Tesla will increase Full Self-Driving option price ‘substantially’ on May 1

Tesla is about to increase the price of its Full Self-Driving option ‘substantially’ on May 1 right after the company will demonstrate its latest autonomous driving capability at an event at the end of the month.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk claimed that Tesla vehicles are now ‘appreciating assets’ due to their self-driving capability.

He aims for Tesla vehicles to become revenue-generating assets for their owners, but if the price doesn’t increase, the value would still depreciate since new buyers could still buy the vehicles for the MSRP.

Now Musk confirmed that Tesla plans to “substantially” increase the price of the Full Self-Driving option over time – starting on May 1st:

“Please note that the price of the Tesla Full Self-Driving option will increase substantially over time.”

He confirmed that it is what he meant by Tesla vehicles becoming  ‘appreciating assets’:

Yes

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2019

He said that it will increase by “something like” $3,000, which would put the price of the package to around $8,000.

The price increase comes as Tesla is introducing its new full self-driving computer, which entered production earlier this month.

It’s still unclear if all new cars are getting the new computer.

Tesla refuses to confirm it, but the automaker still says that it will offer computer retrofits to all owners who bought the Full Self-Driving option, which Musk says will increase in price next month.

Musk says that they will start those retrofits “in a few months”:

Tesla will start FSD computer upgrade in a few months

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2019

Earlier this week, Musk says that Tesla’s new FSD computer is only being used at 5% capacity with the current Autopilot software compared to ~80% for the previous computer generation.

Over the rest of the year, Tesla is expected to release increasingly more advanced software updates that use more compute power out of the new computer – leading to fully self-driving capability by the end of the year, according to Tesla.

The price increase of the package will come after Tesla will demonstrate its latest self-driving technology at an investor meeting on April 22.

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