According to a new report from Bloomberg, the order comes directly from CEO Elon Musk, who wants dealerships to demonstrate the capabilities of Tesla’s Autopilot, its critical point and is under scrutiny by federal regulators.
Customers who purchase a Tesla will now receive a demonstration of the car’s self-driving capabilities before their vehicle is delivered to them. And the blame is that Autopilot has too many negative headlines.
“From now on, it will be mandatory to install and activate FSD V12.3.1 and perform a brief test drive for customers before delivering the car,” Musk wrote in an internal note sent to Tesla employees.
$12,000 to access autonomous driving
With “FSD V12.3.1”, Elon Musk refers to the latest version of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving package, an optional $12,000 upgrade that, according to Tesla, allows your car to “be capable of driving itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention”.
After a closed trial, Tesla opened FSD as beta software to everyone in the United States in 2022, although the system has not yet reached the levels of autonomy promised long ago by Musk.
In the note, the CEO of Tesla and Twitter acknowledges that the practice of having every customer go through a test drive “will slow down the delivery process”, but argues that “hardly anyone really realizes how well the FSD works”.
The underlying idea behind this measure, which will undoubtedly complicate the lives of some Tesla employees due to the time it entails, is for more people to decide to spend the $12,000 and switch to FSD after seeing what it can do.
Buyers who choose the package should be cautious of Musk’s promises about FSD. In 2020, Musk claimed that, after regulatory approval, the value of FSD would be “over $100,000” and that owners could send their Teslas to work as robotaxis, earning money.
However, years have passed and FSD is still far from that level of autonomy, as regulators are increasingly investigating Tesla’s self-driving functions in recent years.
