Tesla pulls one‑time purchase of FSD for $99 per month subscription

Tesla is ending the option to buy Full Self-Driving outright. Starting after February 14, the system will only be available as a $99 per month subscription. Elon Musk announced the change on X but didn’t explain why. The current price for the one-time purchase in the U.S. is around $8,000, but that offer is about to be pulled.

The feature still needs drivers to stay fully alert behind the wheel. It often requires the person in the seat to take control. Despite the name, it’s not fully automated. The change means anyone who wants FSD will have to pay monthly with no option to own it outright.

Tesla’s sales drop while BYD takes the top spot

Tesla’s sales have dropped for the second year in a row. In the last quarter of 2025, deliveries fell 16%. For the whole year, the company’s total was down nearly 9%. That’s how BYD ended up selling more fully electric vehicles than Tesla in both the fourth quarter and the full year.

BYD delivered 2.26 million EVs in 2025. Tesla sold 1.64 million. The year before, Tesla held on to the top spot, but BYD was already closing in. Now the gap is clear.

The fall in Tesla’s deliveries came after EV tax credits expired in the U.S. Analyst Jed Dorsheimer from William Blair said in a note that many on Wall Street were expecting a sales drop after the tax changes. He also said Tesla is now “valued almost entirely on the transformation to real-world AI.”

At the start of 2024, analysts expected Tesla to sell more than 3 million cars by 2026. That forecast has been cut to 1.8 million.

Tesla’s attention is now on other projects like FSD, robotaxis, and robots. With the subscription-only change, FSD joins the list of tools Musk is using to push Tesla’s tech plans forward.

The only part of the business that grew was energy storage. In the fourth quarter, Tesla delivered 14.2 gigawatt hours of energy storage systems. That’s up from 11 a year earlier. For the whole year, the total was 46.7 gigawatt hours, a rise of nearly 50%.

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