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> Rivian says it will charge $49.99 a month, or $2,500 up front, versus Tesla’s $99 per month for its rival system, which is somewhat misleadingly called Full S

> Rivian says it will charge $49.99 a month, or $2,500 up front, versus Tesla’s $99 per month for its rival system, which is somewhat misleadingly called Full Self-Driving (Supervised), or FSD. Mercedes, meanwhile, plans to charge $3,950 for a three-year subscription for the forthcoming MB.Drive Assist Pro If and when FSD systems become a reality and are safer than human drivers, I would expect that regulators will require them on all cars, just as they did reversing cameras, airbags, automated emergency braking, and other once-optional safety features.

chung8123 1mo ago
If it gets too embedded into the revenues of the car companies, regulators are going to have a hard time making it required without a subscription. It could be that you just either have a car with a monthly payment or you don't.
- SoftTalker 1mo ago
  Or just make the car more expensive up front? That's what all the other regulations do.
heaney-555 1mo ago
>I would expect that regulators will require them on all cars That assumes that suppliers are available to affordably add it. So far Tesla is the only company remotely close to unsupervised self-driving that doesn't add $1000s to the BoM cost of the car.
- Kirby64 1mo ago
  > So far Tesla is the only company remotely close to unsupervised self-driving that doesn't add $1000s to the BoM cost of the car. What makes you think it doesn't? All those cameras, the expensive chips and cooling for them, and redundancy for all the systems don't come free.
  - foobazgt 1mo ago
    For a Tesla, the estimates are around $2K. For a Waymo, the same estimates are ~$25K (down from $125K!!!). There's not a clear timeline for Waymo-style kit at a price consumers can afford and in a form factor they'd accept. (FWIW, the business story for Waymo has never been about its hardware making its way to consumers. It's always been about whether Waymo continues to run its own taxi service or leases out hardware and operations to other taxi businesses).
    - Kirby64 1mo ago
      Not sure I'd agree that the Tesla estimate is accurate for the truly driverless versions they've started releasing in Austin. Maybe for the standard ones you can buy. There's reporting on the additional telematics packs that have been added to Model Y cars in their Robotaxi fleet, so who knows what that costs.
      - heaney-555 1mo ago
        Cybercab has double the RAM and a bit more memory bandwidth, but otherwise it's the same 8 external mono RGB cameras. It's maybe $1.5K of BoM total for the chip, memory, and cameras.
        bluecalm 1mo ago
        Tesla is also able to save on components that are no longer needed: steering wheel and steering column, rear window mirror, control to change gears etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it's cheaper to make those cars than standard ones.
    - heaney-555 1mo ago
      >For a Tesla, the estimates are around $2K Where are you seeing this? The estimates I've seen all land around $1K.
    - jojobas 1mo ago
      Teslas also require a couple of OoMs more interventions driving the same distance than Waymos.
- tzs 1mo ago
  The God's Eye B system of BYD adds under $600 to the BoM. The 5 millimeter-wave radars and 12 ultrasonic sensors are $100-150. LiDAR is $150-200. The 12 cameras, control unit, and 300 TOPs of computing is $150-200. This computing is comparable to what Tesla puts on their consumer cars, and the sensors suite is much more extensive. (The current robotaxis have about the same computing power as the consumer cars but a lot more RAM).
  - heaney-555 1mo ago
    Right, but God's Eye B isn't anywhere near good enough for unsupervised self-driving. The hardware isn't the issue; the software just isn't in the same league as Tesla FSD.
    - tzs 1mo ago
      You were talking about the hardware costs to support self-driving. The God's Eye B compute hardware is similar to the compute hardware in current consumer Tesla cars and the sensor hardware is a superset (more cameras plus LiDAR, radar, and ultrasonics), but adds less than $600 to the BoM, which shouldn't be a major barrier to it being mandated on new cars once the software is up to the task.
MisterTea 1mo ago
Sure. So long as I don't have to pay for it.
guywithahat 1mo ago
Which will pose an interesting problem; we’ll have to pay a subscription to legally be allowed to drive our car on the road. As much as I’m excited for autonomous driving I’m not excited for the legal implications that follow
jdross 1mo ago
My 2025 model 3 has driven me over 95% of my last thousand miles. I'm frankly surprised it isn't more, but I'm not the only driver of the car. It's very obvious to me that FSD is a reality already, usually from parking spot to parking spot. And it at least feels much safer than I am driving, especially since I can get tired, etc
- Rohansi 1mo ago
  For any doubters: using a 2025 model is a key detail here. It's the latest hardware version of the self driving computer. The older cars on the road are stuck with significantly worse FSD software because the hardware is far too weak.
  - qwerpy 1mo ago
    FSD 14 lite, which is now available for the HW3 (~2019-2023) Teslas, is surprisingly good. I have a HW3 and HW4, and while HW3 isn't as confident and competent as HW4, it's good enough that I don't mind it anymore. My wife was planning on trading in the HW3 for a new Model Y next year, and now she might just wait a few more years.
  - GMoromisato 1mo ago
    I have a 2020 M3 on HW3 with v14 lite and it's very good. But even v12 was pretty good. I drove an HW4 as a loaner and did not notice a significant difference. I think the big difference would be on the long-tail of edge conditions, but I'm not sure.
    - Rohansi 1mo ago
      There's a wide range of what people find acceptable. I think v12 was the last I tried on HW3 and it was bad. Inching into oncoming traffic trying to do left turns, extremely sudden and sharp lane changes, lots of interventions required. v14 on HW4 was the first I've seen it actually drive competently. I even got to try it in a couple snow storms and it did great. I did not try v14 lite, it's great they got it working in some capacity but I still wouldn't trust it as FSD because it's probably the equivalent of running a heavily quantized LLM (HW4 doubles the available RAM).
elicash 1mo ago
I think insurance companies might beat the regulators, in terms of incentivizing safer vehicles via discounts. Which would then offset these monthly subscriptions by car companies.
- whateveracct 1mo ago
  why wouldn't the FSD company itself integrate into insurance? they have the error rate data which is king for insurance. seems like free real estate.
  - elicash 1mo ago
    I think that's a smart point and seems likely to be attempted. It presents interesting questions, though. Right now, insurance companies are incentivized to fight for their customer in court against the other driver because they don't want to pay out. But if the FSD provider is also the insurer, they aren't a neutral party if the dispute is between whether FSD is to blame or if the driver is to blame. It could become adversarial, let's say if the data in the car shows the driver wasn't looking at the road at the moment of the crash and therefore wasn't ready to take over for self-driving. There might be ways around this, but it's a challenge to overcome. I'd want my insurance company to protect me against my FSD provider, too. (My point is complicated by the fact that liability coverage is separate, admittedly. My insurer might not want to pay out if I was driving drunk, for example.)
inemesitaffia 1mo ago
It's too cheap if it requires updates
jillesvangurp 1mo ago
I think given how far companies like XPeng are with their systems in China. This is more a question of "when" than "if" with the when part narrowed to a time range of perhaps 2027-2029. Xpeng seems to be planning for 2027. Not in the US of course but the rest of the world is a big place. I expect that by the mid 2030s this will be widely used across most car markets in both L2 driver assist form and L4 style autonomous taxis active in most large cities on all continents. L4/L5 level driving for privately owned cars might trail that a bit but I think the technical arguments against that are rapidly evaporating as well. The arguments are increasingly about regulation, insurance, liability, etc. I think the Chinese are a bit more pragmatic on this front and more likely to just get this done domestically by the early 2030s and will be deploying this globally by the mid 2030s. The only question real question is whether the US and Europe will do that before or after them and whether that will be with their own tech or somebody else's. Rivian seems to have all the right tech and strategy.
dgellow 1mo ago
Hmm, that would mean forcing every car sold to be controllable remotely by a corporation. Sounds like something regulators would indeed do, but also, doesn’t sound too great for consumers, to put it mildly

