Tesla Stock Falls Premarket: Elon Musk Says FSD Will Go Subscription-Only From Valentine's Day

Tesla currently offers FSD on a monthly subscription and a one-time fee of $8,000.

• Tesla shares dropped 0.1% in Wednesday’s premarket session, following Musk’s X post about FSD.
• Tesla plans to remove the one-time fee option for FSD from Feb. 14.
• FSD is a major play in Musk’s vision for Tesla; the EV maker is working to roll out a fully autonomous, unsupervised version.

Tesla, Inc. shares dropped marginally in early premarket trading on Wednesday, following founder Elon Musk’s X post saying that the electric vehicle maker would offer its self-drive technology through a monthly subscription plan only from Feb. 14 onwards.

Currently, Tesla allows its EV owners to purchase FSD (Supervised) for a one-time payment of $8,000 or a subscription of $99 per month in the U.S.

The move follows a new probe by the U.S. transport safety authority into approximately 2.9 million Tesla cars fitted with FSD technology over alleged violations of safety laws.

FSD Push

For Musk, the Tesla FSD (Full Self-Driving) system is core to his vision for the electric vehicle company. He regularly shares updates and milestones about FSD, which is currently available in Tesla cars in the U.S., Canada, China, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, and New Zealand. 

Although Tesla currently offers a “supervised” version, which means a person must be at the steering wheel when the system is deployed, Musk recently said, “FSD Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point.” He has also said China is set to approve Tesla’s unsupervised FSD this year.

Tesla initially partnered with Mobileye in 2014 to develop an autonomous system. That partnership ended, and Tesla unveiled its in-house FSD in 2016. The EV giant claims its cars have driven over 7.3 billion miles with FSD enabled.

Legacy automakers are jumping on self-driving technology. Mercedes-Benz unveiled Mb.Drive Assist Pro, a major upgrade to its autonomous tech, in partnership with Nvidia, at the CES 2026 trade show. Musk recently said he had previously offered the FSD technology license to other automakers, adding that he found their refusal ‘crazy.’

Stock Weakness

Over the past few months, Tesla’s stock has softened from its late-2025 highs and dipped materially into early 2026 amid broader market pressure. 

The downturn is driven largely by slowing EV sales and delivery declines in key markets such as Europe and China, as well as rising competition from both legacy automakers and Chinese rivals.

On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for TSLA has shifted between ‘bearish’ and ‘extremely bearish’ over the past week, as investors prepare for the company's fourth-quarter results on Jan. 28.

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