It really feels like Elon is spiraling with Tesla. Taking out Autopilot makes sense if he's trying to push people to subscribe to FSD subscription model. Issue is he's saying they'

One of the KPIs he has to hit to get his trillion dollar payout is believed to be "x" number of FSD subscribers, so he's slashing features from Autopilot and eliminating the purchase option to drive subs.

Right, but who is going to spend even more money on FSD? $99 a month is semi-reasonable. $150 or $200 is DOA.

Not sure I would say that $1200 per year is reasonable, even if it worked (which it doesn’t).

Some people spent $15,000 on FSD. At $99/mo. ($1000/yr., if you pay up front), that's 15 years. Tesla's barely had a Model S for that long.

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I think it’s so he don’t lose all of his money from lawsuits of people dying from his autopilot.

My guess is that there will be two tiers of FSD (both scams of course). One will be the regular and then likely light version for $20....all because he needs to boost number of subscriptions to get his comp plan

They won’t. He’s toast.

They are beginning to circle the drain as far as the dog & pony show pretending to be a car company is concerned. Enron's extracurricular political activities are pissing people off, especially among the demographic that is most likely to be purchasing EVs over ICE cars. Now add in the fact that they are no longer the only game in town, with many others coming into the EV market including traditional automakers with much better reputations. Don't be surprised if Tesla is bankrupt long before Enron's "deal" expires. The stock ponzi that keeps it going can't last forever and people can't keep ignoring the reality of failuing business fundamentals forever.

Yeah, for software, this might make sense as customers usually don't have much choice but to pay the rent. See Microsoft 365, it's a hassle to move to Google and are after moving, the customers are confronted with another lock-in. Lucky for us, there's no such thing as 'vendor lock-in' with cars. The USPs of Tesla were the good mileage of the cars, the charging network, and the software. 1. There are other cars that are as economical with electricity, and some of the range claims of Tesla have been wildly overstated by them. Others have caught up; most notably Mercedes. 2. The charging network is opened for other brands. Unless he pulls the ultimate dick-move and closes it for other brands, or makes charging with another brand car twice as expensive. Also, Tesla is still 400V, limiting DCFC performance. 3. Leon can claim FSD as much as he wants, it's just not that. Law enforcement runs slowly, but it's going to catch up eventually. * Also; CarPlay & Android Auto are catching up with Tesla's infotainment. Tesla is a small player compared to these two. So, good luck to Musk with trying to cage his customers. I'm pretty sure they'll find the exit pronto.

Autopilot literally was one of the main selling points to buying a tesla compared to other EV's lol. I don't get their strategy here.

10M, which is more than the number of cars sold in the entire history of the company so far, and sales numbers are falling fast. Unless he tries to pass off cheap windup toys as "full self driving", he won't make it.

B-b-but they have to pay those remote operators in the Bangladesh sweatshop.

I mean I would rather spend $1,200 a year or go on and off months than to give Elon $8k that doesn't even transfer to the next car lol.

It would work out for Tesla and give then a good profit revenue, in the past, when they were the leader and had a large moat. They aren’t anymore.

FYI, there are 12 months in a year so $100/month is $1,200/year. Honestly, neither the monthly nor the annual pricing makes sense for what you’re getting, which is an unsafe beta product without radar or LiDAR.

The car sales are tanking, so I think they’re trying to compensate by adding more paying monthly subscribers through offering FSD. If there are 500k subscribers, that would add about 50 million/month more in revenue. As FSD is not fully autonomous, despite how much Tesla influencers hype it on YouTube, most people were content with Autopilot. It was good enough for longer trips. Ironically, now there’s even less incentive to buy a Tesla in the first place, as it comes with fewer features than the competition.

Is autopilot the equivalent of a glorified cruise control?

He can hit his 10 million FSD subscriber operational goal before he jacks the price up to meet financial operational goals. The 12 operational goals each unlock 1/12th of the shares that will be made available to him, combined with 12 market cap goals that also need to be met, and his sticking around for 7.5 to 10 years from the agreement date for the shares to vest. There are not currently 10 million Teslas in existence, so I don't think he'll be pushing for this any time soon, but he certainly wants to eliminate purchased FSD options now, to steer customers toward subscriptions. I don't think he realistically expects to ship a level 4 FSD in the next couple years, despite saying otherwise, and he probably won't jack prices until he does. I can't remember the exact statements, but a few years ago he was saying something to the effect that the "value" of unsupervised FSD would be at least $100k, so it's possible the subscription fee could go up a lot, perhaps continuing to offer supervised FSD at near the current price point. I think at least a $200+ fee is very likely if they provide remote support so a licensed driver isn't needed in the vehicle in the event it gets stuck...like it could act similar to their Robotaxi at that point, with remote operators able to take temporary control in occasional situations that warrant it.

