The price of the Tesla Full Self-Driving package will rise to $15K — FSD Beta 10.69 doesn't fail to impress (test videos)

The latest installment of Tesla’s FSD Beta version 10.69 has gotten mostly positive reviews from the beta testers who have been testing it over the weekend.

The automaker is rigorously working on the next sub-version releases of 10.69.1 and 10.69.2 to smoothen out any bugs and issues in the current major release of 10.69.

FSD Beta v10.69 which started rolling out Saturday has been distributed to only ~1,000 beta testers initially and will slowly expand to ~10,000 Tesla owners out of more than 100K in total.

FSD Beta 10.69 started rolling out to Tesla owners last night. This build is a big step forward!

10.69.1 probably end of week with wider release.

1069.2 in a few weeks should be good enough to provide to all FSD Beta participants.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2022

After indicating the release schedules of the next versions (10.69.1 & 10.69.2), Tesla CEO Elon Musk also announced that after 5th September 2022, the price of the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Capability package will be increased to $15,000 which currently stands at $12,000.

“After wide release of FSD Beta 10.69.2, price of FSD will rise to $15k in North America on September 5th,” Musk tweeted, “Current price will be honored for orders made before Sept 5th, but delivered later,” he clarified any confusions for the existing customers.

FSD Beta 10.69 First Impressions

It has been only less than 48 hours since the FSD Beta version 10.69 started rolling out to a limited batch of beta testers and the ones active on social media and YouTube are mostly reporting positive first impressions of this update.

Two Tesla owners @Whole Mars Catalog (Omar) and @BLKMDL3 on Twitter experienced city driving with 10.69 with zero disengagements. Omar’s car drove for straight 35 mins in San Francisco at nighttime and he did not have to intervene even once (video below).

Just had a zero disengagement drive on #FSDbeta 10.69 all the way from Santa Clarita to Westwood. Navigated city streets then merged onto 3 different freeways and back to city streets perfectly. Lane changes and merging are much smoother now. Great work @Tesla AP team! @elonmusk pic.twitter.com/ZmCb4EUOmU
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) August 21, 2022

Chuck Cook became famous for being included in the FSD Beta 10.13 release notes for attempting a complex unprotected left turn (UPL) and giving Tesla Autopilot a great challenge.

He has tested this complex turn with the FSD Beta v10.69, and he is very much impressed with the progress the automaker has made in successfully taking these scenarios with this update.

HEAVY TRAFFIC. #FSDBeta v10.69 blew me away this morning. I tried to throw everything I had at this version, and this is what it did. Every turn was not perfect, but if this is what we can do with good engineering. The future is bright for this technology.@elonmusk @aelluswamy pic.twitter.com/ehgy8app0a
— Chuck Cook (@chazman) August 22, 2022

Video tweet: Chuck Cook-style unprotected left turn taken very safely by FSD Beta 10.69 in a heavy traffic situation (full video below).

FSD Beta 10.69 Test Videos

Video: Whole Mars Catalog was one of the first ones to record a 35-minute video of FSD Beta 10.69 drive without a single human intervention.

Looking at the above video in detail, I found a couple of interesting things in this test. For example, a car in front was stopped and its passenger side door was opened as the Tesla approached. FSD Beta 10.69 stopped the car completely and did not take over until the person was safely away from the vehicle in front. In previous versions, FSD Beta would’ve been less patient and took over much earlier.

In another scenario, as the Tesla running on FSD Beta 10.69 was waiting at an intersection for a red light, a large bus passes through. I noticed that the traffic signal on the center screen driving visualization disappears and reappears after 1-2 seconds as the bus passes by (see screenshot below).

FSD Beta 10.69: traffic signal disappears from the visualization/ Tesla Vision as a large bus passed across the intersection. Credit: Whole Mars Catalog / Editing: Iqtidar Ali / TeslaOracle.com.

Tesla Vision indeed gets blocked by a large object such as this bus in front. Tesla Autopilot team might take a 2nd look at this issue, if a traffic signal is blocked by such an object, the car’s decision-making might be affected and result in serious implications.