I told you so.

Remember when I said that Elon Musk’s proposed pay package, which required certain sales goals for FSD, was going to influence how the company behaved? Here it is.

Inside EVs is reporting that Tesla is removing features from the “base” Model 3 and Model Y configurations related to the standard autosteer functionality. The primary feature that is reportedly being removed is lane centering. In 2016, when my Model S 90D was built, the car came standard with AutoPilot 1.0, which was basically Traffic Aware Cruise Control and Lane Centering. Honestly, I can’t remember if it did lane changes, but I think it did.

Then Tesla added features, created the Enhanced AutoPilot package and, ultimately, created the mislabeled “Full Self-Driving”, rather than calling it something like “Really Great AutoPilot” which is what it is. But it is not a car than can drive itself reliably and it can’t be on the road legally with out a driver at the wheel. As most people know, it is now called “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)”.

If you will remember, Elon Musk and Tesla have proposed a pay package that is based, in part, on FSD subscriptions. I knew that meant that Tesla would move the goal posts on FSD, which is what they did. If the article is correct, a buyer will be able to acquire a “base” car at a low price and add on FSD. This makes it easier for people who think they want the FSD tech but don’t think they want the fancier features of higher spec car.

As a teenager, people would buy cheap cars and add chrome wheels, fancy stereo and a wing on the back. They could do that stuff because the car was cheap. Essentially that is what Musk and Tesla are doing here. But instead of a plastic wing, they are allowing lower-budget consumers to add the fancy Level 2 cruise control called “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)”. And in buying the cheap car, and adding the FSD package, they will put the world’s richest man on track to be even richer.