Enlarge / Interior of a Tesla Model 3. (credit: Tesla )

The California Highway Patrol said it arrested a man seen riding in the back seat of a Tesla Model 3 that had no one in the driver's seat. Param Sharma, 25, was arrested "and booked into Santa Rita Jail" on counts of reckless driving and disobeying an officer, the department said in a statement Tuesday. Sharma was arrested after multiple 911 calls on Monday around 6:30 pm reported a driverless vehicle "traveling eastbound on I-80 across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge toward the city of Oakland," police said.

Sharma spent a night locked up, and he "committed the same crime shortly after being released from jail," according to a story yesterday by KTVU Fox 2 :

Param Sharma met KTVU's Jesse Gary in San Francisco Wednesday afternoon, not far from his mother's high-rise apartment. After getting out of jail on two counts of reckless driving, he pulled up sitting in the back seat of a Tesla with no one in the driver's seat.

When asked if he purchased a new Tesla after the previous one was impounded he said, "Yeah, I'm rich as (expletive). I'm very rich."

"I feel safer back here than I do up there," Sharma also told KTVU from the right-rear passenger seat.

Enlarge / Interior of Tesla's Model 3. (credit: Tesla )

Tesla is wasting no time cashing in on excitement over the company's forthcoming "full self-driving" software release, which was released in beta form to a small number of customers last week. Tesla has now raised the price of the FSD upgrade from $8,000 to $10,000.

Tesla has tinkered with pricing for the full self-driving package repeatedly over the last two years. In 2018, the package cost $3,000 at vehicle purchase time or $4,000 when purchased later. In 2019, Tesla briefly cut the price to $2,000 , angering customers who had paid higher prices. Then Tesla revamped its price structure, making basic Autopilot features standard and raising the FSD package price to $5,000. Tesla subsequently raised the price to $6,000, $7,000, and then $8,000.

Musk has long warned customers to expect the price of the full self-driving technology to continue rising. "If you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset—not a depreciating asset," Musk said in a 2019 podcast episode.