Tesla Is Letting More Owners Try FSD Beta Software

• Tesla begins offering its Full Self-Driving Beta request button, which will let owners try Beta version of semi-autonomous software if their driving score is good enough.

• The automaker's software judges owner driving behavior based on five criteria, collecting data for analysis.

• Tesla has been offering FSD on a monthly subscription basis for $199 a month, or for a one-time fee of $10,000.

Over the weekend Tesla began offering what it calls Full Self-Driving Beta to more current owners, making the controversial software more widely available than before. Specifically, drivers can request for it to be activated in their vehicles if they have the right hardware version—and if Tesla rates their driving to be safe enough via a score obtained through monitoring driving behavior.

The electric automaker has been letting a smaller segment of drivers test FSD in Beta mode for about a year now, rolling out updates along the way, one of the latest of which included a function known as Autosteer on City Streets that has been available for just a few months.

Just who will get the option to request that FSD Beta be activated in their cars?

Tesla will use five safety factors to compile a driving score based on data collected from individual cars, using criteria that frowns upon behaviors like hard braking, forward collision warning activations, aggressive turning, unsafe following distances, and forced Autopilot disengagements. Tesla software measures all of these things with some precision to arrive at a score with a maximum of 100 points, though the company does not say just what minimum number of points will permit one to have FSD Beta activated in their cars upon request.