Tesla Suddenly Removed A Major Feature From Model Y And Model 3 Trims

By Alex Hevesy
Tesla Model 3 on the road Tesla

Ever the company to change up the options list of its cars with almost no prior notice, Tesla has now substantially augmented the standard technology suite on its Model Y and Model 3 cars. But instead of getting more features, you get less. Autopilot and by extension Autosteer, which is Tesla's name for lane-centering technology is now absent for Model Y and Model 3 options lists. 

Visiting Tesla's site, you are now bombarded with Full Self-Driving promos. Full Self-Driving is available as a 30-day free trial and for an extra $99 a month afterwards, or an $8,000 option to have it permanently. Now, the affected Teslas only include "Traffic Aware Cruise Control" in the standard features list. 

The Tesla Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck also show a similar feature pricing structure. It looks like Autopilot, as the automotive world formerly knew it, is dead, just in time for Mercedes to be crowned the autonomous driving winner. Now, if you want any autonomous features apart from basic adaptive cruise control, you have to opt into Tesla's controversial and optimistically named Full Self-Driving feature.

Struggling for the market

Tesla Model Y on highway Tesla

On a post on X, formerly known As Twitter, Musk said in response to the news, "I should also mention that the $99/month for supervised FSD (Full Self-Driving) will rise as FSD's capabilities improve. The massive value jump is when you can be on your phone or sleeping for the entire ride (unsupervised FSD)." As unlikely as that future will be, it's worth comparing Tesla's pricing structure to that of other automakers when it comes to autonomous (or semi-autonomous) features. 

Ford's BlueCruise Hands-Free driving, which includes the ability to center in the lane and change lanes, costs $2,495 for a one-time purchase on the Mustang Mach-E. It's also available on a number of non-electric cars. General Motors has Super Cruise, which does much of the same thing as Blue Cruise and is $3,355 for three years of service on a car like the Equinox EV. Tesla is scrambling to make its cars worth buying again, and dropping features and increasing prices probably won't help matters much. That's especially since Tesla needs to worry about Chinese automakers like BYD more than anything else.

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