Key Takeaways
- Tesla is now updating Cybertrucks with Full Self-Driving, but only for drivers in its early access program.
- The option costs $99 per month or $8,000 upfront.
- Wide access may have to wait for October or later.
Tesla is finally delivering a promised version of its Full Self-Driving feature for Cybertruck owners, Electrek reports. The automaker has squeaked through a September launch window, delivering 12.5.5 v12 software to drivers in its early access program. Based on Tesla’s track record, it’s likely that other Cybertruck owners won’t have access to FSD until late October — if not November or later. The company could hypothetically postpone a wide rollout if unexpected glitches surface.
While every new Tesla has Autopilot driver assistance, Full Self-Driving is an extension that’s hypothetically capable of taking a vehicle on a complete trip, including highways and freeways. Tesla notes that the V12 software merges city and highway driving into a single stack, while also adding attention monitoring with sunglasses support — your truck won’t think you’ve fallen asleep or started texting because you’re wearing shades on a sunny day, in other words.
The tech doesn’t come cheap — adding it to a Cybertruck involves a $99 monthly subscription, or else an $8,000 one-time fee. That’s despite the vehicle shipping with the necessary cameras and other hardware since its November 2023 debut.
Tesla’s race to make self-driving reliable
The reason attention monitoring is a key part of Tesla’s software is that Full Self-Driving sometimes fails to live up to its name, requiring a driver to grab the wheel to prevent an accident or execute a turn properly. CEO Elon Musk has been promising unsupervised FSD since 2016 — most recently claiming that it could happen by the end of 2025, as InsideEVs notes. That would be a first in the consumer auto industry, likely cementing Tesla’s dominance in the North American EV market.
Adding to the pressure is a robotaxi unveiling scheduled for October 10. Any product Tesla shows off will be fully dependent on FSD, so it needs to improve the technology’s reliability as fast as possible if it wants to launch within a reasonable timeframe. It’s already facing competition in the form of taxi firms like Alphabet’s Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise.
Safety remains an overwhelming concern with self-driving systems. While there have been relatively few accidents, robotaxis can sometimes create traffic snarls by being overly conservative, slowing or stopping for threats that a human driver would know how to handle. People against self-driving cars have sometimes exploited this to protest.
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