Tesla says it now has 1.74 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions, a 67% increase from a year earlier. The figure comes from the company's Q3 2026 shareholder letter, which includes a footnote explaining how the number is calculated.
According to that footnote, the metric follows "our 2025 CEO Performance Award" and "includes both upfront payment and monthly subscriptions." In practice, owners who bought FSD outright, in some cases years ago, are counted alongside people who pay monthly. The only exclusion is free trials.
The definition matters because 10 million active FSD subscriptions is one of the operational milestones Elon Musk must reach to earn tranches of his 2025 pay package. The award has 12 tranches, each requiring a market capitalization target and an operational target. Other operational goals include 20 million vehicles delivered, 1 million Optimus robots, 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation and adjusted EBITDA targets. As of June 30, Tesla considered only the 20 million deliveries milestone probable.
Tesla stopped selling FSD as a one-time purchase on February 14, 2026. New customers can now only subscribe, at $99 a month in the US. Those who paid upfront before that date, at prices that reached $15,000, remain in the count as long as their cars are active. Tesla has not disclosed how many of the 1.74 million actually pay monthly. In April, when the company reported 1.28 million, Electrek raised the same issue.
The letter applies a similar approach elsewhere. Tesla's cumulative deliveries figure, now 10.2 million, also includes "any unsupervised Robotaxis placed into commercial operation," matching the pay package, which carries a 20 million vehicle milestone.
Tesla also said more than 75% of new North American deliveries in Q3 included FSD subscriptions, "a nearly twenty percentage point sequential increase." The company said it believes "FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available." The letter does not define the attach rate, however. It does not say whether subscriptions started at delivery with an introductory offer are included, or how many of those buyers keep paying after a few months. While the active-subscription metric excludes free trials, Tesla does not say the same for the attach rate.
The pace of growth suggests the 10 million target is distant. Tesla added 260,000 net FSD subscriptions in Q3, its best quarter so far. At that rate, reaching 10 million would take about eight years. At the roughly 700,000-a-year pace of the past 12 months, it would take closer to 12. The award runs until 2035.
Electrek argued that counting outright purchasers is not wrong on its own, since those cars do have the software. Its objection is to calling them subscriptions and presenting the total as evidence of momentum when the definition was written for Musk's compensation rather than for investors. The outlet also noted that hundreds of thousands of those customers were sold unsupervised self-driving, which Tesla has yet to deliver, and called on the company to disclose retention figures for North American buyers who began subscriptions in the second quarter.
