Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter that starting January 17, the purchase price of Tesla's fully automated system FSD will be raised from $10,000 to $12,000, and if you use a subscriber who rents FSD every month, the monthly usage fee will also increase accordingly. At present, Tesla's FSD system has been developed to the 10.8 beta version, which will be pushed to all users as an official version.
The self-driving function is a big selling point of electric vehicle publicity. Since 2016, Tesla has been promising users self-driving cars. In April 2020, Tesla said it would introduce FSD to the market. On July 17, 2021, Tesla allowed Tesla owners to subscribe to FSDs for $199 per month, after car owners needed to spend $10,000 on the service. The software industry likes to use this monthly subscription method to reduce the cost of the user's first payment to improve user conversion, such as Microsoft's Office365, domestic WPS, etc., more and more software developers through the way of subscription to get a large number of users who are not willing to spend a lot of money to buy out, and in fact, when the user subscribes for several years, the software developer will actually get more income than the one-time sale, which is why the software industry likes the subscription system. Tesla has a strong Silicon Valley gene in the United States, and it is not happy to increase revenue in this way.
Most of Tesla's new cars are currently equipped with Autopilot, an autopilot kit, which is already standard on the new Model S, X, Y and 3 models. This feature enables limited autopilot capabilities as well as automatic emergency braking, forward collision warning, lane keeping, and adaptive cruise control. If you need more advanced features, you need to pay for a fully autonomous driving system FSD system, and if the vehicle does not have this hardware, you need to purchase additional FSD hardware first. One is the driver assistance Autopilot, and the other is the fully automated driving system FSD, in contrast, it will be more advanced, can achieve automatic lane change, signal light recognition and "smart summoning" and other functions, using smart summoning, car owners can wait for Tesla at the entrance of the parking lot to drive over.
Tesla's software iteration speed is very fast, usually a small version will be launched in a month or two, one is to quickly correct the problem that occurs, and the other is to launch a new feature to keep the software attractive. Tesla's latest FSD version is the 10.8 Beta Beta, before the official release, as a subscriber to the FSD users can voluntarily apply to become the beta "guinea pig" and experience the new features. Taking the 10.8 version as an example, according to the video shared by two different testers, the new version has some new features.
In the narrow aisles, the FSD recognized that a pedestrian had suspected intentions to cross, and achieved a quick stop to let the pedestrian pass first. In another video, the same narrow aisle Tesla met the car, FSD guided the vehicle to avoid pedestrians first, and then hit the right to make way for the opposite vehicle to make lane space, while retracting the left rearview mirror to let the other party pass, and then reopen the left rearview mirror after the other party passed, bypassing the obstacle to drive to the left, looking very advanced.
Tesla FSD 10.8 avoids pedestrians
Tesla FSD 10.8 will be a car
However, if you are not afraid of ten thousand, you are afraid of just in case. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been following up on the investigation of Tesla's FSD system, and its chairman believes that Tesla's use of the term "full autopilot" is "misleading and irresponsible" because consumers are more concerned about marketing than the car's manual or warnings on the company's website, and the publicity of full self-driving will mislead many people into misusing and abusing the technology, and FSD may have caused multiple accidents, so Tesla was asked to elaborate on how vehicles in autopilot mode respond to emergencies.
Tesla has been hinting that users only need to enter a location in the navigation system to do virtual autopilot on highways and city streets. On the one hand, in the manual and explained to the investigative agency, it is still an L2 level driver assistance system, so the driver is still responsible for the vehicle, must put his hands on the steering wheel, and is ready to take over the vehicle at any time. In an interview late last month, Musk said Tesla's driving technology would achieve L4 self-driving level by the end of 2022.
Not long ago, Tesla also adjusted the price of some models in China on the last day of 2021. Among them, the price of the Model3 rear-wheel drive version was adjusted to 265,652 yuan, an increase of 10,000 yuan over the previous price; the price of the Model Y rear-wheel drive version was adjusted to 301,840 yuan, an increase of 21,088 yuan over the previous price. If Tesla's price increase is due to the shortage of chips in 2021 and the rise of upstream steel, aluminum and other materials. The software revenue is Tesla's increase in revenue, the financial report shows that in the third quarter of last year, Tesla's software revenue including FSD was 894 million US dollars, accounting for 6.5% of the 13.757 billion US dollars in the quarter revenue. This makes Tesla Motors' gross profit margin reach 30.5%, higher than that of CAR companies such as BMW Benz. According to estimates, tesla will have more than 18 million existing car owner users in 2030, of which nearly 80% will become FSD subscription paying users, FSD's subscription service fee will reach 16 billion US dollars / year, according to its gross profit margin of 80%, the corresponding FSD subscription service fee gross profit will be as high as 13 billion US dollars.
Perhaps for reasons such as maps or road conditions, Tesla currently only offers subscription services in the United States, and there is no news in Tesla's other two major markets, China and Europe. Domestic Xiaopeng Automobile's autopilot system XPILOT 3.0 will be higher than Tesla, its software and upgrade services lifetime service fee of 36,000 yuan, in the first quarter of last year, Xiaopeng Automobile officially included this revenue in the financial report separately calculated, the first quarter revenue of 80 million yuan. Weilai Automobile said on the ET5 released earlier that all series are equipped with NAD as standard, and also use the subscription method of "opening and paying monthly" to charge 680 yuan per month; and the ideal car service does not charge.
Electric vehicle technology is moving forward rapidly, and is often criticized for autonomous driving and endurance, but in terms of profitability innovation and profitability, it is much higher than traditional fuel vehicles.
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