Elon Musk promises full autonomous driving tech this year, again

Tesla’s latest earnings call came with lower profit margins despite highest sales ever. Tesla’s price-cutting campaign is resulting in more cars being sold than ever, but investors prefer profits and with lower margins, there’s less of those. Elon Musk’s reply to that was that he favors sales when the economy goes cold and of course, the FSD is here to save the day.

According to the Technoking himself, Tesla will likely launch the FSD this year and, as a result, will generate significant profits. Those profits in turn should improve the bottom line and relieve some of the stress put on the company’s balance sheet by the aggressive price cuts.

On one hand, we have to admit it does sound like a broken record. Pretty much every earnings call comes with the promise of the FSD being launched in the next few months. Since 2014 when Autopilot first saw the daylight, we have been promised that fully autonomous driving is just a few months away. Just in case you haven’t noticed, it’s 2023 and Autopilot has been downgraded to parking duties while FSD is stuck in Beta.

On the other hand, when Tesla unveiled Autopilot in 2014, we were still thinking the future was in diesel-powered cars. The world laughed at Musk and his electric cars and Toyota execs probably made a piñata in Elon’s shape and smashed it to pieces at every boardroom meeting. How the world has changed.

FSD may be delayed but the first Supercharger V4 site is already open
We can blame Musk for being overzealous, we can certainly blame his insatiable drive for corner-cutting for many failed attempts to successfully launch the FSD. The truth is, Elon wants the FSB to be in our hands as much as we want it - but it’s not so simple.

Tesla is facing several legal hurdles, it is being investigated and it is being sued for the shortcomings of the FSD. Tesla’s legal team is clocking in some serious overtime and there is absolutely no doubt that serious mistakes were made along the way and FSD was rushed and people were not prepared for how bad it was. It was simply overpromised and under-delivered.

Updated Tesla Model 3 can't hide any more
Tesla desperately needs the FSD in acceptable form, it charges customers as much as $15,000, and the majority of Tesla buyers want the system. With Tesla’s prices now being cut almost every week, the sales are going through the roof. Each vehicle has all the FSD hardware installed, with the latest 4th generation rolling out as you read this. That means, once the FSD is ready-ready, the company will be able to sell it in tens of thousands.

In essence, once the FSD goes fully-fully ready-ready live, the price of each Tesla will shoot up by $15,000. How many people will say “No, I don’t want the FSD”? With the prices of the vehicles already lowered by as much as $15,000, in some cases even more, the FSD will appear to be free of charge - and that is Tesla’s clever plan.

Drop prices, sell more cars, and then unleash a $15,000 top-up that feels like it costs nothing. Whatever you say about the guy, he’s switched on and Tesla’s balance sheets are about to get a boost. Unless FSD fails to materialize as it did last year, and a year before, and a year before that…

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