Government subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles are offered by the US authorities only to certain categories of citizens, and the key criterion for their selection is the amount of annual income. Eligible EVs are filtered by price and body type. Tesla has decided to maintain access to subsidies for its customers if they initially choose an electric vehicle with FSD.
Image Source: Tesla
Let us remind you that the FSD complex implies deep automation of the vehicle control process; its hardware is installed on all Tesla electric vehicles produced since 2016, but the software is constantly being improved, and ideally in the foreseeable future it should make it possible to do without a driver at all. The problem is that the FSD option currently costs Tesla electric vehicle buyers $8,000, and this increase reduces the chances of Tesla customers applying for a subsidy to meet the government limit for the selected category of electric vehicles.
As Electrek reports, Tesla has found an original way out of this situation. It offers U.S. customers who choose the FSD option additional options at no cost, allowing them to avoid spending their overall EV purchase limit while enhancing its functionality. In the case of the Tesla Model 3 Performance, we are talking about the ability to choose any body color for free, which in the most technologically complex options increases the cost of the car by up to $2000. For the Tesla Model 3 Performance, the cost limit under the US subsidy program is $55,000, of which the buyer can return $7,500 through a tax deduction.
In fact, when buying a Tesla Model 3 Performance with FSD, the company’s customer gets the opportunity to choose any body color for free, although he will still have to pay $8,000 for FSD. Relatively speaking, the automaker provides a $2,000 discount on FSD and allows you to choose the desired body color without additional payment. These measures, apparently, should attract those buyers who expect to receive subsidies from the US authorities to Tesla electric vehicles.
For buyers of the larger Tesla Model X crossover, which is subsidized only if the total cost is no more than $80,000, the company offers a free third row of seats, which would normally cost $3,500, when purchasing a car with FSD. Roughly speaking, FSD in this case costs $4,500, and this option also comes with an upgrade to a seven-seat cabin. By the way, at the end of the year before last, the FSD option cost $15,000, and only competition, combined with constant criticism from customers, forced Tesla management to reduce the price of the constantly “maturing” software solution to $8,000. The picture is somewhat clouded by the $2,000 increase in the cost of Tesla Model S and Model X, which happened in the United States at the end of last week.