Elon Musk has spent years insisting that rival automakers should buy Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software instead of building their own. His latest comments go further, hinting that they are not just skeptical but afraid of what FSD would expose inside their cars. New reporting and technical benchmarks now sketch out a harsher explanation, one that has less to do with pride and more to do with liability, regulation, and who controls the customer relationship in a driverless future.
Put bluntly, the emerging evidence suggests legacy brands are wary that adopting Tesla’s stack would hand Musk the keys to their most valuable asset, the in-car computer and data pipeline, at the exact moment regulators are tightening scrutiny and consumers are being pushed into recurring software fees.
From “crazy” snub to quiet stalemate
When Elon Musk complained on Tuesday that other carmakers did not want to pay for Tesla’s self-driving technology, he framed it as a baffling snub of a superior product rather than a strategic choice. In that earlier post on X, Elon Musk said he could not understand why rivals would refuse to license a system he portrays as years ahead, and The Tesla CEO told investors that he did not expect to be striking deals anytime soon. That gap between public invitation and private expectation is the first clue that the stalemate is structural, not just emotional.
More recently, Musk has sharpened the point, arguing that Automakers have not gone “crazy” by embracing Tesla’s approach, even as he touts the company’s autonomous driving computer as a turnkey solution. In a separate report that highlighted how legacy brands are sticking with their own advanced driver-assistance systems, the coverage of Follow Lloyd Lee underscored that Every legacy brand is weighing not just performance but who ultimately owns the stack. When Lloyd and others describe how Enter and Sign up prompts sit next to stories about autonomy, it is a reminder that data and recurring engagement, not just hardware, are the real prize.
Technical lead, with strings attached
On pure capability, Tesla has a strong case that FSD is ahead of the pack. Independent testing that compared a range of driver-assistance systems found that Tesla FSD (in its supervised form) now outperforms rivals on a mix of lane-keeping, traffic handling, and feature breadth. Last year, GM’s Last Super Cruise system took top honors in similar evaluations, but the same testers now say FSD’s capabilities have only improved, a shift that helps explain why Musk is so vocal about licensing.
Analysts who walked the floor at CES came away with a similar impression. In a detailed analysis, Ferragu argued that while competitors are making strides, their latest announcements effectively concede a decade-long lag behind Tesla’s software-centric approach. That gap is not just about code, it is about the integrated hardware that Musk wants to sell as a package, from the autonomous driving computer to the sensor suite, which would sit at the heart of any partner’s vehicle architecture.
Fear of losing the customer, not just the credit
For legacy brands, the brutal logic is that adopting FSD would turn them into hardware vendors for Musk’s software empire. One investor who pressed this point, Jan Gary Black, has said Tesla will not be “winner-take-all” in autonomy, stressing that his question is about competitive advantage, not product superiority. If a Mercedes or Toyota driver is paying a monthly fee to Musk for FSD, the brand on the steering wheel risks becoming secondary to the software subscription that actually defines the experience.
Tesla’s own pricing moves underline why that prospect is so sensitive. The company has decided that it will End One Time FSD Purchase, a shift that turns a long-standing promise of a one-off upgrade into a recurring revenue stream. Electric vehicle (EV) giant Tesla TSLA is making that change just as it pitches FSD as the core of its future valuation, which makes it even harder to imagine the company giving partners generous economics on the same software.
Regulators circling, liability rising
There is another, less glamorous reason automakers might be wary of bolting FSD into their cars: regulators are already circling Tesla’s own deployment. Federal auto safety regulators have given Federal investigators more time to probe allegations that Tesla vehicles using driver-assistance features were involved in 58 reported incidents in October. That scrutiny is not limited to branding or marketing, it goes to the heart of how the software behaves in edge cases, and any automaker that licenses FSD would be tying its own safety record to Musk’s code.
At the same time, Tesla’s FSD is described as being at a Crossroads, with U.S. Safety Scrutiny and Europe’s Regulatory Opening pulling the technology in different directions. That Regulatory Opening in Europe hints at a path for supervised autonomy under strict conditions, but it also signals that lawmakers are ready to write detailed rules about how systems like FSD must behave. For a legacy automaker that has spent decades managing recall risk, importing a third-party stack that is already under the microscope looks less like a shortcut and more like a liability multiplier.
Subscription shock and consumer trust
Even among Tesla loyalists, the shift to subscriptions is proving contentious, which gives rivals another reason to hesitate. When Musk announced that FSD would only be available as a monthly service after Valentine’s Day, he did it in a post on X that Tuesday
Reporting on how drivers reacted captured that tension in human terms. In the Transportation section, Transportation writer By Ben Shimkus spoke with Tesla Model 3 owner Leslie Snipes, who learned from the Tesla “company update” that her path to FSD would now run through a subscription. For a rival automaker contemplating a white-label deal, the lesson is stark: if even Tesla fans bristle at losing a one-time purchase, convincing their own customers to pay Musk monthly for FSD could be a hard sell.
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