Tesla would soon start selling the Full Self Driving (FSD) feature as a monthly subscription, CEO Elon Musk announced in a post on X (formerly Twitter) today, Tuesday.
“Tesla will stop selling FSD after Feb 14. FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter,” he said.
Tesla will stop selling FSD after Feb 14.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 14, 2026
FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter.
For years, the electric vehicle company sold a promise alongside its cars. Pay once, and you're buying into a future where your vehicle will slowly learn to drive itself. But that is now changing.
The move closes the door on the $8,000 upfront option that has existed for years. Although Musk did not state exactly how much the subscription will cost, there’s already an FSD subscription for $99 per month or $999 per year. The company has not yet confirmed if this would be the same subscription.
On the surface, this looks like a simple pricing tweak. Dig a little deeper, and it feels more like an admission.
FSD has always sat in an awkward middle ground. It can change lanes, respond to traffic lights, and handle city streets, but it still demands full driver attention. Tesla now even labels it “Supervised,” an important reminder that this is not autonomy in the sci-fi sense many buyers once imagined.
Regulators have noticed too. The US safety watchdog has opened investigations tied to crashes and traffic violations involving FSD-equipped vehicles, keeping the system under constant scrutiny.
Against that backdrop, selling FSD as a permanent add-on has become a harder pitch. Only around 12% of Tesla’s fleet currently subscribes to the software, and revenue from it has been sliding. A subscription model lowers the barrier to entry. Ninety-nine dollars a month feels easier to try, easier to cancel, and easier to justify than an $8,000 bet on software that is still evolving.
For owners, the change cuts both ways. You lose the sense of ownership that came with a one-time purchase, but you also avoid paying upfront for features that may not meet your expectations. For Tesla, the upside is predictable recurring revenue and more control over how the software is valued over time.
This move also puts Tesla closer to how the rest of the tech industry operates. Advanced driver assistance is increasingly treated as a service, not a product. Carmakers are watching how far customers are willing to go with subscriptions, especially as hardware margins tighten and EV sales growth slows.
There is a bigger reason this matters. Musk has tied Tesla’s future, and even his own compensation, to scaling FSD subscriptions into the millions. Framing Tesla as an AI and software company depends on making that model work.
Whether customers follow is another question. Making FSD subscription-only may boost trial numbers, but it also puts pressure on Tesla to prove, month after month, that the software is worth paying for. In the long run, this shift says less about pricing and more about where Tesla believes its future really lies.
Ogbonda Chivumnovu
