Tesla raises “full self-driving” price from $8k to $10k | Hacker News Reader

Tesla raises “full self-driving” price from $8k to $10k

arstechnica.com

17 pointssamizdis19 comments

Maybe I’m wrong, but... everything he says feels like a lie. I just don’t believe a Tesla will be able to go out and drive Lyft for you and make you $100k anytime soon. Even if the tech is there, the regulation isn’t.

It’s weird to see a high end, amazing product being sold like snake oil.

I wouldn't buy a Tesla to share it out... so that price is steep.

Will I be able to rent other peoples' autonomous Teslas for trips?

My current ICE vehicle lease is up in 2 years. It'll be interesting to see what options exist when considering a replacement/alternative. I'm partial to thinking it could be a VW ID.4. But I don't expect it to be autonomous Teslas.

Even if you have your car driving people for you, you'd have the extra wear and tear of the usage, plus probably risking someone suing you for whatever (their coffee was spilled due to sudden braking, they got late to the airport, ...)

And when will this artificial "appreciation" be superseded by the competition's FSD technology

it’s really sad, to me, to see the gimmicky way tesla is trying to sell its cars

imho they already have the killer “feature” which is... the electric car. remember electric cars before tesla? me neither. so, focus on the electric part and make that as good as it can get. that’s a problem the world needs tesla to solve.

self-driving cars? nah. this is a 1st world problem.

I bet ALL Tesla's profit margin (non-carbon credit) comes from this "feature", this increase will bump up next quarter results. FSD buyers are discounting cars for non-FSD buyers. Non-FSD base model (by phone order) is probably a loss leader.

There is Nissan Leaf (used as taxis in some countries) and it is from 2010. While Tesla inc existed before, I would consider that it really started with Tesla S from 2012.

electric cars existed but they were ugly/unappealing. now, the model S looks great and is a sports car in disguise (of you go for the P100D). electric cars went from meh and being pretty rare to mainstream.

Tech aside, this is what I see as Tesla's killer innovation.

Pretty much every non-Tesla mass production EV (or most dedicated hybrids not based on an existing ICE car) looked like a cheap ugly dwarf mutant hatchback economobile.

Teslas actually look like premium, desirable, normal cars.

So if I buy this then do I actually buy a license? Is this license transferable? For example if I am the last owner of the car then can I transfer it to a new car when I return my old car?

This is my biggest issue with the whole "full self driving" thing. As far as I can tell, it's tied to a vehicle and not a person. I could almost see this being worth it if you believe that level 5 driving is coming in the next few decades and it was tied to a user, but it isn't. Let's say that he doens't raise the price anymore, and you have 3 Teslas from now until FSD is present. You're out $30k. That's not chump change for the vast majority of people.

The FSD license goes with the car and increases its resale value.

Wasn't there recently a story where Tesla revoked a license after a car was re-sold?

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-aut...

That appears to be a one-off case.

It seems to me that people overlook the benefit FSD brings to people with busy or long commutes. I like being able to relax and only focus on _intervening_ when there is a lot of traffic on my 45 minutes commute from work. I don’t get home fatigue from the driving. Instead, I spend time doing the things I want to do, like play with my kids or work on my projects. To me it is worth the investment.

Pretty sure the so-called Auto Pilot system that came earlier on with Tesla vehicles basically does all that you describe, just without the ridiculous pricetag of FSD... a system that still has a lot to prove and needs further development.

Although Tesla is free to sell their half-baked beta add-on for whatever price, it feels reminiscent of the saying "A fool and his money are soon parted".

Wake me up when this is out of beta and delivers on every promise with 99.999+% reliability.

> only focus on _intervening_

Sorry. Humans suck at this. Aviation psychologists proved this many times over, and the NTSB database is full of death from those who trusted automation, relaxed, and thought all they had to do was lightly supervise, and only focus on intervening.

Humans suck at being dropped into a situation and having to make sense of it fast. If you're relaxed and paying any less attention than you would be if you were driving, you're already a more dangerous driver to all those around you and yourself.

Three Tesla owners in the U.S. thought the same thing, and they all died relaxing while their car drove them into obstacles right in front of them that any other car or human driver would have easily seen.

Tesla's FSD might be worth the investment one day. But it's definitely not right now. (Some drivers are reporting issues with FSD already; at least 3 near accidents in just the past 3 days https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/tesla-is-now-beta-testi...).

So, what if you buy this and keep the car 2 years, and drive an hour and a half a day.

$10000/365 days/2 years/1.5 hours = $9.13 per hour.

That's probably about what you have to pay an Uber driver. Isn't self driving meant to be cheaper than people?

Minimum wage in the US is $7.25

except it's not really self driving.

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