Tesla Is Officially In Its Enshittification Era

I hate to say it, but I was right.

Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash

It is hard not to come across as a smug prick when you say, “I told you so.” Still, I am going to have to try. You see, just over a week ago, I made some bold, damning predictions about Tesla. I assumed that these would come true in a few months’ time, but it seems Musk has jumped the gun and proven me correct already. This effectively confirms that Musk is taking Tesla in a downward spiral of enshittification to line his own pocket. So, let me shed some light on the subject.

I made these predictions in the article “The Enshittification Of Tesla Has Been Turned Up To 11”, in which I explore why Musk is making FSD a subscription-only purchase from February. Ultimately, all of the conditions of Musk’s $1 trillion pay package have been phrased in such a manner that Musk can meet them without actually delivering any tangible growth, and I highly suspect that is what is going on here.

One of these conditions is that Tesla will “reach ten million active subscriptions to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD)”. This doesn’t measure how well Tesla’s self-driving business is doing at all because the definition is too loose, too unconstrained. Case in point: Musk removing the ability to buy FSD outright would nudge him closer to this goal without delivering any tangible real-world growth.

Especially when no one wants to buy the FSD system. In 2024, only 2% of drivers who tried FSD went on to purchase it. By the end of 2025, only 12% of the Tesla fleet had bought FSD, and FSD revenue in Q3 2025 was actually lower than in Q3 2024. We really shouldn’t be surprised by this when you look at Tesla’s FSD-powered Robotaxi service. Musk promised that it would cover half the US population by the end of 2025. Yet in 2026, it consists of just ten Robotaxis bumbling around Austin, Texas, at any one time. Not only that, but these Robotaxis crashed seven times over 250,000 miles, making their crash rate ten times higher than that of human drivers! And that is with a safety driver in the car, meaning that they weren’t truly autonomous. Despite this, Tesla’s Robotaxi recently began operating without a safety driver in the car, though it appears they have simply been transferred to a chaser car, making it appear more like smoke and mirrors than actual progress. No wonder no one wants to buy this system, as it is light-years away from being even remotely usable.

FSD is arguably the biggest automotive sales flop in history. Yes, even worse than the Cybertruck. Tesla has spent somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion developing FSD and is expected to spend around $5 billion a year on development going forward. Yet FSD generates just a few hundred million dollars in revenue each year, and there are only marginal improvements in its performance and safety.

My main prediction from this previous article was that Musk will get desperate and force more customers to subscribe to FSD by any means, given that he can’t sell FSD subscriptions on their own merit. I noted that “Musk will put other important features behind the FSD paywall. Want to use the heated seats? They work with an FSD subscription. Want your car to charge fast? Buy an FSD subscription, and it will unlock that feature. Want to use all your car’s power? The FSD subscription enables that.”

This is, effectively, enshittification because it involves hitting arbitrary targets by the letter, not the intent. And guess what? It has already happened, and in a worse way than I predicted.

Tesla has officially discontinued Autopilot for new vehicles in the US and Canada. Now, Tesla bundles it with FSD, so the only way to access this core feature is to buy the $99 FSD subscription.

Autopilot had two features: Traffic Aware Cruise Control (TACC), which managed speed and following distance, and Autosteer, which actively kept your vehicle in lane. The Autosteer is the feature that has been paywalled, so as standard, Teslas now only come with TACC.

That is an insane thing to put behind the FSD paywall and proves just how desperate Musk is.

To give you context, £20,000 EVs ($27,000 on-road equivalent) in the UK come with Autosteer (lane-follow) as standard; no subscription or extra option is needed! In the US, Toyota Corollas also come with it as standard, and they are nearly half the price of the Model 3 ‘Premium’.

I don’t think you realise just how much of a catastrophic shot in the foot this is for Tesla, because it is far worse than putting something like heated seats behind the FSD paywall.

Take the Hyundai Ioniq 6, arguably one of the Model 3’s biggest competitors. It costs a similar price and has a similar range to the Model 3, but the Ioniq 6 comes with Lane Follow Assist (their equivalent of Autosteer) and active cruise control (TACC equivalent) as standard. So, for the Model 3 to be the equivalent spec to the Ioniq 6, you need to account for paying an extra $99 per month that disappears into Mr Musk’s pocket. Customers typically hold onto new cars for around 8.4 years in the US, so the total cost for FSD during that time is $9,979.20.

In one fell swoop, Musk has made his car ten smackers more expensive than its closest rival! Who in their right mind would buy the Model 3 over the Ioniq 6?

Autopilot was a critical draw for many Tesla customers and a fundamental part of Tesla’s success. When it became a standard feature in 2019, it pushed Tesla sales through the roof. For years now, these lane-following systems have been a highly desirable, if not essential, feature for new cars in Tesla’s price bracket. Putting this critical feature behind a $99-a-month subscription to a completely different feature that customers unilaterally do not want makes Tesla’s value proposition exponentially worse. It will drive customers to rivals who offer an Autopilot equivalent as standard or as a cheap one-time purchase feature.

Musk knows this. He is, in my opinion, an idiot, but even his two pesky neurons are capable of understanding the consequences. Still, he continues to plough ahead anyway, damaging Tesla’s core business in a blatant attempt to meet this awfully worded, arbitrary condition of his ludicrous pay package.

And this is just the start. I can almost guarantee that this decision will not increase FSD sales enough. We can expect more of this enshittification to come. Even the fact that Musk pulled this move months before I expected him to is a telling sign. It hints at desperation. So, what’s next? What else can Musk shove behind this paywall? How else can he force users to pay monthly for his awful system? I don’t know. But the fact Musk has attempted this so quickly suggests that Tesla has firmly entered its enshittification era and that it will all be downhill from here.

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Thanks for reading! Everything expressed in this article is my opinion, and should not be taken as financial advice or accusations. Don’t forget to check out my YouTubechannel for more from me, or Subscribe. Oh, and don’t forget to hit the share button below to get the word out!

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Sources: NATA, NATA, NATA, Will Lockett, Electrek, Electrek, iSeeCars