Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Monday, March 25, the electric automaker will offer U.S. customers a month's free trial of its driver-assist technology, Full Self-Driving (FSD). "All U.S. cars that are capable of FSD will be enabled for a one-month trial this week," Musk said in a post on social media platform X. Tesla has been selling the FDS option package for $12,000 or a subscription of $199 a month; Musk has been selling the option as a future money maker to Tesla investors. The promise and software has fallen short. Tesla’s safety and marketing campaign for its full driving autonomy software has been under regulatory and legal scrutiny since its inception.  

The company has been embroiled in a number of lawsuits involving its FSD tech one the past 6 years. A class action lawsuit, filed against Tesla In September 2022, alleging the company had made “misleading and deceptive” statements about its Autopilot and FSD capabilities was dismissed on September 30, 2023, by U.S. District Judge Haywood S. Gilliam. The judge ruled that the proposed class action lawsuit could not proceed due to an arbitration clause and statute of limitations. In April 2023, a jury found that Tesla was not responsible for a crash in 2019 that injured driver Justine Hsu. In October 2023, another jury found that Tesla was not responsible for the 2019 death of driver Micah Lee, who was allegedly using Autopilot at the time of his crash.  

In November 2023, following on the heels of the Micah Lee ruling, Palm Beach county circuit court judge Reid Scott found reasonable evidence that Tesla managers and Elon Musk knew the company's Autopilot tech was defective. The Florida  judge pointed out the company still allowed the cars to be driven in an unsafe manner, leading to the accident and death of Stephan Banner. The judge ruled the case could proceed.  “It would be reasonable to conclude that the Defendant Tesla through its CEO and engineers was acutely aware of the problem with the ‘Autopilot’ failing to detect cross traffic,” the judge wrote. The trial has not yet happened.

The FSD addition option has been decreasing in popularity with Tesla buyers, only 14% of Tesla customers bought the package in the Q3 -’22, down from a record high of 53% in Q3-’19.  "The combination of substantial price cuts on the vehicles and dramatically lower FSD take rates has severely hurt Tesla’s margins," said analyst Sam Abuelsamid at Guidehouse Insights. "The mandate to demonstrate FSD as it is today, is just the latest in a long-running series of end-of-quarter stunts by Musk intended to boost deliveries and revenues."