Tesla Offers Free Full Self-Driving to Customers for a Month

Tesla is offering a free one-month trial for its Full Self-Driving system to get owners to experience it.

In a bid to get more drivers interested in their advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), Tesla is offering a free one-month trial of its proprietary Full Self-Driving (FSD) system. As announced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk via his official X/Twitter account, this one-month free trial will be offered to all Tesla owners in the US starting this week.

The American automaker recently started the official rollout for the latest FSD version 12.3.1, which Musk said would feature some “mind-blowing” updates. Taking advantage of the “end-to-end neural nets,"  this new version of the FSD will also be making decisions based on Tesla’s vast bank of driving data rather than relying solely on the programmed logic.

With this new update promising better autonomous driving capabilities, Tesla is now trying to entice its owners with this free trial programme. So much so that Musk allegedly asked all its employees to install FSD on every vehicle it sells to demonstrate this updated feature to every new customer in North America.

This FSD free trial promo is important for Tesla, as the automaker saw more and more Tesla buyers not opting for this ADAS function. According to Reuters, the total uptake of FSD in Tesla EVs had fallen to 14% in Q3 of 2022, which is a significant drop from the 53% uptake back in Q3 of 2019.

This trial promo is also part of the ongoing EV price war that Tesla is part of, with the automaker now slashing more of its profit margins to keep sales volume up and healthy. With the FSD free trial promo now underway, Tesla and Musk hoped that it would further boost their sales number up.

In recent years, Tesla’s dominance in the global EV market has been challenged by the likes of emerging Chinese EV brands like BYD, where the automaker recently overtook the American marque in annual sales volume for 2023. BYD’s rapid surge in the global EV market has threatened Tesla pretty significantly, so much so that it has prompted Musk to call for a trade barrier for Chinese EV brands in western markets, particularly North America.