• Tesla's FSD subscriber base just had its largest quarter-over-quarter jump in history.
• The automaker hit a whopping 1.48 million FSD active FSD subscriptions.
• FSD monthly revenue alone now exceeds $65 million per month.

The adoption of Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software is skyrocketing. In its quarterly earnings report published on Wednesday, Tesla revealed just how many drivers have been buying into its (now) subscription-only driver assistance feature, and it's finally accounting for some serious revenue.

Tesla revealed that a total of 1.48 million cars around the world currently have access to Tesla's FSD (Supervised) driver assistance feature. This includes the number of people who purchased FSD up-front and those who pay monthly for the feature, specifically excluding any free trials of the software.

Photo by: Tesla

The jump represents a 56% pop since this time last year, as well as a 200,000-subscriber climb quarter-over-quarter (the largest single-quarter climb on record for Tesla's FSD users, but it only started reporting that number fairly recently). As of June, Tesla had successfully launched FSD in 12 different countries and says that it is seeking approval in additional regions.

"In Q2, we had, in North America, about 55% of our deliveries had FSD subscription at the time of delivery enabled," said Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja during the company's earnings call on Wednesday. It's not clear if the 55% figure referenced by Taneja includes the 30-day free trial of FSD available to new Tesla buyers. Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles worldwide in Q2.

At $99, FSD is much more affordable to owners than it was in years past. In fact, Tesla once sold FSD for as much as $15,000 on top of the cost of the vehicle. And before moving to subscription-only, FSD was available as an $8,000 add-on.

Taneja said that of its 1.48 million FSD customers, 55% purchased the option outright and 45% are subscribing. This equates to around $791 million of additional software revenue each year at the current take-rate. The CFO added that since the option to purchase FSD up-front is no longer available in most markets, the automaker expects to see its bulk of FSD monetization come from subscriptions.

When stacked up against Tesla's 9.7-million car lifetime delivery figures, this brings FSD's total adoption rate to around 15.2% of all vehicles sold.

Tesla has a big incentive to keep growing the number of people who use FSD, which, notably, still is not autonomous. Its car sales have been struggling (though last quarter suggests a comeback may be underway) and millions of monthly subscribers would provide Tesla serious recurring revenue to fund its AI future. 

Elon Musk himself is heavily invested in this goal too. Part his epic $1 trillion pay package rests on Tesla accumulating 10 million active FSD subscribers. Discontinuing Autopilot should help. New Teslas now only come standard with adaptive cruise control. So drivers who want lane-centering on the highway—something you can get in a base Toyota Camry—will need to cough up for an FSD subscription. 

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