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⚡ This Week’s Big Charge
💡 Automakers Are Betting Big on ADAS Subscriptions. Here’s Why.
Owning a car comes with unavoidable recurring costs: monthly payments, insurance, gas (or electricity), and maintenance. But how much are you willing to pay for your car to drive itself?
After a busy week covering Q4 earnings calls from both General Motors and Tesla, I’m convinced this will be one of the defining questions for the auto industry in 2026 and beyond.
There was plenty of news from two very different automakers that find themselves in radically different situations as they contend for the same buyers. GM posted better-than-expected annual results amid a tariff crunch and costs tied to slowing its electric-vehicle push (even as it finished 2025 second to Tesla in EV sales). Meanwhile, Tesla posted its first sales decline in about a decade and a 46% drop in profit as it races away from cars and attempts to become a robotics and AI powerhouse.
But their earnings reports had two things in common that perhaps didn’t get enough attention this week. Both companies included more details about automated driving assistance system (ADAS) subscriptions than we’ve seen previously. Here’s why that matters.
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🛻 GM’s Big Money Dreams For Super Cruise:
GM reports that it ended 2025 with more than 620,000 Super Cruise subscribers, up 80% from the previous year.
The highway-only hands-free driving system costs about $40 per month, but it’s included with a free three-year trial on about two dozen gas cars and EVs.
The big news is Super Cruise renewals: after that trial, about 40% of owners opt to keep it. (It’s also becoming a way for GM to make money from used cars.)
Subscriptions are becoming a big business at GM, accounting for $5.4 billion in deferred revenue in 2025. GM expects that to hit $7.5 billion this year.
This includes in-car connected services, streaming apps and more for GM’s impressive but controversially Apple CarPlay-free software system.
Super Cruise alone generated $234 million in revenue for 2025. GM expects that to hit "almost $400 million" in 2026.
GM has big dreams for the tech. It hopes to go fully “eyes-off” with a lidar-equipped Cadillac EV in 2028.
The plan seems clear: Get drivers hooked on Super Cruise now, while prices could rise as capabilities improve—something Tesla CEO Elon Musk was far more explicit about.