chung8123 1mo ago

If it gets too embedded into the revenues of the car companies, regulators are going to have a hard time making it required without a subscription. It could be that you just either have a car with a monthly payment or you don't.

SoftTalker 1mo ago
Or just make the car more expensive up front? That's what all the other regulations do.

heaney-555 1mo ago

>I would expect that regulators will require them on all cars That assumes that suppliers are available to affordably add it. So far Tesla is the only company remotely close to unsupervised self-driving that doesn't add $1000s to the BoM cost of the car.

Kirby64 1mo ago
> So far Tesla is the only company remotely close to unsupervised self-driving that doesn't add $1000s to the BoM cost of the car. What makes you think it doesn't? All those cameras, the expensive chips and cooling for them, and redundancy for all the systems don't come free.
- foobazgt 1mo ago
  For a Tesla, the estimates are around $2K. For a Waymo, the same estimates are ~$25K (down from $125K!!!). There's not a clear timeline for Waymo-style kit at a price consumers can afford and in a form factor they'd accept. (FWIW, the business story for Waymo has never been about its hardware making its way to consumers. It's always been about whether Waymo continues to run its own taxi service or leases out hardware and operations to other taxi businesses).
  - Kirby64 1mo ago
    Not sure I'd agree that the Tesla estimate is accurate for the truly driverless versions they've started releasing in Austin. Maybe for the standard ones you can buy. There's reporting on the additional telematics packs that have been added to Model Y cars in their Robotaxi fleet, so who knows what that costs.
    - heaney-555 1mo ago
      Cybercab has double the RAM and a bit more memory bandwidth, but otherwise it's the same 8 external mono RGB cameras. It's maybe $1.5K of BoM total for the chip, memory, and cameras.
      - bluecalm 1mo ago
        Tesla is also able to save on components that are no longer needed: steering wheel and steering column, rear window mirror, control to change gears etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it's cheaper to make those cars than standard ones.
  - heaney-555 1mo ago
    >For a Tesla, the estimates are around $2K Where are you seeing this? The estimates I've seen all land around $1K.
  - jojobas 1mo ago
    Teslas also require a couple of OoMs more interventions driving the same distance than Waymos.
tzs 1mo ago
The God's Eye B system of BYD adds under $600 to the BoM. The 5 millimeter-wave radars and 12 ultrasonic sensors are $100-150. LiDAR is $150-200. The 12 cameras, control unit, and 300 TOPs of computing is $150-200. This computing is comparable to what Tesla puts on their consumer cars, and the sensors suite is much more extensive. (The current robotaxis have about the same computing power as the consumer cars but a lot more RAM).
- heaney-555 1mo ago
  Right, but God's Eye B isn't anywhere near good enough for unsupervised self-driving. The hardware isn't the issue; the software just isn't in the same league as Tesla FSD.
  - tzs 1mo ago
    You were talking about the hardware costs to support self-driving. The God's Eye B compute hardware is similar to the compute hardware in current consumer Tesla cars and the sensor hardware is a superset (more cameras plus LiDAR, radar, and ultrasonics), but adds less than $600 to the BoM, which shouldn't be a major barrier to it being mandated on new cars once the software is up to the task.

