Tesla announced today that it is going to increase the price of its Full Self-Driving package to $12,000 starting on January 17. The price bump should coincide with the release of an important new update.

The Price of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) package has been somewhat controversial.

CEO Elon Musk has made Tesla’s pricing strategy clear when it comes to FSD: Tesla is going to increase the price of the package as it introduces new features. But, since the package doesn’t actually do what the name says (which is for the vehicle to fully drive itself), people have criticized Tesla for increasing the price, which gradually went up to $10,000.

The automaker has refrained from increasing the price since launching the Full Self-Driving Beta program in October of last year, but now Musk has announced that Tesla will increase the price to $12,000 on January 17:

That’s despite most people buying the package not getting any more features and most drivers not having access to the FSD Beta.

Speaking of the FSD Beta, Musk also said that a new update (10.9) should be coming next week around the same time as the price increase and another bigger update will come “probably next month”:

Beta 10.9 should be ready in about a week. Beta 11 with single city/highway software stack & many other architectural upgrades probably next month.

The price increase is only in the US, which is also the only market where the FSD Beta is available to people who have a “driver safety score” of over 97.

Last year, Tesla also launched its FSD subscription service at $199 per month. It’s likely to also see an increase in price since Tesla says that it wants the one-time purchase to be the best economic option.

As we previously reported, Full Self-Driving Beta (FSD Beta) is an early version of Tesla’s self-driving software that is currently being tested by a fleet of Tesla owners selected by the company through its “safety test score.” The software enables the vehicle to drive autonomously to a destination entered in the car’s navigation system, but the driver needs to remain vigilant and ready to take control at all times.

Since the responsibility lies with the driver and not Tesla’s system, it is still considered a level-two driver-assist system despite its name. It has been sort of a two steps forward, one step back type of program, as some updates have seen regressions in terms of the driving capabilities.

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