No Tesla sales in California
Tesla was told that if it could not resolve the misleading marketing within those 60 days, the sales suspension would go into effect. This would be bad for the automaker, as California is its biggest market in the US, although it is shrinking every quarter. It would be disastrous to completely suspend sales in the state. Some had speculated that Tesla might change the name of Autopilot to something less confusing, but the company chose a more drastic approach.
Now, if you buy a new Tesla and want it to drive itself – while you pay attention to the road – you’ll have to pay for FSD. As of mid-February, this can be done for a one-time fee of $8,000. But as of February 14, that option will also be gone, and the only option will be a $99/month FSD subscription.
But probably not for very long. Last night, Musk revealed on his social media platforms that “as FSD capabilities improve, there will be an increase to $99/month for Supervised FSD. The huge bump in price comes when you can be on your phone or asleep the entire trip (unsupervised FSD).”
The pursuit of recurring revenue streams is becoming a holy grail in the automotive industry as OEMs that previously treated their customers as one-off sales are now hoping to make themselves more attractive to investors by encouraging customers to make regular payments.
This may have contributed to General Motors’ decision to remove Apple CarPlay and Android Automotive. BMW has also experimented with subscription services. Tesla’s share price remains high enough that such plays are probably unnecessary here, but with falling profit margins, declining sales and the loss of emissions credits to bolster the bottom line, one can see why regular cash investments from Tesla drivers would be desirable.
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