A recently exposed internal memo at Tesla revealed CEO Elon Musk's directive to staff to install and demonstrate the company's "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) system to customers before delivering vehicles, including taking customers on a “short test drive” with FSD activated, aiming to educate and promote the system to users.
It's important to note that this promotion is not a suggestion, but a requirement. This means that regardless of whether customers and service personnel are willing, this process must be completed before delivery. It's a mandatory “advertisement” to watch, though the memo did not specify what consequences there will be if a customer refuses the test drive or if the service is not provided.
To promote the FSD system, Musk has gone to great lengths, publicly pledging on his social platform X to provide one month of free FSD service to support Tesla models with FSD, to spread the word about this driving system which is “ten times safer than human driving”.
Musk also pledged to maintain long-term updates for the FSD system, with updates every two weeks, including three significant updates each time, although he did not specify whether these entail three separate patches or one patch containing three substantial updates, nor did he clarify which updates are considered “significant”.
Musk has really outdone himself in promoting the Full Self-Driving system. But is he really concerned about customer safety? Probably not entirely, since the FSD system is not provided for free but is available for purchase or through a monthly subscription plan, with a disclosed price of $15,000 for the feature, offering two subscription options at $199 and $99 per month respectively.
From the FSD system, we can see Musk's plans for Tesla: selling cars is just the first step, followed by various value-added services and add-ons. This has caused some customers to worry that Tesla, like some manufacturers, might deliberately limit certain features, selling an unfinished product to customers and then coercively offering various additional services.
