Tesla uses three free months of 'Full Self-Driving' to push year-end sales

The “Full Self-Driving” system that Tesla sells as a $10,000 option isn’t available in subscription form yet, but the car company is already using that idea to boost sales. Reported earlier by Electrek and confirmed in a tweet by Elon Musk, “All Tesla cars delivered in the final three days of the year will get three months of the Full Self-Driving option for free.”

For buyers going all-in at purchase, the option is like about more advanced capabilities that may come in the future, but with just three months new Tesla owners can use the features currently available:

• Navigate on Autopilot: automatic driving from highway on-ramp to off-ramp including interchanges and overtaking slower cars.

• Auto Lane Change: automatic lane changes while driving on the highway.

• Autopark: both parallel and perpendicular spaces.

• Summon: your parked car will come find you anywhere in a parking lot. Really.

• Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control: assisted stops at traffic controlled intersections.

While Musk recently said the subscription package will be available early next year, adding the tech for good has come at varying prices over the last few months. Now, as Tesla pushes to meet goals for record deliveries by the end of the year, it’s become an incentive.

Not everyone is happy about the offer however, particularly because of how Tesla advertises its Autopilot “advanced safety and convenience feature” and the “Full Self-Driving” tech. As the the Tesla website notes in slightly smaller print “The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”

NTSB member Jennifer Homendy noted the difference in a thread of tweets, saying “‘Full self-driving’ suggests that the vehicle can drive itself right now, without input from a human operator. That's not true. There should be safeguards in place to prevent such deceptive claims.”