I agree that the poll is flawed in the sense that it’s not clear whether you are asking what you would pay for as it exists now, or what you think it will be worth eventually. And the reason that distinction becomes important is how far in the future do you think its value will increase? If it was “this year” or “next year” as Elon keeps saying, then yes, maybe $12K (or more!) is appropriate. The justification for the price increases is increasing confidence (on Elon’s and Tesla’s part, not the general public’s) that true FSD is right around the corner.

I paid $5K for Enhanced Autopilot when I bought my car. That was slightly more than I really thought it was worth (especially since the equivalent feature more or less comes with the higher trim levels of other vehicles, other than perhaps the auto lane change), but I figured I would roll it into the purchase price. If I had to set what I consider a fair price for essentially autosteer, TACC and auto lane change, I would say $2500.

Then I took advantage of a fire sale on FSD when it was offered for $2K. While I was sure that FSD was not “right around the corner” as they advertised it to be even then (early 2019 timeframe), I was willing to part with $2K so that eventually I would be able to have the car drive mostly unattended on long trips…I’d even be happy if it only worked on highways. Plus, I felt I was doing my part to fund FSD development (remember at that time, Tesla was still taking heavy losses).

So I guess in that timeframe, the amount I was willing to pay for an eventual FSD (and in my mind, it was still at least 5 years away), was $4500 (the $2500 I had already paid above and beyond what I thought was a fair price for EAP and the $2000 extra I paid for FSD). I’ll even say $5000.

But since that time, things have changed. Now, of course, they got rid of EAP (huge mistake) and the only way you can get access to auto lane change (I think) is to buy the whole FSD package, even though FSD doesn’t exist yet, and having seen how slow progress has been on FSD, I’m even less confident it’s just around the corner. Sure, FSD capability and the ability to add your car to the Tesla robotaxi network is potentially very valuable. $12K may even be a bargain. But nobody knows when that’s going to become a reality. Worse still, if you consider FSD an investment, since you can’t transfer the license, and your insurance policy may not even cover it (consider my case where I only paid $5K for EAP, and the $2K I paid extra for FSD was a side purchase) if the car ever gets totaled, you are never going to see any benefit of that investment. At this point, I still think we are at least 5 years out before we see any practical kind of robotaxi service or true FSD. By then my car will be 9 years old. How much use am I going to get out of it then?

So if I had to answer your poll as-is today, coming at it fresh without already having FSD, I wouldn’t even consider buying it. At least not until they change their licensing terms that if I buy an FSD license, it follows me. And even then, since FSD doesn’t exist today in any form that is actually usable for self-driving purposes, I would consider it more of an investment. And while I would expect it to eventually offer a return on that investment, like I said, it’s still many years off in my opinion. So I would be better off investing the cash in something today that is going to actually generate a return and buying FSD later, even if it means a higher price then.

Speaking of which, I also don’t agree with the business model of the robotaxi network. I think the value being attributed to vehicles that participate in the robotaxi network is based on rideshare rides costing what they currently cost today (with human drivers). But if and when we have robotaxis on the roads, the rideshare market will be flooded with all this capacity and the price per ride will plummet. Expect the revenue per mile earned by robotaxi rideshare to be a fraction of what it is for Uber/Lyft. So I don’t think that the economic returns of FSD are what everyone is attributing to it.

As for a subscription model, given that the only practical feature that would be enabled today (IMO) is the auto-lane change, I would probably pay around $30/month for it, given that I would probably subscribe to it for one month each year to use on a long trip I take annually. Any more than that, and I will manually change lanes. My wife’s VW effectively has autosteer + TACC, and all she has to do to change lanes is manually do so and when she gets into the new lane it will pick up autosteering itself automatically. I think she might even get auto lane change as a future update. So while using the turn signal to request a lane change and be confident that it is doing it safely is a nice feature, it certainly isn’t worth any more than $30 per long trip to me.