Musk Would Compound Tesla Automated-Driving Risk With Free Trial
Regulators are already swirling, and some customers have paid $15,000 for features the CEO is prepared to give away for a month.
Elon Musk at a conference last month in in Miami Beach, Florida.
Photographer: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images
Elon Musk has long pressed his luck with respect to automated driving. His plan to offer a month-long free trial of features that Tesla has been charging $15,000 for would escalate the risk-taking to another level.
Musk tweeted this week that all Tesla cars in North America will get complimentary access to software marketed as Full Self-Driving, or FSD, once it’s “super smooth.” This is the same set of driver-support features the company recalled earlier this year after several meetings with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which raised concerns about Teslas traveling in unlawful or unpredictable ways.