ISLAMABAD: Tesla has quietly abandoned its long-standing pledge to deliver fully autonomous cars, changing the meaning of its much-hyped “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system. The company now markets it as “Full Self-Driving (Supervised),” acknowledging that drivers must remain engaged behind the wheel.
Since 2016, CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that Tesla vehicles would soon be capable of unsupervised autonomy—promising year after year, since 2018, that the technology was just months away. Buyers have paid up to $15,000 for the FSD package on the assurance that future software updates would unlock true self-driving capability, Electrek website reported.
A Shift in Definition
Tesla’s updated language drops the promise of full autonomy. Media reports note that the system no longer claims to make vehicles “autonomous” or guarantees it as a future feature. Instead, it’s being framed simply as an advanced driver-assist system that still requires human supervision.
Tying Musk’s Pay to FSD—But Redefining It
The shift comes as Tesla’s board proposes a record-breaking new compensation plan for Musk—worth up to $1 trillion in stock options if performance milestones are met. Among those milestones is reaching 10 million active FSD subscriptions.
But Tesla has rewritten what FSD means in that compensation package, defining it vaguely as “an advanced driving system… capable of performing transportation tasks that provide autonomous or similar functionality under specified driving conditions.” Under this definition, Tesla’s current supervised version of FSD could qualify—without delivering the unsupervised autonomy long promised to buyers.
A Broken Dream for Owners
For years, Musk touted a future where Tesla owners could sleep in their cars and wake up at their destination, a vision that helped sell both vehicles and pricey software packages. Today, that dream has been rebranded into a supervised driver-assist system—still advanced, but far from the autonomy that once set Tesla apart.
