Tesla counts long-ago FSD buyers in 1.74 million subscription total

Tesla has reported a significant jump in its Full Self-Driving figures, but the methodology behind the numbers has raised questions about how the company defines success. The electric vehicle maker stated this week that it now has 1.74 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions, a 67 percent increase from a year earlier.

A footnote in the company's third-quarter 2026 shareholder letter clarifies how this total is calculated. The metric follows the definition used in the 2025 CEO Performance Award and includes both those who paid a lump sum upfront and those on a monthly plan. This means owners who purchased the software years ago are still counted as subscribers, provided their vehicles remain active. The only group excluded from this total is those on free trials.

This distinction matters because reaching 10 million active subscriptions is a specific milestone required for Elon Musk to earn his compensation package. It also highlights a potential disconnect for consumers. Hundreds of thousands of these counted individuals were sold the promise of unsupervised self-driving, a feature Tesla has not yet fully delivered. Instead, they are currently using a supervised version of the software.

Tesla stopped selling FSD as a one-time purchase on February 14, 2026. Since then, new customers in the US have had to subscribe at a rate of $99 per month. However, anyone who paid upfront before that date, at prices that went as high as $15,000, remains in the active count. The company has not disclosed how many of the 1.74 million users are actually paying the monthly fee.

Similar accounting appears in other parts of the report. Tesla’s cumulative deliveries figure, now at 10.2 million, also includes any unsupervised Robotaxis placed into commercial operation. This aligns with the pay package, which sets a milestone of 20 million vehicles. The company also claimed that more than 75 percent of new deliveries in North America included FSD subscriptions in the third quarter, a nearly twenty percentage point increase from the previous period.

However, the letter does not define exactly how that attach rate is measured. It is unclear if it includes subscriptions started with introductory offers or how many of those buyers are still paying after a few months. While the active subscription metric explicitly excludes free trials, the company did not state the same for the attach rate. This lack of transparency makes it difficult for investors to assess the true momentum of the software.

Musk’s 2025 award is structured in 12 tranches, each requiring both a market cap milestone and an operational achievement. These include 20 million vehicles delivered, 10 million active FSD subscriptions, and 1 million Optimus robots. As of June 30, Tesla considered only the 20 million delivery milestone probable. The company added 260,000 net FSD subscriptions in the third quarter, its best quarter yet.

At that pace, it would take about eight years to reach 10 million subscriptions. Over the last 12 months, the growth was closer to 700,000 per year, which would require about 12 years to hit the target. The award runs until 2035, giving the company considerable time, but the current trajectory suggests the goal is still distant.

Counting upfront buyers is not inherently wrong, as those cars do have the software. The issue is presenting the total as proof of current momentum when the definition was written to satisfy compensation criteria. The board has approved this definition, and the company’s financial performance metrics now rely on it, even as the breakdown between monthly payers and legacy buyers remains undisclosed.