Tesla claims 1.74 million FSD users, a figure tied to Elon Musk's pay

Tesla has announced that it now has 1.74 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions. This figure represents a 67 percent increase compared to the same period last year. The company revealed this data in its third quarter 2026 shareholder letter. A specific footnote in the document explains the calculation method used to arrive at this total. The metric follows the definition set out in the 2025 CEO Performance Award. It includes both upfront payments and monthly recurring subscriptions in the final count.

This counting method means that owners who purchased the software outright years ago are still classified as subscribers. This distinction is significant because reaching 10 million active FSD subscriptions is a key milestone for Elon Musk. He must hit this target to earn a portion of his 2025 pay package. The definition also impacts how investors view the company's growth. Hundreds of thousands of these counted users were sold on the promise of unsupervised self-driving. Tesla has not yet delivered that specific level of autonomy to all of them.

The company stopped selling FSD as a one-time purchase on February 14, 2026. New customers in the United States can now only access the feature as a subscription for 99 dollars a month. However, anyone who paid upfront before that date remains in the active count. The only exception to this rule is free trials. Those temporary access periods are excluded from the 1.74 million figure. The previous price for the one-time purchase reached as high as 15,000 dollars.

Tesla reported 1.28 million active subscriptions in April of this year. Six months later, the number rose to 1.74 million. Despite this growth, the company has not disclosed how many of those users are currently paying the monthly fee. The same accounting approach appears in other parts of the shareholder letter. Tesla's cumulative delivery figure now stands at 10.2 million vehicles. This total also includes any unsupervised Robotaxis placed into commercial operation. This inclusion aligns with the pay package, which has a milestone of 20 million vehicles.

The company states that more than 75 percent of new deliveries in North America included FSD subscriptions in the third quarter. This represents a nearly twenty percentage point increase from the previous quarter. Tesla believes that FSD is driving demand in markets where it is available. The letter does not define exactly how this attach rate is calculated. It does not clarify if introductory offers at the time of delivery are included. It also does not specify how many of those initial buyers are still paying after a few months.

Musk's 2025 award consists of 12 tranches. Each tranche requires meeting a market cap milestone and one operational milestone. The operational list includes delivering 20 million vehicles, reaching 10 million active FSD subscriptions, and achieving 1 million Optimus robots. It also requires 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation and specific adjusted EBITDA targets. As of June 30, Tesla considered only one of these milestones probable. That milestone is the 20 million deliveries target.

Tesla added 260,000 net FSD subscriptions in the third quarter. This was its best quarter yet in terms of growth. At this current pace, it would take about eight years to reach the 10 million target. If the company maintains the pace of the last 12 months, which was about 700,000 per year, it would take closer to 12 years. The award runs until 2035. The board wrote the definition, and Musk's compensation depends on it. The company knows the number of monthly payers but has not yet shared it with investors.