Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Beta Available to Anyone That Pays in North America

Tesla Inc’s Full Self-Driving Beta software is available to everyone in North America, Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk announced this week. 

In a tweet(Opens in a new window) he said: “Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option.” 

The automaker is currently awaiting a green light from US auto regulators for its cars to be driven completely hands-free.

Tweet(Opens in a new window)

The beta software was rolled out in 2020 with a small number of customers but has grown to roughly 160,000 drivers as of October 2022, The Verge notes(Opens in a new window).

According to Reuters, Musk is planning to provide an update to the self-driving software next year in a bid to show regulators that it is much safer than the average human driver. 

Access to the beta is dependent on drivers having purchased Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” functionality, which is currently offered for an upfront fee of $15,000 when buying a car, or as part of an up to $199 subscription.

Tesla has been rocked by collapsing shares since Musk’s tumultuous takeover of Twitter, with shares dropping over 50%(Opens in a new window) in the past year.  

As Reuters has reported(Opens in a new window), Tesla, is under investigation by the Department of Justice over claims that the company’s electric vehicles can drive themselves. 

In August last year, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation(Opens in a new window) into a series of Tesla crashes, one of them fatal, where Teslas equipped with Autopilot crashed into parked emergency vehicles.

And just last week, Tesla issued a recall for over 300,000 vehicles in the US, owing to a reported taillight problem. Tesla has already filed 19 recall campaigns this year covering over 3.7 million vehicles, according to Sky News(Opens in a new window). 

Meanwhile, General Motors this month launched its hands-free driving network Super Cruise to select full-size SUVs.