I wonder what is the cost of running inference? It might be expensive enough that they need to charge a fair amount just to cover the running costs.
Inference runs on the cars. I think you mean training.
They needed to charge so much because Elon thought they were building robotaxi software. He thought it was going to be a transformative technology many years ago. So he priced it accordingly. Right now, it's an interesting technology that's still got a ways to go before it can justify the price tag that's been hanging on it for so long. The masses are not going to want to supervise the thing.
Today, it should probably be about $1,000 to buy. It's interesting enough for that. Once they start in on providing Level 3, then they can jump to $3,000-$5,000. The monthly price would be priced at break-even after 60 months of subscription.
When they move beyond Level 3, that's when they have to rethink ownership of vehicles because people will run these things as robotaxis. That's a commercial venture. I'd probably go with a subscription for consumers, and some kind of licensing deal with revenue sharing for anyone who wants to run robotaxis. Owning a robotaxi of your own would be more expensive than riding commercial robotaxis all the time, but you'd have the convenience of having one at your instant beck and call all the time, the convenience of leaving stuff in the car, and not having to worry about riding in a messed-up interior.
The various specific features could be sold separately, without subscription, such as Autopark, Summon, etc.