• Tesla has discontinued Basic Autopilot as a standard feature on new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in North America, leaving only Traffic-Aware Cruise Control (TACC) for speed matching and stopping.
• To access lane-keeping (Autosteer) and advanced features, buyers must subscribe to Full Self-Driving (Supervised) FSD at $99/month; one-time $8,000 FSD purchase ends February 14.
• Move aims to boost recurring revenue amid falling sales, low FSD adoption (12% of customers), and Elon Musk's pay tied to 10M subscriptions; new owners get 30-day FSD trial.
• Autopilot faced regulatory scrutiny, including California sales suspension risk over misleading marketing claims of autonomy.
• Competitors offer similar lane-keeping for free as table stakes; Tesla pivots to subscriptions for profitability.

Hacker News Discussion

• Basic Autopilot (lane-keeping + adaptive cruise) now standard elsewhere; Tesla removing it seen as backward step, paywalling safety feature amid demand slump.
• Criticism of subscriptions for basics like lane-keeping; users hate recurring fees for owned hardware, compare to "renting lights in your house."
• Tesla tech praised as superior (e.g., FSD interventions rare), but business move called desperate, tied to Musk's comp package needing 10M subs.
• Debates on FSD readiness: unsupervised claims doubted, vs. Waymo; weather/edge cases challenge vision-only approach.
• Some defend subscriptions for users/updates; others prefer Linux-like alternatives, distrust Tesla's nagging/disengagement issues.

for - progress trap - Tesla autopilot - YouTube - The hidden data that reveals why Tesla's crash - WSJ - 2024 - Dec

80% of what we think about is reflexive, we are on autopilot. We need to support the REFLECTIVE side. Most of us don't reflect on a daily basis. The more technology we have, the more we are on autopilot. Social media stimulates a positive feedback loop of our REFLEXIVE nature.

Whenever we learn something new, we must apply reflective thinking but once learned and habituated, the reflexive system takes over.