Tesla's New Automatic Collision Evasion Only Works for FSD Subscribers, Leaving Millions Without Access

Disclaimer: Many of our readers have criticized me for supporting an Elon Musk company. It does present a conundrum for me. Musk has supported Donald Trump with millions of dollars of campaign contributions and has served as a member of his administration. Trump has single-handedly set back green energy and electric vehicle adoption in the US by possibly 10 years. He is doing this because of his historical hatred for wind turbines near his golf courses and as payback for massive campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. On the other hand, Musk’s development of the first practical EVs, like the original Roadster and Model S, plus his development of a US-wide Supercharger system on major US highways probably advanced the adoption of EVs worldwide by maybe 10 years. His Model Y EV became the best-selling automobile in the world of any kind for a couple years and is still near the top. He has also spent $billions$ developing Tesla’s Full Self Driving hardware/software and training it on billions of driving situations. His FSD works extremely well on superhighways, two-lane highways, city streets, and country roads anywhere in the US and in many foreign countries. FSD, plus the Tesla Supercharger network and continued development of advanced functionality of Tesla EV hardware, continue to make his EVs the first choice of millions of drivers like me.

A few evenings ago, I was driving my 2026 Tesla Model Y past the Three Lakes town market in our little town in Northern Wisconsin. A big black pickup truck pulled out from the market without looking, directly into my path. Before I even saw the truck, Full Self Driving V14 took radical evasive action swerving to the right and avoided the truck. I’m certain that I would have hit the truck without FSD.

“Tesla has introduced a new feature called Automatic Collision Evasion, which can autonomously activate Full Self-Driving (FSD) to avoid imminent collisions, even if the driver has not engaged the FSD system. This feature aims to enhance safety by allowing the vehicle to take evasive actions during critical situations.”

In my case described above, I was driving with FSD engaged when it automatically made a radical evasive maneuver to avoid hitting the truck that pulled out in front of me. My wife and I obsessively use FSD. Tesla keeps track of your FSD use, and my rating is 95%.

My issue: You must have paid $99/month for FSD V14 and have turned it on in the menu. Also, it only works with Teslas with Hardware 4 running FSD V14, which have been built since mid 2023. The problem: Only 15% of Tesla customers are paying the $99/month for FSD 14. That means that 85% of Tesla owners, millions of them, don’t have access to Automatic Collision Evasion.

We have a family member and a friend that purchased permanent subscriptions to the previous version of FSD and neither routinely used it. Fortunately, if you have paid the $99 monthly subscription fee and have it switched on in the menu, the new Automatic Collision Evasion will operate even when FSD 14 is not active.

Bottom line: There are millions of Tesla customers who don’t have the lifesaving potential of FSD because they are not paying for it and the new Automatic Collision Evasion functionality. Tesla has sold about 5 million cars since mid 2023. If 85% are not paying the $99/month, that means that over 4 million Tesla customers don’t have FSD, and it follows that many have died as a result. How can Tesla morally justify this happening?

When Nils Bohlin invented the 3-point seatbelt in 1959, he immediately made the patent available at no cost to all manufacturers because of its life saving potential. Tesla is not even making the lifesaving potential of FSD and Automatic Collision Evasion available to all its customers, to say nothing of making it available to other manufacturers.

Tesla may have already spent billions of dollars developing the hardware and software to implement FSD and continues to spend millions of dollars to continue its development. This has been orders of magnitude more expensive than Volvo’s development of the three-point seat belt.

If Tesla must make more money to continue the development of FSD, Tesla could add a required, say, $500 safety fee to the purchase price of each new vehicle to make up for the income lost by no longer charging $99/month for FSD. However, to get all the current owners with vehicles with HW4 using it, Tesla needs to stop charging them $99/month.

Fortunately, the new Automatic Collision Evasion function solves the safety problem of people who have paid the $99 monthly subscription fee and have it switched on in the menu, but don’t routinely activate the system. If Tesla would put customers’ lives ahead of cash flow, it would at least make the new Automatic Collision Evasion operational for all Tesla customers, not just those who are paying the $99/month subscription fee for FSD.

It turns out, Tesla is doing the opposite: Instead of making more safety functionality operational for all Tesla customers, it is taking functionality away. The 85% of Tesla customers who don’t pay for FSD no longer get automatic lane assist, which has until recently been a standard feature for all Tesla customers since 2012. Why is Tesla doing this? Tesla thinks of FSD as a cash cow and is using this as motivation to get its customers to pay the $99/month for FSD functionality. Musk has promised numerous times over the last 10 years that FSD would achieve level 5 functionality soon. Level 5 means that you can text, read a book, go to sleep, or send your car to pick up the kids at school while FSD drives your car. Musk has also stated that when FSD achieves level 5, he will raise the price. I worry that I will be priced out of using FSD.

Automatic lane assist is standard functionality these days for virtually all car manufacturers. We rented a bare bones Toyota Corolla recently and it had automatic lane assist. It worked well only on superhighways, but it was a standard feature of the Corolla. The bare bones Nissan Leaf that we leased in 2014 had automatic lane assist as a standard feature.

If you find any of my articles helpful to you, please use my referral link when buying a new Tesla: https://ts.la/arthur73734 (Be sure to use it when you make your order). Tesla keeps changing the program, but here’s the latest: If you are buying a new Tesla Model 3 or Y and use my link, you will get two months of free Full Self Driving (a ~$200 value) on top of the one month that comes free with every new Model Y right now. This will get you a total of 3 months free Full Self Driving. It will be $99/month after that. For a Cybertruck, you will get $1000 off your purchase price. At this moment, Tesla is offering a year of free Supercharging with the purchase of a new Model 3 Premium or Performance.