Its being reported elsewhere that future new teslas will not have basic autopilot (the name Tesla use for the standard lane keep assist they offer) at all, the only way to get any form of lane keep assist will be to subscribe to FSD. The wording in the ars article linked here does a terrible job of explaining the change. Existing Teslas which already have basic Autopilot will still continue to have the feature.
New Teslas will now only have "Traffic Aware Cruise Control" as standard without lane assist, i.e. keeps pace with traffic and can stop/start, but user still has to provide steering input.
Isn’t lane keeping pretty standard for most new cars?
It’s like an upside down freemium model - try out our basic self driving product, which is (now) the worst in the market, so you’ll convert to the premium FSD offering.
I don't see this mentioned in the configurator for a new model 3 on the tesla site right now. Under "Driver Assistance" it describes "Traffic-aware cruise control" only. Under "Active Safety" it includes "Lane Departure Avoidance" which is separate from the "Autosteer" feature described under the "Autopilot" section. It's possible they will choose to fold autosteer into the lane departure avoidance but there's been no announcement of that.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_il/GUID-ADA05DF...
Under the new 2026 pricing structure, Autosteer has been removed. *New vehicles will now only ship with Traffic-Aware Cruise Control*. Buyers who want the vehicle to steer itself on highways must now pay for the software that was once standard.