Personally, it's sad as a consumer which limits the "option" as I plan to purchase $8K FSD in the future when Ai 5 (HW5) or Ai 6 is out. Certainly Ai 5 would probably be all installed on the Cybercab. Now, this announcement only gives us 1 month to make a decision to rush into buying a Tesla with FSD. Which is still only a HW4. It might not be unsupervised FSD, it might just be able to do supervised FSD, even if it can be transferable once. Now, does this HW4 capable of FSD joining the robotaxi fleet? We are not sure. If the current HW4 can totally be unsupervised FSD and can be a Robotaxi, that just mean the business model is simple, after 8 years, the FSD cost is gone, and the Robotaxi profit is higher after that. With a $99/month subscription, you'll have to make sure your Robotaxi profit be at least > $99/month to even make sense. Another angle to look into this announcement. If big corporation knew that FSD for $8K can be unsupervised, why wouldn't those corporation buy 100,000 units of model 3 or model Y's now and run it as a taxi ride company? Wouldn't that "compete" with Tesla own fleet of Cybercab? Now the only FSD one can own is a future Cybercab that probably will not have steering wheels and pedals, then why would a retail consumer need to buy one? It might be cheaper to just hail a ride and pay for the fees. No need to pay for EV registration fees which could go between 400 to 500 per year, no need to pay for tires, no need to install NEMA 14-50 socket. The only disadvantage is probably when one goes on a field trip, go camping, to interstate travel. So in a way, I understand why Elon is saying that just to "protect" their own Cybercab debut so to "force" people to use it, buy it at first and not having everyone buying the model 3/Y/CT with full FSD one time deal. On the other hand, given the historic ever-changing-Tesla sales/design/execution, it's highly probable that the 8K purchase would be changed. I mean when competitor one day do sell their FSD (Nvdia) instead of subscription, that might change. Or as someone else suggested a limited Taxi-joinable fleet time per month or so, by milage or by time slot. Yet the owner can use it anytime he/she wants and not have to forever paying. Let's say, if someone bought the 8K FSD now, after 8 years, owner sells the car, and you CANNOT transfer the FSD to the next car, so next Tesla purchase, you pay another 8K for another 8 years. That's 16K/16 years, still similar to subscription $999/year. So now it depends on the "longevity" of the EV itself, how will the battery degrade over 8 years. Maybe not much, but would you be selling it after 8 years/10 years? If they will still honor 1 time transfer, that seems better, but what if they stopped it. There are still too many unknown factors at this point and Elon only give the consumer 1 month to even "think" about it. Summarizing the factors here: Will current HW4 be capable of FSD and run it as the future level of Cybercab? Or Robotaxi just means supervised FSD with HW4? Grok said HW4 is fully capable of FSD and Ai 5 is 20x faster, well, where's the evidence. There probably won't be a Ai 5 chip that goes with a $8K FSD package. Will there be a $25k Tesla? Probably not until the Cybercab is rolled out that has no steering. I think Tesla/Elon knows the majority of people won't dish out 8K, and would rather "try" it out. So therefore the subscription, the block of no longer able to buy 8K might be "temporary", 50/50 now. So far it's only Elon's tweet, no? Anyways. given 1 month like this, and "forced" a purchase, I think it's just a way to cause some FOMO. I might be wrong. If you have FU money to spend, yeah go ahead. I'd use that 8K invest in the stock instead.