I've tried the various flavors of self-driving in my Tesla over the past several years, and essentially it came down to a three-strikes rule for me - after the third time that car jerkily exited the self-driving mode on it own (the third time being in a slight bend on the highway at night) and spiked my heart rate to must have been an all-time high as I manually corrected in time to avoid disaster.. I said "nope, this is a decent electric car but I'm driving it myself from now on."

Waymo on the other hand, I trust it with my life on a weekly basis and have never had cause for concern (fingers crossed I didn't just jinx it).

Do BYD and other Chinese EVs have this insane subscription scheme for basic features on their cars, or is that only a feature of North American/European manufacturers?

Our 2020 Model S came with Autopilot. It was part of the purchase price.

We don't use FSD, we don't use Autopilot either.

But I'll be goddamed if he tries to take away something I paid for.

$99/mo is for FSD, not just lane keeping.

The article doesn’t explain what happens to simple lane leeping. Surely it should be free like in any other car (like my Volvo).

I've been using Autopilot for years, but recently subscribed to FSD for a long weekend roadtrip. It changed my mind on the value of FSD.

While unfortunate for consumers, it cleans up the offerings. For four years, I didn't buy FSD because Autopilot was good enough to cover highway driving and I couldn't justify $99/month for the "last mile". If you strip out Autopilot and given the latest FSD, I would 100% buy the FSD subscription.

Removing the lifetime purchase option also simplified my mental model. Before, I was always stressed that if I bought a few months, loved FSD, and then bought the lifetime, I would have "wasted" those few months. Plus, every month I owned the car yet didn't buy lifetime FSD made it worth "less" to me: I'd eventually sell the car, so I'd missed out on those few months of usage.

I do wish Tesla offered a price lock: so long as you maintain your FSD subscription, your price is guaranteed for 5 years. Otherwise, it does feel scary: I spend 50k on a car for its FSD and over time, they jack the price to $200 or $500/month. Also, if they jack up FSD prices and then lower base car prices, your Tesla's value decreases effectively, which feels even worse.

I'm 41 and I've never been comfortable with even cruise control, when I drive I DRIVE.

I can't shake the feeling of trusting an already complex machine to yet another layer of complexity through software.

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The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.

— Scotty, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

I love FSD, but this is awful. Given that this is almost certainly being done to juice the FSD subscriber count so that Elon hits his 10M sub target, I'd even go as far as to say that this is legally questionable.

Also, this move is beyond stupid IMO. Autopilot is Tesla's ONLY moat now that their Supercharger network is open to everyone. Gating that behind a $99/mo sub is guaranteed to make buyers shop elsewhere, especially now that the EV tax credit is no longer and the OEMs (and our O&G friendly admin) are rallying around EREVs.

How much does braking cost ?

FSD makes sense as a subscription as it's something that gets updated all of the time. Subscriptions to things built into the car like heated seats seems like a way to scam money out of people.