Tesla is discontinuing Autopilot in an effort to boost adoption of its full self-driving software

Tesla has to stop Autopilot, its primary driver-assistance system, as the company tries to boost adoption of a more advanced version of the technology it calls full (supervised) self-driving.

The decision comes as the company faces a 30-day suspension of manufacturing and dealer licenses in its largest US market, California. A judge ruled in December that Tesla was involved Deceptive marketing By overestimating the capabilities of autopilot and FSD for years. The California Department of Motor Vehicles, which originally brought the case and has a say in the licenses, stayed the ruling for 60 days to allow Tesla to comply by dropping the Autopilot name.

Autopilot was a combination of Traffic Aware Cruise Control, which sticks to a set speed while maintaining distance to cars in front of you, and Autosteer, a lane-centered feature that can steer the car around curves.

Tesla’s online configuration site now states that new cars now only come standard with Traffic Aware Cruise Control. It is not clear whether existing customers are affected.

The decision comes one week after the company said this Starting February 14thwill stop charging a one-time $8,000 fee for the FSD program. After that, customers will only be able to access FSD through a $99 monthly subscription — although Tesla CEO Elon Musk He wrote in another On Thursday, the subscription price will rise as the program’s capabilities improve.

Musk believes Tesla’s newer cars will be capable of “unsupervised” driving, saying advances in FSD will allow drivers to “stay on your phone or sleep the entire ride.” In December, he said a new version of the FSD had allowed the first Texting while driving is illegal in almost all states.

On Thursday, Tesla rolled out Early versions of robotaxi of a Model Y SUV in Austin, Texas, which does not have personnel to monitor human safety in the vehicles. These vehicles operate with a more advanced version of the company’s driving software, and the company’s cars still follow them for supervision.

Tesla launched the beta version of its full self-driving software in late 2020, but its adoption has consistently lagged behind the expectations of executives like Musk. In October 2025, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja He said Only 12% of all Tesla customers have paid for the software. Reaching “10 million active FSD subscriptions” by 2035 is one of its main “product goals.” It is required for Musk to receive the full return From his new trillion-dollar pay package.

Tesla first introduced the Autopilot system in early 2010 After the collapse of the talks between Musk and Google to leverage technology being developed by the search giant’s nascent self-driving division (which eventually spun off into Waymo). Tesla has made a driver assistance system standard All its cars in April 2019.

Over the course of more than a decade of Autopilot’s existence, Tesla has struggled to communicate the software’s capabilities. The company often overpromised and made the technology seem more capable than it was, leading some drivers to become overconfident in its abilities, which in turn led to hundreds of accidents and at least 13 deaths. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.