There’s some confusion around Tesla’s Early Access Program and the automaker’s upcoming new V10 software update. CEO Elon Musk commented on the state of the update, and who is going to get access as part of the Early Access Program.

In March, Tesla slashed the prices of Autopilot and Full Self-Driving upgrades.

At the time, Tesla said that it would offer the Early Access Program (EAP) for people who bought the Full Self-Driving package before the price drop:

Customers who previously purchased Full Self-Driving will receive an invitation to Tesla’s Early Access Program (EAP). EAP members are invited to experience and provide feedback on new features and functionality before they are rolled out to other customers.

The idea is to compensate the buyers for having bought features that Tesla never delivered, and that are now sold for less than they paid.

Later, Musk said that it would give early access to everyone who bought the Full Self-Driving Package.

In June, owners started to report being added to the early access program.

However, Musk now says that there are two different levels of the early access program:

So there's a main EAP and the EAP access promised to FSD owners is a different "wider" EAP? — Fred Lambert (@FredericLambert) September 5, 2019

The original one still gets the software first, and Musk is now referring to a “wide EAP,” which gets it later and it is presumably the level of EAP that people who bought the FSD package are getting added to.

Tesla’s v10 software update is going to be the first major update to be released under this new priority rollout system.

Musk says that they are doing another quality assurance release this week, and they hope to push the update to FSD owners next week:

Merging code branches & one more QA-level release this week. Hopefully, EAP wide release week after. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 7, 2019

The CEO mentioned that Smart Summon, the new more advanced version of Tesla’s Summon feature and the main new feature coming in v10, is now “almost great.”

He said that “Drive-in theater mode, caraoke, and Cuphead are awesome.” These are all features that Musk has been promising for Tesla v10.

Electrek’s Take

I never thought that it would make sense to bring all FSD owners to the EAP because it would be way too many people with a possibly buggy version of the software.

However, I am not sure that this two-level EAP thing really means much, either.

I maintain that Tesla should take the lowest price offered for the FSD and give that price to everyone who bought the package before they started adding Enhanced Autopilot features to the FSD package.

My logic is that Tesla never delivered those FSD features, and therefore, it makes no sense they would charge different prices to different people for literally nothing.

If they want to increase the price of the FSD, now they can, since there are actual useful features in the package — although those used to be regular Autopilot features.

Going forward, it also makes sense to increase the cost of the package with the release of new FSD features, but I don’t think they should have done that before ever releasing the features.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.

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