Tesla late Friday cut the price of Supervised Full Self-Driving to $99 a month from $199, confirming online chatter. Tesla stock edged lower early Monday.
A lower price should boost Tesla FSD subscriptions, but would need to double the tax rate to generate more revenue.
Also, the lower rate could spur more people to subscribe to FSD vs. paying the $12,000 for a lifetime service. At $99 a month, it would take just over 10 years to pay $12,000 in FSD subscription fees.
However, if FSD shows dramatic improvement and attracts heavy demand, Tesla would likely hike prices substantially.
The EV giant haas at times offered free FSD transfers to a new Tesla vehicle. On Saturday, Tesla halted its latest FSD free transfer.
FSD, despite its name, is a Level 2 system that requires a human driver to be paying attention and ready to take over at any time.
In late March, the EV giant activated one free month of FSD for all capable vehicles.
During Friday's session, there was growing buzz that the FSD subscription rate would be halved to $99. Tesla CEO Elon Musk liked multiple posts on his social site X that favored a $99 FSD monthly rate.
So the actual announcement wasn't a big surprise.
Over the weekend, Tesla reportedly halted Cybertruck deliveries, possibly to address one more problems with recently launched EV.
There is also online chatter of significant Tesla layoffs coming.
Tesla Stock Dips
Tesla stock fell 0.5% in early Monday trade.
Shares fell 2% to 171.05 in Friday's stock market trading. TSLA stock gained 3.7% for the week, buoyed by Musk's promise of a robotaxi unveiling on Aug. 8.
Please follow Ed Carson on Threads at @edcarson1971 and X/Twitter at @IBD_ECarson for stock market updates and more.