Narrative. They want to keep selling cars in Cali. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/16/california-judge-says-tesla-engaged-in-deceptive-autopilot-marketing-.html 60 day deadline from Dec 16 to change their marketing.

The threat of future subscription price increases sells the $8000 lifetime. Subscriptions have a certain amount of honesty to them

Look, none of it makes sense. But we are talking about a company and a person that have generated the kind of following that the subs dedicated to its products ban people for being subscribed to this sub. SOME people will continue to buy what Muslims selling. The stock will continue to float at unrealistic valuations until the people that are long can get past their egos and FOMO and dump the stock.

He said “if you pay up front”, implying there’s a discount for doing so (I’m ignorant of whether or not there is a discount; just that I think that’s what they meant).

Or maybe he splits the subscriptions into multiple parts and counts each part as a unique subscription. Lol

The cult is getting smaller so each remaining cult member must pay more to their deity

He thinks this will entice people to start using FSD instead of switching to a car that doesn't make them pay exorbitantly for basic features. Like usual he's a moron who doesn't know the first thing about automotive market demand anymore (see also: Cybertruck)

This announcement seems to have shaken even the biggest fanboys. There's still a few tesla centric channels that are saying this is bad for consumers but still good for them as investors lol.

From California DMV (Tesla chose option 7a, because they couldn't prove option 7b) : "Continuing use by respondent Tesla Inc., doing business as Tesla Motors Inc., of the Autopilot name to describe ADAS features that do not cause respondent’s vehicles to operate at SAE Level 3, SAE Level 4, or SAE Level 5 violates Civil Code section 1770, Vehicle Code sections 11713 and 24011.5, and California Code of Regulations, title 13, section 260.00. 2. Vehicle Dealer License Number 68106, held by respondent Tesla Inc., doing business as Tesla Motors Inc., is hereby suspended for 30 days; provided, however, that said suspension is stayed for a period of 90 days under the terms and conditions set forth in paragraph 7, below. Vehicle Manufacturer License Number 63277, held by respondent Tesla Inc., doing business as Tesla Motors Inc., is hereby suspended for 30 days; provided, however, that said suspension is permanently stayed. 4. During the 30-day suspension period, respondent shall not exercise any of the privileges granted under Vehicle Dealer License Number 68106. 5. If, in connection with any advertising, representation, or dissemination made to the public or any member thereof during the period of actual suspension, such advertising, representation, or dissemination states or reasonably implies that respondent’s dealer’s license has been or is suspended for any reason other than by order of the DMV, such advertising, representation, or dissemination shall be deemed to be untrue or misleading advertising within the meaning of Vehicle Code section 11713, subdivision (a). 6. During the 30-day suspension period, DMV employees shall post notices of suspension, in accordance with the provisions of California Code of Regulations, title 13, section 316.00. Respondent may not remove these notices before the end of the 30-day suspension period. 7. Respondent shall have an opportunity to mitigate this penalty if, within 60 days from the effective date of this Order, Respondent files either of the following with the Department: a. A statement that Respondent has ceased using the Autopilot name to describe ADAS features that do not cause Respondent’s vehicles to operate at SAE Level 3, SAE Level 4, or SAE Level 5. Said statement shall describe the steps Respondent has taken to cease the use of the Autopilot name and the date on which Respondent ceased using the Autopilot name; or b. A statement that Respondent has implemented changes to the ADAS features described as Autopilot, which now do cause Respondent’s vehicles to operate at SAE Level 3, SAE Level 4, or SAE Level 5. Said statement shall contain sufficient detail to enable the Department to identify which specific ADAS features offered by Respondent, individually or collectively, cause Respondent’s vehicles to operate at SAE Level 3, SAE Level 4, or SAE Level 5 and are being described by use of the Autopilot name. Upon receipt, the Department shall, within 15 days, evaluate and provide a response to Respondent as to whether the statement satisfies either of the conditions set forth above. If the Department determines that Respondent’s statement satisfies either of the conditions set forth above, the stay set forth in paragraph 2 of this Order shall become permanent."

I thought the term “Autopilot” was dropped when Muskrat changed to the term “Full Self Driving”.

Pretty much.  It's just the Tesla name for speed matching cruise control and lane centering.

No, it just got removed because California gave them the choice to remove it or prove autonomy. They couldn't prove autonomy, so they removed the name.

Yeah it’s lane keep assist + adaptive cruise control which almost every car has stock these days.

You might be on to something here. a) Remove autosteer from all Teslas, (b) introduce autosteer as FSD (Freeway Steering Device) (aka "autosteer") as a free upgrade. The result...millions of FSD subscriptions, and Elmo well on his way to a trillion...

