Tesla is removing the option to pay a one-time fee for its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver assistance software, CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday. Going forward, the only way to access the feature will be through a monthly subscription. This change represents a major break from how Tesla has sold access to the advanced driver assistance suite over the years. It is also a decision that could have an impact on Tesla’s bottom line, Musk’s ability to unlock the full value of his one trillion dollar pay package, and the company’s ongoing legal troubles. This shift comes as many other global automakers are making progress on their own advanced driver assistance systems in hopes of competing with Tesla.
Tesla has sold access to its Full Self-Driving software suite at various price points over the years. It is important to note the software still does not make a car completely autonomous and requires human supervision. The up-front price peaked at fifteen thousand dollars in 2022, though more recently the company has been charging customers eight thousand dollars. Tesla started offering access to the software via a one hundred ninety-nine dollar per month subscription in 2021, and it dropped that price to just ninety-nine dollars per month in 2024. Musk often encouraged customers to pay the up-front price, claiming the cost would increase dramatically as Tesla added to its capabilities.
But on Wednesday, Musk wrote that Tesla will stop selling Full Self-Driving outright starting on February 14. He did not say whether Tesla plans to change the pricing structure for the subscription. Musk also did not offer an explanation for the change, but there are a few possible reasons. Musk and other Tesla executives have spoken publicly about how the adoption rate is lower than they had hoped. In October 2025, chief financial officer Vaibhav Taneja said only twelve percent of all Tesla customers have paid for Full Self-Driving. Shifting to a subscription-only model with a lower up-front cost could help boost those numbers, especially during a first quarter that is expected to be challenging for Tesla.
Boosting subscriptions would also get Musk closer to fulfilling one of the key product goals required for him to receive the full payout of his new one trillion dollar pay package. The company has tasked him with, among other things, reaching ten million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions, measured daily over a three-month period, before late 2035.
Moving to a subscription-only model could also be a legal hedge. For a decade, Musk and Tesla promoted the idea that customers were buying cars that had all the hardware required to become autonomous vehicles, and that all the company needed to do was improve the software. But that was not true. Tesla has had to make a number of upgrades inside its vehicles in the years since, and Musk himself has said that a huge portion of existing owners would likely need new hardware in their cars. Full Self-Driving was sold under this same promise, with the idea that customers who bought the software outright would eventually get a software update that would make their cars fully autonomous. Tesla has still not fulfilled that promise.
Tesla currently faces all kinds of legal trouble related to these unmet promises. In December, a judge ruled that the company engaged in deceptive marketing around Full Self-Driving and Autopilot and ordered the California DMV to suspend Tesla’s manufacturing and dealer licenses in the state for thirty days. The DMV stayed the order and gave Tesla at least sixty days to comply by changing the names of those products or shipping software that delivers on the promise. Tesla also faces a range of class action lawsuits over the claims it made about the future autonomous capabilities of its vehicles. By removing the option to buy Full Self-Driving outright, the company could be capping any potential liabilities in those lawsuits should they proceed to trial.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving is still regarded as the most capable driver-assistance software on the market in the United States. But the company’s success has not stopped competitors from trying to develop their own systems. Rivian recently detailed its own efforts to release Full Self-Driving-like driver assistance software, starting with a major geographic expansion to its hands-free driving feature. Ford and General Motors have their own hands-free systems. The many rival automakers Tesla competes with in China have been developing their own solutions, with some even offering their driver assistance features as a standard option.