that if Tesla decides even more hardware is needed, such as better cameras, better radar and yes, possibly even LIDAR, those who paid in advance for FSD will get that for no extra charge. However, it is also possible that if the cost of that is too high, Tesla might just refund your money, with interest and give some other perk.

Unfortunately, while it’s easy for Tesla to replace other components, their cars are difficult to add a LIDAR to. The roof is glass and the bumper is solid. It is possible something could be done for a forward LIDAR by replacing the rear-view mirror unit that already has the forward cameras. That might be costly — but if you pay in advance, you should be covered.

What will they really do with the price?

It’s worth examining the history of the price of FSD.

• The original Enhanced Autopilot, which offered the basic auto-steer and traffic-aware cruise control. This was typically $5,000 to buy with the car, and in theory a bit more to purchase later. However, they offered a “free trial” which usually included the ability to buy it for that same time-of-purchase price.
• Later, it became more truly “enhanced,” and they added some extra features, including park assist, basic summon, and later “navigate on autopilot” which would take exits, merge and change lanes after confirmation.
• During this period you could also purchase the “Full Self Driving” (FSD) add-on, for typically another $3K-$5K at time of purchase, and a statement it would cost more to add in the future. This provided no new features, but was a promise from Tesla that when they had a real “full self driving” product, you would get it for no extra money. The implication was other customers would pay more for it. The advertised assertion was that the car had all the hardware needed for this, so it would just be a software upgrade.
• March 1, 2019, the structure was changed. Basic Autopilot was reduced in price to $2,000 and reduced to close to the original feature set. The EAP features such as park assist, basic and advanced summon and navigate on autopilot with auto lane change, were moved into FSD. Now, FSD for $5,000 got you some actual features, along with the promise of more in the future, and eventually an actual full self driving.
• After the change, those who had paid $5,000 for the fuller EAP prior to the change were concerned about being left out of the new features. Tesla briefly offered to let them upgrade to FSD for only $2,000, so that their total of $7,000 for AP+FSD matched what new customers paid. Those who took delivery after February got FSD for free. Those who didn’t buy EAP got the chance to buy AP for $2,000 and FSD for $3,000K.
• After this, there were other price changes in the car, including the bundling of basic autopilot into the price, with a $2,000 price increase. Now, FSD is the only add-on on the standard order form. It was again indicated that it would cost more to add in future.
• Customers who bought FSD earlier, feeling they got nothing for that extra money, were put into Tesla’s early access program, where they get beta access to certain new features before other customers.
• In July of 2019, Tesla increased the price of the FSD add-on to $6,000. Elon Musk tweeted that it would probably go up another $1,000 in August and keep going up every few months after that. Musk has repeatedly said that once FSD is fully operational and people can hire out their car in the Tesla Network as a taxi, they will be able to make a great deal of money from doing so, and the value of FSD will be extremely high — and its price may be increased accordingly.
• In late July of 2019, Tesla again offered to let those who purchased full EAP add FSD for only $3,000.

This suggests it’s hard to predict what price Tesla will charge in future for this upgrade, or if the statements from Elon Musk about it going up are a good guide.

So, should you buy it?

The overall conclusion is that the added features today are modest and not worth $6,000, or even $3,000 for somebody who bought the EAP product. As such, the decision is about whether you think the future features are worth the cost, and how sure you are Tesla will deliver them, and how quickly they will do so. In addition, you must consider whether it really will be more expensive to buy these as an add-on later. Right now, Tesla is charging $2,000 more to buy them after delivery, and it claims it will increase this price and gap.

That’s a dubious claim. Aside from the new processor, at present FSD is a software product, not a hardware product. It’s very rare to buy software products in advance, or expect them to go up in price. FSD and Autopilot have swung wildly in price, though they have increased recently. It’s very difficult to predict what their price will be in future.

Competition will also change the price of this function. If Tesla is alone in the marketplace, they may be able to charge the premium they have described. If there is competition, that will regulate prices. The normal history of software and technology products is to go down in price with time, not up. Sometimes way, way down. The car itself, mostly a hardware product, has dropped greatly in price just this year.

Disclosure: The author owns a Tesla vehicle and some TSLA stock.

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