Tesla has no growth strategy in selling cars, Chinese companies are eating their lunch. This is red meat for the meme stock followers and option traders to trade 0DTE

They can do that in the US, but not the rest of the world, where the competition will be stiff on two fronts: wider choice of EVs, and wider choice of the equivalent of the so called unsupervised FSD, not to mention better alternative choices and pricing. They can continue to say that they have no credible competition, but that is a mere pretense. Pretense does not turn into a reality.

Makes no sense to market a tech based vehicle and not even include tech that's standard with most manufacturers now in the base package.

Toyotas come with radar based Cruise control and lane centering. And they're the tech laggards typically.

We bought our model y for about 88k and sold it for about 25k, since then we found out that 45% or whatever of those cars fail out from their 5 year inspection for suspension / arm / ball joint failure and our car used to make low speed clunking noises that Tesla didn't fix after two visits. 50k over 4 years was more than we wanted to spend on the TCO of our car, not even counting interest on the loan.. lol. We leased a buzz instead. Our day goes kinda like it did before and it's nice to have gotten out of that model y before the sus-spension consumed the lives of the family. I hope CarMax gets our old car recall repaired before they sell it. Sadlol.

As much as Musk has made grandiose statements about Tesla out manufacturing everyone in the past, it's ultimately not something the company is particularly good at or that justifies the kind of valuation we see right now. Musk wants to be a trillionaire and wants Tesla to be valued like a software company. So he's been trying upon trying to push this narrative around FSD and Optimus as a path towards that a more services oriented company that constantly generates substantial cash flows. It's kind of like how Microsoft generally stopped selling software directly and started selling subscriptions to everything and monetizing XBox live. Why now? Part of it is probably the pay package but another big part is probably that margins are continuing to decline and the company is probably going to start actively losing money on their auto sales and need some other narrative for how they're going to make money going forward. So we'll see a shift from "sure we're not making money on the sale but we'll have a few grand in service income over the next few years" and Musk will rant about how close FSD is, how everyone will buy it and how the pricing will go up down the line, etc. Of course it won't be that simple and people will probably buy even fewer vehicles as Tesla ends up actually falling behind every other manufacturer on the technology front with their vehicles. Sales might also slump further as the Rivian R2 starts shipping in H1 this year too assuming it's decent.

I hope now one will subsribe

A lot of disjointed knee jerk policies put in place lately- seems desperate. He definitely takes his customer base for granted.

so glad I didn't get a Tesla. the $99 a month is crazy

He is hiding the basic lane centering behind the paid autopilot to force purchase and subscription too!

That assumes that it remains $99/mo for the next 15 years. And also that Tesla will still be online in 15 years to keep your car functioning as you expect it to. Is it really worth choosing a car that puts critical functionality at stake via subscription anything? This makes it easy to avoid Tesla altogether.

Its also a lot easier to "game" or fake subscriptions than it is to do with vehicles sold. Not saying it will happen but its a lot easier to do.

The carbon credits payola from legacy carmakers to Tesla in the US has stopped making sense, as the fines for exceeding the limits has been effectively set to zero. This was a big source of revenue for Tesla, for which they didn't have to do anything.

Wait what?!!

That’s the biggest risk with modern cars. They are so dependent on Software and electrinic Components. And especially electronic Components age faster than milk. If something faild on s 10 year old car, there most often is no replacment part anymore. Just an example: In Europe every Car has to have an Emergency Call Button since about 2010. The first Cars had those Buttons using 3G-SIM-Cards. Now 3G is being shut down by the Mobile Operators. So your cars Emergency Call does not work anymore and your car loses it’s legality to be on the road still. Replacement parts? Non existant. Does any Car Company or the Government care about this? No. Another example is Fisker. Where the Servers that are critical for the operation of the Fisker Ocean where threatened to have to be shut down after their Bankruptcy. Another Company invested into keeping those servers up. But only for five years and a lot of functionality in the Cars has been lost already.

If the subscription fee is high enough you can give away the cars for free /s

$1200 a year seems like a good price for the whole vehicle. Better technology should make things cheaper, not more expensive.

Ya even the base trims come with Toyota Safety Sense 3 now.

I used to work for a company that was approaching bankruptcy, and our CEO came to our branch office to go over his strategy on how to emerge from the financial mess. The chart and goals he had were ridiculous and I didn’t see any way we’d be able to climb out of it, but he was super animated and pushed us to do it. Less than a year later most of us were laid off and the company was sold off. Said CEO died of a cocaine overdose not long after. Made a lot of sense!