MisterTea 1mo ago

Sure. So long as I don't have to pay for it.

guywithahat 1mo ago

Which will pose an interesting problem; we’ll have to pay a subscription to legally be allowed to drive our car on the road. As much as I’m excited for autonomous driving I’m not excited for the legal implications that follow

jdross 1mo ago

My 2025 model 3 has driven me over 95% of my last thousand miles. I'm frankly surprised it isn't more, but I'm not the only driver of the car. It's very obvious to me that FSD is a reality already, usually from parking spot to parking spot. And it at least feels much safer than I am driving, especially since I can get tired, etc

Rohansi 1mo ago
For any doubters: using a 2025 model is a key detail here. It's the latest hardware version of the self driving computer. The older cars on the road are stuck with significantly worse FSD software because the hardware is far too weak.
- qwerpy 1mo ago
  FSD 14 lite, which is now available for the HW3 (~2019-2023) Teslas, is surprisingly good. I have a HW3 and HW4, and while HW3 isn't as confident and competent as HW4, it's good enough that I don't mind it anymore. My wife was planning on trading in the HW3 for a new Model Y next year, and now she might just wait a few more years.
- GMoromisato 1mo ago
  I have a 2020 M3 on HW3 with v14 lite and it's very good. But even v12 was pretty good. I drove an HW4 as a loaner and did not notice a significant difference. I think the big difference would be on the long-tail of edge conditions, but I'm not sure.
  - Rohansi 1mo ago
    There's a wide range of what people find acceptable. I think v12 was the last I tried on HW3 and it was bad. Inching into oncoming traffic trying to do left turns, extremely sudden and sharp lane changes, lots of interventions required. v14 on HW4 was the first I've seen it actually drive competently. I even got to try it in a couple snow storms and it did great. I did not try v14 lite, it's great they got it working in some capacity but I still wouldn't trust it as FSD because it's probably the equivalent of running a heavily quantized LLM (HW4 doubles the available RAM).

elicash 1mo ago

I think insurance companies might beat the regulators, in terms of incentivizing safer vehicles via discounts. Which would then offset these monthly subscriptions by car companies.

whateveracct 1mo ago
why wouldn't the FSD company itself integrate into insurance? they have the error rate data which is king for insurance. seems like free real estate.
- elicash 1mo ago
  I think that's a smart point and seems likely to be attempted. It presents interesting questions, though. Right now, insurance companies are incentivized to fight for their customer in court against the other driver because they don't want to pay out. But if the FSD provider is also the insurer, they aren't a neutral party if the dispute is between whether FSD is to blame or if the driver is to blame. It could become adversarial, let's say if the data in the car shows the driver wasn't looking at the road at the moment of the crash and therefore wasn't ready to take over for self-driving. There might be ways around this, but it's a challenge to overcome. I'd want my insurance company to protect me against my FSD provider, too. (My point is complicated by the fact that liability coverage is separate, admittedly. My insurer might not want to pay out if I was driving drunk, for example.)

inemesitaffia 1mo ago

It's too cheap if it requires updates

jillesvangurp 1mo ago

I think given how far companies like XPeng are with their systems in China. This is more a question of "when" than "if" with the when part narrowed to a time range of perhaps 2027-2029. Xpeng seems to be planning for 2027. Not in the US of course but the rest of the world is a big place. I expect that by the mid 2030s this will be widely used across most car markets in both L2 driver assist form and L4 style autonomous taxis active in most large cities on all continents. L4/L5 level driving for privately owned cars might trail that a bit but I think the technical arguments against that are rapidly evaporating as well. The arguments are increasingly about regulation, insurance, liability, etc. I think the Chinese are a bit more pragmatic on this front and more likely to just get this done domestically by the early 2030s and will be deploying this globally by the mid 2030s. The only question real question is whether the US and Europe will do that before or after them and whether that will be with their own tech or somebody else's. Rivian seems to have all the right tech and strategy.

dgellow 1mo ago

Hmm, that would mean forcing every car sold to be controllable remotely by a corporation. Sounds like something regulators would indeed do, but also, doesn’t sound too great for consumers, to put it mildly