Tesla has stopped using Autopilot to promote its advanced Full Self-Driving software.
Autopilot included features like Traffic Aware Cruise Control, which helps maintain speed and distance from other cars, and Autosteer, which keeps the car in its lane. Now, new Tesla cars only have the Traffic Aware Cruise Control feature. It’s still unclear how this affects people who already own Tesla vehicles.
Just a week before this change, Tesla said it would drop the $8,000 fee for Full Self-Driving. After February 14, customers can only access this software through a monthly subscription costing $99. Elon Musk, the CEO, indicated that this price may go up as the software gets better.
Musk thinks upcoming Tesla cars could drive without any help from people, allowing drivers to relax during the ride. Recently, Tesla introduced robotaxi versions of its Model Y in Austin, Texas, where no humans are present to take control if needed.
Full Self-Driving started as a beta version back in 2020, but many customers haven’t paid for it. By October 2025, only 12% of Tesla owners had chosen the software. Musk needs to reach 10 million active users by 2035 to get the full benefits of his huge pay plan.
Autopilot first came out in the early 2010s. Musk had planned to work with Google’s self-driving tech, but that fell through. Tesla made Autopilot a standard feature by April 2019.
However, Tesla often struggled to explain what Autopilot could really do. Their promises led some drivers to trust it too much, which resulted in many accidents and at least 13 deaths, as stated by safety officials.