Tesla Says It Has 1.1 Million Full Self-Driving Subscribers, Amid Controveries

• In its fourth-quarter 2025 earnings report, Tesla announced that it has 1.1 million active subscriptions of Full Self-Driving (Supervised). 
• Driving FSD subscriptions is a key component of CEO Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar compensation package.
• But the camera-and-AI-based automated driving system is the subject of multiple investigations, complaints and even lawsuits.

In order to secure his unprecedented $1 trillion pay package, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has to hit some aggressive milestones. One of those is selling 10 million subscriptions to Full Self-Driving (Supervised), Tesla’s hands-free automated driving assistance system. 

If the numbers in Tesla’s fourth-quarter earnings update are accurate, then Musk is more than one-tenth of the way there. The electric automaker—which is attempting to pivot to a robotics, energy and artificial intelligence company—boasted that it had 1.1 million active FSD subscriptions by the end of 2025. That number represents a 38% increase from about 800,000 subscriptions in the fourth quarter of 2024. 

It is the first time Tesla has officially disclosed the total number of FSD subscriptions. It’s not immediately clear how that tracks with the total number of FSD-capable Teslas sold to date; according to the International Council on Clean Transportation, over 7 million EVs were sold in the U.S. between 2015 and Sept. 2025, and most of those have been Teslas, although the company’s EV market share has dwindled in recent years.

The result also means that Tesla has nearly twice as many FSD subscribers as General Motors does for Super Cruise, its hands-free automated driving system. (Unlike FSD, Super Cruise only operates on mapped highways, while FSD can drive in urban areas as well.) And in the view of Musk and his executives, selling FSD subscriptions is even more important than selling EVs, because “the future is autonomous,” as the CEO said. 

A version of the FSD software is used in Tesla’s Robotaxi service, which recently started operating without human safety minders in Austin. Musk said the service is expected to expand to several other cities in 2026, including Dallas, Phoenix and Miami. (It’s not immediately clear whether Tesla’s FSD subscription figure extends to cars in its own fleet.) 

“This new autonomous market, you have to start thinking about us as providing transportation as a service, more than the total… market for vehicles alone,” said Tesla engineering VP Lars Moravy on the earnings call. Musk added that he sees “the vast majority of miles traveled will be autonomous in the future.” 

Like GM, Tesla sees FSD subscriptions—the service costs $99 per month and was recently discontinued as a one-time purchase—as a key driver of future revenue. Even so, Tesla’s bullish approach to autonomy has drawn considerable controversy for a number of safety mishaps. In October, U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into nearly 3 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD over more than 50 reports of crashes and traffic law violations. In California, Tesla’s largest market, a judge ruled in December that Tesla engaged in deceptive marketing by overstating the capabilities of both FSD and Autopilot for years. It recently dropped the latter name from its suite of standard driver-assistance features. The automaker faces a number of lawsuits over FSD as well.

Nonetheless, Tesla officials seem undaunted about the future being driven by autonomous driving, not making new cars.

“We’re starting not the next chapter, but a new book on the progression of this company,” said Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla’s CFO. “2026 will be when all of this began. While at times it feels daunting, it will be the most exciting change in Tesla’s history.”

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com