• Tesla slashed the price of its assisted driver software, FSD Supervised, from $199 to $99 a month.
  • Elon Musk once said the cost of Tesla's FSD would only increase as it improves.
  • The discount comes after Tesla missed earnings expectations for its first quarter.

Tesla announced a price cut for its assisted driver software on Friday amid lower-than-expected vehicle sales for the first quarter of 2024.

A subscription to Tesla's Full-Self Driving software — now called FSD (Supervised) to remind drivers that the system requires their attention at all times — is now being offered for $99 a month, down from $199 a month.

It's just one of a few recent moves Tesla has made to hook more people onto the company's Level 2 self-driving system, which requires a driver to constantly monitor the vehicle.

Elon Musk recently mandated all Tesla employees in an internal memo to take new customers on a "short test ride" of FSD before handing over the vehicle during the delivery process.

His rationale was that "almost no one actually realized how well (supervised) FSD actually works," according to the memo that Business Insider confirmed.

In March, the company also announced that it would be giving a free one-month trial of FSD beta to all US customers.

Now, the newly announced discount could make Tesla's controversial driver-assist software more accessible to its customers, which would be beneficial at a time when the company is missing investor expectations and continues to work toward improving its software.

At the beginning of April, Tesla said it had delivered fewer cars in the first three months of 2024, selling 386,800 cars — about 90,000 fewer than investors expected. The company's Q1 performance marks the first year-over-year decline in sales in nearly four years, BI reported.

More customers using Tesla's FSD could also mean more data the company can gather to improve its software, according to TechCrunch.

The discount also marks a departure — even momentarily — from Musk's expectation that Tesla's Full-Self Driving system would only get more expensive.

In 2020, Musk said on X that the value of FSD could reach $100,000 as it "gets closer to full self-driving capability with regulatory approval." It's unclear if Musk was referring to the price per vehicle.

For a moment, that prediction did come to fruition when Musk raised the lifetime service price of FSD from $12,000 to $15,000 in 2022, with a monthly subscription option offered at $199. But last year, the company dropped the lifetime price to $12,000.

A Tesla spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider