Tesla Announces API Pricing Plan... Criticism Over High Costs

Tesla, which has allowed third-party developers free access to its vehicle application programming interface (API), has announced a plan to charge for API usage.

According to electric vehicle media InsideEV on the 4th (local time), Tesla announced last week an API pricing plan that developers must pay per vehicle to access data and perform tasks on the vehicle through their apps.

Tesla is implementing a pay-as-you-go pricing model that charges users based on total usage. Some items, such as streaming signals and commands, are relatively inexpensive, which is seen as encouraging developers to utilize the data they retrieve from vehicles.

However, the API pricing plan announced by Tesla this time drew attention for being priced higher than initially expected. James Gragg, the developer of the popular Tesla app Tessie, said, "At the current rates, we would have to pay Tesla about $60 million annually."

Ramin Nasibov, a developer of a Tesla statistics app, also commented, "Tesla's new API pricing has come as a shock to the community. Tesla announced a transition to a paid model late last year, but the new pricing model is extremely expensive," adding, "In most cases, developers have to pay Tesla thousands of dollars a day, while they earn only a fraction of that amount."

Tesla has announced plans to offer a $10 monthly discount per Tesla account for personal APIs. Tesla explained that this discount could include data streaming, 100 commands, and waking up twice a day for two vehicles per month.