Tesla has decided to expand its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta for the first time in a long time, adding 60,000 additional owners. Tesla's FSD Beta will now have over 160,000 people in the program.
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The FSD Beta program allows vehicles to drive autonomously to a destination registered in the car's navigation system, but the driver must remain alert and ready to take control at all times.
The FSD Beta program is billed as a more advanced autonomous driving system than the existing “ Full Self-Driving Capability ” option.
Since the responsibility lies with the driver, not Tesla's system, FSD Beta is still considered a level two driver assistance system, despite its name. Tesla is essentially using its customer fleet to test the feature's capabilities and collect data to move toward its goals of making the system truly autonomous and shifting responsibility for driving safety to Tesla.
The FSD Beta is a controversial program due to the potential risk of testing the software with customers on public roads, but Tesla has been quite cautious in its rollout, making gradual expansions to more owners.
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Tesla launched the FSD Beta program in October 2020, and at first, it only had a few thousand owners in the program. It gradually grew to include about 100,000 owners. Then, with the latest software update 10.69, Elon Musk began hinting that Tesla might expand to more owners due to increased trust in the system.
Today, Musk confirmed that Tesla is expanding its Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta program to 160,000 owners in the United States and Canada.
The CEO previously said Tesla would expand to owners who have a driver safety rating above 80.
Before all of that, Tesla customers must purchase the FSD Capability, which now costs $US15,000 ($22,337) in the US.
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Tesla has built a safety rating system, which uses real-time driving data collected from vehicles to determine whether you are a “good driver” based on factors such as the number of “Forward Collision Warnings” you receive, the amount of hard braking you do, aggressive cornering, unsafe following distance you follow, and instances of forced disengagement of Autopilot.
