Tesla’s New Pricing Could Help Shares

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 13, 7:10AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Tesla’s New Pricing Could Help Shares — © Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has cut the price of one of its most expensive optional features. Full self-driving will now cost $99 monthly, down from $199. CEO Elon Musk announced the change on X. It may help Tesla’s shares, which went down 31% this year. There are several ways Tesla could make a comeback.

The company describes the technology: “Your car will be able to drive itself almost anywhere with minimal driver intervention and will continuously improve.” It also provides autosteer on city street traffic and stop sign control, which identifies stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows the car to a stop on approach. Tesla says it “requires active driver supervision and does not make the vehicle autonomous.: However, many people say that with the feature, they can drive great distances on complex road layouts without touching Telsa’s controls.

The Holy Grail for Tesla’s drivers is a system that works without the driver’s need to watch the road. Many manufacturers and software companies are working on technology that does this. However, regulators must approve the feature before it can be sold.

The price cut is part of Tesla’s efforts to attract customers by offering its cars at lower prices. Tesla has also cut the base prices on many of its vehicles. It was a leader, if not the leader, of EV sales in China. Local manufacturer BYD now holds the lead. Tesla has about 55% of the US EV market. To keep revenue and deliveries growing here, it needs to keep that share in a market where every major car company has challenged it.

Musk has been a clever marketer. The price cut shows he has tried to use that skill again.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.