After recent events, I decided my next car will not be a Tesla When Leon went crazy with doge, I still wanted to get another tesla because of the tech. However, if I’m squeezed with even the basic stuff, heck no The moment he removes autopilot from existing car is the moment I have to make a hard decision - dump my car and move on Yes, it may happen, if you still remembered the radar sensors on the older models that was rendered useless via software update a few years ago

Always remember Elon Musk doesn’t do anything that doesn’t A) feed his narcissism, and B) feed his bank account. Everything else about him is a lie. Everything.

I thought teslers appreciate in value 🤔 lol

Elon has one goal now: being the first trillionaire. If he was told ICE had to murder half of Minneapolis for him to be a trillionaire, he’d immediately turn the X algos to support the extermination.

Enshittification.

Could be okay for a minute, if their in-house insurance or this third-party Lemonade insurance they've announced saves enough money for primarily-FSD drivers to offset a big chunk of that cost. The biggest problems there imo are that 1) no one's seen that math to know it works yet and 2) that subscription price is not guaranteed to stay at the equivalent of $99 2026 USD in the future, even for older / supervised models. The removal of autopilot, when so many competitors have practical equivalents just included with their cars, is really going to harm their value if they can't do something for people to offset the cost of the FSD. All in all it's a pretty bizarre move to me.

The X algorithm is in full force. Yesterday Minnesota wasn’t trending at all, and now every post has 30 replies from random usernames with bald eagles for profile pics yelling ‘FAFO.’

I very much agree with this, but... Don't think for second that the other car companies won't do the same thing unless these features become required by law.

Driver side: subscribed Passenger side: **Watch fuel economy soar as both wheels steer in the same direction! Subscribe now!!**

He said you'll be able to buy tesla robots next year so expect it to pump even more... anything's possible if you're willing to suspend belief.

I didn't believe that one when I heard it, and it should have been a huge tip off. Elon forcing his employees back to work during covid was when I realized I was duped by lex luthor instead of tony stark lol.

Someone countered this by saying 99/ months is a better deal than 8k upfront as the first owner will have sold the car before reaching the 8k which is around 7 years give the price stays the same. It pretty much sucks for the 2nd market.

I just bought a CPO ID4 that was previously leased, depreciation was appreciated by me, it came with Travel Assist, which works better than the Autopilot in the new Model 3 that I test drove, nothing like FSD, but I wouldn’t have been paying for FSD monthly so Autopilot would have been what I would use. Removing Autopilot is probably because Tesla stopped supporting it while focusing on FSD, and their neglect showed in how poorly it worked where VW Travel Assist works great.

This move seems to me an implicit admission that the so-called FSD does not work as promised. It also protects Tesla from potential future lawsuits from customers who purchase FSD going forward. However, a massive class-action lawsuit is likely forthcoming for those customers who bought FSD in the past and have yet to see it deliver on its promises, despite claims that 'problems have been solved' or that Tesla vehicles would be able to drive themselves from San Francisco to Los Angeles by the end of 2017.

Yes, Under the new scheme lane centering or lane following will not be available if fsd is not enabled. You can read it online.

Does that apply only to new purchases or will they deactivate current owners? I read it and I think it's only for new purchases right?

I think the earnings report is going to be bad this week. Sales down, loss of payments from other auto makers and metals price skyrocketing. Tesla also normally reports non GAAP income from crypto which got pounded last quarter. Tesla does not provide details so who knows what this number could be.

When reality interferes with arithmetic, he’s going to redefine each paid ride in a robotaxi as a “FSD subscription” to collect it. Or count each individual month as a new subscription. And Texas courts and the bribed BOD would let him get away with it, when a Delaware corporate court would not.

There is no strategy. It’s run by impulsive vibe management by someone who is uniquely unqualified at understanding how normal people think, and someone who doesn’t give a shit about not understanding.

every week billing?

Fingers crossed he ODs any day now :D

I could see them trying that angle, but Robotaxi is still vaporware.

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Oh yeah, my ‘22 civic has a blind spot detector on the side view mirrors which is pretty common now. But it was only on higher trim models. I’m sure it will become part of basic packages soon. It’s a really good safety feature.

It was all a name, though. I didn't find the system to be superior to, say, Honda's or Volvo's.

I rather think he is trying to wiggle out of balance sheet liability. They still hold significant deferred revenue from the FSD sales. You slap FSD buyers lifetime subscription, which costs Tesla nothing extra and then just say mission completed and recognize rest of the revenue.

Weird argument. Spending $0 on any Tesla product is an option you know.

Boomers losing their sight will pay any subscription amount for FSD

The funny thing is that thanks to inflation there will definitely be the first Quadrillionaire. And it won't be Musk. Remember the first guy that became a billionaire? No? Well that sucks for Musk.