A limited beta test for Tesla's new Full Self Driving feature is currently underway, although customers who live in an eligible area wanting to participate will have to pay for the privilege - quite a lot, actually; the Full Self Driving beta costs $10,000. That's more than a quarter of the base MSRP for a brand new Tesla Model 3 sedan.

But for some, the true cost of Full Self Driving was actually more than that, because upgrading from the $5,000 Enhanced Autopilot package to the FSD beta cost $6,000, for a grand total of $11,000 invested.

That's $11,000 invested in incomplete software still in development, mind you, all so that Tesla can learn from your data and continue to develop the system.

But now, as Electrek reports, Tesla seems to have had a sudden change of heart, lowering the price of its Enhanced Autopilot-to-Full Self Driving beta upgrade to $5,000. That brings pricing exactly in line with what the beta cost as a standalone option, which many customers will no doubt see as an injustice being reversed. What's unclear, however, is where this leaves customers who'd had Enhanced Autopilot and have already paid the sum of $6,000 to upgrade to the beta - whether Tesla will reimburse them the $1,000 difference, or not.

Tesla's software pricing strategy is interesting for a number of reasons. For starters, all Teslas manufactured today come equipped with all the hardware necessary to theoretically unlock full autonomy at some later date; only the software, which can be replicated ad infinitum at essentially no cost, carries an additional charge. For another thing, for Tesla, the purpose of the Full Self Driving beta is to gather data and refine the system prior to a general release, and while we don't doubt that there's plenty of demand for the software anyway, it's atypical for a company to charge so much money for a system in the beta stage.

A wider beta release of Tesla's Full Self Driving system is expected before the end of the month.