Earlier this year Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally confirmed a Full Self-Driving (FSD) subscription would be coming after Tesla hacker @greentheonly revealed the option was hidden within the software’s source code.
When Musk provided the confirmation during the Q1 2020 earnings call, he said the option would arrive “towards the end of this year.” He later revised that timeline in October when he said the monthly rental option would “be available sometime next year.”
Recent changes to Tesla’s website point to the possibility Musk could stick to his original timeline.
Late last night part of Tesla’s website and mobile app went down with multiple owners reporting they were unable to access their accounts or their lootbox and upgrades section on the mobile app.
Maybe Tesla is giving us something? 👀 pic.twitter.com/8rcz3OcS0Z
— 0% is where it’s at (@sacramentotesla) December 18, 2020
This is the story with the upgrades page @kkvr2823 @TeslaGong pic.twitter.com/0oU5eOImrv
— ByteofWhy Podcast 🇨🇦🇦🇺🌏⚡️🔋🚘 (@byteofwhy) December 18, 2020
The outage only lasted for about 10 minutes, and when everything came back online it appeared as though there were no visible changes.
But that wasn’t the case, as Tesla made a small, but potentially big change by adding a new ‘Subscribe’ button in the upgrades section of owner’s accounts online.
Tesla does already offer one subscription to their Premium Connectivity service. If you don’t already subscribe to it, that is the only option available in the new section of the website. If you subscribe, or have a free lifetime subscription, as is the case with our account, the website tells you to “check back for future subscriptions.”
This new subscribe option doesn’t appear in the mobile app just yet, but evidence of it was found earlier this year. A Tesla owner was able to reverse engineer the app and found a “Subscribe” option on the “Upgrades” tab hidden behind the scenes.
Since Tesla already had set everything up for owners to subscribe to Premium Connectivity, it seems strange that they would make this change without another subscription option coming soon.
While that other option is likely the FSD subscription, it could still be several months before it finally becomes a reality. But it would be nice if it was included the upcoming holiday software update that is supposed to be released next week.
Do you think this change means the FSD subscription is coming soon? Let us know in the comments below.
