> Rivian says it will charge $49.99 a month, or $2,500 up front, versus Tesla’s $99 per month for its rival system, which is somewhat misleadingly called Full Self-Driving (Supervised), or FSD. Mercedes, meanwhile, plans to charge $3,950 for a three-year subscription for the forthcoming MB.Drive Assist Pro

If and when FSD systems become a reality and are safer than human drivers, I would expect that regulators will require them on all cars, just as they did reversing cameras, airbags, automated emergency braking, and other once-optional safety features.

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elicash 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think insurance companies might beat the regulators, in terms of incentivizing safer vehicles via discounts.

Which would then offset these monthly subscriptions by car companies.

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jdross 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My 2025 model 3 has driven me over 95% of my last thousand miles. I'm frankly surprised it isn't more, but I'm not the only driver of the car.

It's very obvious to me that FSD is a reality already, usually from parking spot to parking spot. And it at least feels much safer than I am driving, especially since I can get tired, etc

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sbstp 32 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Out of curiosity, do you live in a place that gets heavy snow? I've always felt that FSD would struggle to handle heavy snow fall, roads with snow banks on the sides and difficult driving/braking conditions in the snow and on ice patches.

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Rohansi 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For any doubters: using a 2025 model is a key detail here. It's the latest hardware version of the self driving computer. The older cars on the road are stuck with significantly worse FSD software because the hardware is far too weak.

	▲	qwerpy 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		FSD 14 lite, which is now available for the HW3 (~2019-2023) Teslas, is surprisingly good. I have a HW3 and HW4, and while HW3 isn't as confident and competent as HW4, it's good enough that I don't mind it anymore. My wife was planning on trading in the HW3 for a new Model Y next year, and now she might just wait a few more years.
	▲	GMoromisato 7 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I have a 2020 M3 on HW3 with v14 lite and it's very good. But even v12 was pretty good. I drove an HW4 as a loaner and did not notice a significant difference. I think the big difference would be on the long-tail of edge conditions, but I'm not sure.

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chung8123 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If it gets too embedded into the revenues of the car companies, regulators are going to have a hard time making it required without a subscription. It could be that you just either have a car with a monthly payment or you don't.

	▲	SoftTalker 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Or just make the car more expensive up front? That's what all the other regulations do.

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heaney-555 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>I would expect that regulators will require them on all cars

That assumes that suppliers are available to affordably add it.

So far Tesla is the only company remotely close to unsupervised self-driving that doesn't add $1000s to the BoM cost of the car.

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Kirby64 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> So far Tesla is the only company remotely close to unsupervised self-driving that doesn't add $1000s to the BoM cost of the car.

What makes you think it doesn't? All those cameras, the expensive chips and cooling for them, and redundancy for all the systems don't come free.

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foobazgt 11 hours ago | parent [-]

For a Tesla, the estimates are around $2K. For a Waymo, the same estimates are ~$25K (down from $125K!!!). There's not a clear timeline for Waymo-style kit at a price consumers can afford and in a form factor they'd accept.

(FWIW, the business story for Waymo has never been about its hardware making its way to consumers. It's always been about whether Waymo continues to run its own taxi service or leases out hardware and operations to other taxi businesses).

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Kirby64 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not sure I'd agree that the Tesla estimate is accurate for the truly driverless versions they've started releasing in Austin. Maybe for the standard ones you can buy. There's reporting on the additional telematics packs that have been added to Model Y cars in their Robotaxi fleet, so who knows what that costs.

	▲	heaney-555 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Cybercab has double the RAM and a bit more memory bandwidth, but otherwise it's the same 8 external mono RGB cameras. It's maybe $1.5K of BoM total for the chip, memory, and cameras.

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heaney-555 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>For a Tesla, the estimates are around $2K

Where are you seeing this? The estimates I've seen all land around $1K.

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tzs 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The God's Eye B system of BYD adds under $600 to the BoM.

The 5 millimeter-wave radars and 12 ultrasonic sensors are $100-150. LiDAR is $150-200. The 12 cameras, control unit, and 300 TOPs of computing is $150-200. This computing is comparable to what Tesla puts on their consumer cars, and the sensors suite is much more extensive. (The current robotaxis have about the same computing power as the consumer cars but a lot more RAM).

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heaney-555 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Right, but God's Eye B isn't anywhere near good enough for unsupervised self-driving. The hardware isn't the issue; the software just isn't in the same league as Tesla FSD.

	▲	tzs 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You were talking about the hardware costs to support self-driving. The God's Eye B compute hardware is similar to the compute hardware in current consumer Tesla cars and the sensor hardware is a superset (more cameras plus LiDAR, radar, and ultrasonics), but adds less than $600 to the BoM, which shouldn't be a major barrier to it being mandated on new cars once the software is up to the task.

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MisterTea 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sure. So long as I don't have to pay for it.

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guywithahat 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which will pose an interesting problem; we’ll have to pay a subscription to legally be allowed to drive our car on the road. As much as I’m excited for autonomous driving I’m not excited for the legal implications that follow