Elon Ctrl + Alt +Deletes $8k FSD Fee For $99/Month Subscription (Saas Model Loading…)

Does this subscription include the X, Starlink, Grok, Boring Company, Robotaxi, Optimus, and Neuralink bundle? Asking for a friend… 

Elon has officially gotten his SAAS on as he’s just taken Tesla’s Full Self-Driving out back and turned it into a dang onlyfans subscription. As of Feb 14, the one-time $8,000 FSD buy button is gone. Finished. Ctrl + Alt + Deleted. From here on out, it’s $99 a month or you walk like a peasant. 

I had to… (Source: Reddit) 

Now to be clear, this was obviously inevitable. FSD was never a product… it was an Elon promise. And when it comes to Grok’s less unhinged daddy, promises don’t scale unless you meter them. For more context, Tesla spent years selling “Full Self-Driving” that very explicitly still requires a human driver, two hands ready, and a soul prepared to intervene when the car decides a curb looks optional. Regulators, and class-action lawyers noticed and went full tilt. So now Elon’s doing what every tech company eventually does when the narrative outpaces reality: move it to SaaS and smooth out the expectations. 

(Source: CNBC) 

That said, only about 12% of Tesla’s fleet actually paid for FSD under the old model, per CFO comments. Which tells you everything. Either people didn’t believe… or they believed too hard once and learned a lesson. Therefore, subscription fixes that. It's low barrier and an easier sell the real game (read: robotaxis) than the original $8k fee you’d have to sell a kidney for. 

For instance, Tesla already rolled out a limited robotaxi service in Austin with human safety supervisors sitting shotgun like nervous parents. San Francisco still requires drivers. California still hasn’t handed over the keys. And meanwhile Waymo is out here quietly doing 450,000 paid rides per week with no steering wheels and no tweets. But does Elon like talking about that? Hell no. Which is why when your edge is narrative, subscriptions are oxygen. Wall Street understands $99/month way better than “trust me bro, autonomy is coming.”

(Source: Giphy) 

As for the investor side of things, is this bullish? Long term, probably. Recurring revenue beats lumpy hope every time. Is it hilarious watching Tesla turn into Adobe? Absolutely. Which is why it’s not shocking to see shares dip on the news. Any time Elon takes something away, the market sulks for a day before remembering this was always the math. For now, keep your eyes open for Tesla’s earnings report on Jan. 28th, and pour one out for the Tesla owner who just realized their car has an additional monthly bill now. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Tesla as mentioned in the article.