Here are eight things that come to my mind with this announcement:
1) Getting rid of the FSD purchase option eliminates the hardware-upgrade/retrofit concern going forward for new EV sales from Tesla’s standpoint, because subscribers aren’t promised anything.
2) One of the operational milestones in Elon’s 2025 CEO Performance Award plan is 10 million FSD subscriptions - not 10 million FSD purchases. Subscriptions.
3) Investors love predictable revenue. One-time FSD purchases don’t provide that; subscriptions provide a steadier, long-term recurring revenue source.
4) Free FSD transfer will undoubtably remain in countries where FSD is not live yet.
5) The Luxe Package on the Model S/X and Cybertruck will likely go away, or at least the FSD portion, lowering those cars’ entry prices.
6) At $99 per month, buying FSD outright for $8,000 made little sense for most people, since it would take about 6 years and 7 months of monthly payments to equal that upfront price. That doesn't include the opportunity cost of what you could have done with that $8k (stocks, etc).
7) This could be my bias (and optimism) speaking, but I think this change is a positive signal for the FSD (Unsupervised) timeline.
8) In my view, it would eventually make sense for Tesla to offer different FSD subscription tiers. For example, a lower-priced “FSD Light” could replace legacy Autopilot, while full FSD (Unsupervised) would remain a higher-priced premium option. Offering an annual FSD subscription for slightly cheaper would be great too.
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