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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.
⚡ Meanwhile, At Tesla:
Tesla is in the middle of an overt retreat from making cars. Musk announced the cancellation of the O.G. Model S and Model X to make room for humanoid robots.
Instead, engineering VP Lars Moravy said, “You have to start thinking about us as providing transportation as a service.”
The big news from Tesla was the disclosure of active Full Self-Driving (Supervised) subscriptions for the first time: 1.1 million.
Musk claims that’s a 38% increase from Q4 2024.
FSD costs $99 per month and was recently discontinued as a one-time purchase. It allows for hands-free driving on highways and in urban areas, but it’s continually dogged by safety investigations and lawsuits.
FSD is now subscription-only; it’s no longer available as a one-time purchase. (Recurring revenue!)
A version of FSD is used on Tesla’s Robotaxis. The company claims that service will be in “dozens of major cities” this year (though it fell well short of expansion goals in 2025).
Autonomy, to Musk and co., is the future of Tesla and the key to unlocking better automation for robots too: “We believe that the segment we are creating will grow millions year over year.”
📊 More Context:
Subscription features in cars have been a tough sell. And why not? You now have to pay monthly for things you once got when you bought the car.
BMW became a kind of global pariah when it attempted to charge subscription fees for heated seats several years ago.
Younger drivers tend to be more OK with subscriptions—they grew up paying for Netflix and Spotify and everything in between.
But in an S&P Global survey in 2025, only a third of respondents said they’d want subscription features in cars. The rest wanted a free trial, or none at all.
The upside (for car companies, anyway) to all of this is that hands-free highway driving is now the most in-demand feature among car-buyers.
And if these numbers from GM and Tesla are any indication, people are willing to subscribe to use that feature.
I didn’t have time to get into it this week, but Ford reported similar results: BlueCruise use is skyrocketing. (No word yet on recent subscription data.)
🧠 My Take
Forward-thinking folks in the auto industry tell me this all the time: the long-term goal for these companies should be to move away from making money by selling cars one at a time. (Or having dealers do this—you get the idea.)
And why not? Carmaking is a brutal, low-margin, capital-intensive business. Investors prefer recurring revenue, especially from subscriptions.
ADAS tech is among the most advanced in the sector, something automakers are pouring billions into. (Rivian says that’s its biggest area of investment.)
Automakers can’t afford for these bets to fail, even though they’re all chasing the same outcome and only some will end up with the best tech.
Simply put: if drivers want autonomy, they’re going to have to pay extra for it, and not just when they buy the car. This model is likely to define the entire space.
In Tesla’s case: I do wonder how this subscription push tracks with its lack of interest in selling cars or making new EVs. It feels like you have to do both, until Robotaxis are ubiquitious?
Either way, expect the competition over ADAS subscribers and revenue to be a fixture of many earnings reports from now on.
📰 More Stories That Matter
I penned the obituary for the Tesla Model S in The Atlantic this week. It was still the 21st century’s most important car. [The Atlantic]
Scout Motors, surprised by the demand for its gas-engine-equipped Harvester EREV, will deploy that before the fully electric version. [InsideEVs]
The market is getting a little weird right now for plug-in hybrids, perhaps even more so than for EVs. [Automotive News]
One in 10 cars sold in Europe is now made by a Chinese brand. [Bloomberg]
Joanna Stern, the WSJ’s must-read tech columnist, gets her hands on a Xiaomi SU7. Like Ford’s CEO, she didn’t want to give it back. [WSJ]
If you need it, here are some of my own winter EV driving tips, including stuff I’ve learned the hard way. [InsideEVs]
📡 On My Radar
Could the Musk empire of companies see consolidation this year? Reports have emerged that SpaceX and xAI could merge, along with Tesla and SpaceX—wild to think about. [Bloomberg]
Chinese automakers have the U.S. market in their crosshairs. Here's what it could mean for car dealers. [Car Dealership Guy]
The Volvo EX90 launch was a bit of a software disaster. My colleague Mack Hogan reports on why Volvo thinks the EX60 will be smoother. [InsideEVs]
South Korea just can’t catch a break. President Trump hiked the nation’s tariff rate back to 25%, which is bad news for Hyundai and Kia profits. [CNBC]
Then again, Canada is opening its doors to more Korean manufacturing in another split with the U.S. [New York Times]
🔌 Charging News
The space got some great news this week: 2025 was the best year yet for U.S. charger installations—and they’re getting more powerful, too. [InsideEVs]
A federal judge swatted down the Trump administration’s freeze on America’s $5 billion EV charger funding program. [The Hill]
Following that court ruling, Washington State selected five partners for $12.1 million in funding for EV chargers. [Washington State Standard]
Despite its many challenges, that program—the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program—had a strong growth year in 2025. [InsideEVs]
Walmart, which has become a godsend to EV drivers everywhere, is expanding its charger presence across 19 states. [MassLive]
GM adds Electrify America access to its native EV app. [GM News]
Pilot Travel Centers are adding 1.2-megawatt chargers for the Tesla Semi at dozens of truck stops. [FreightWaves]
🔋 Battery Industry News
Battery recycling startup Redwood Materials just netted a $425 million Series E round, including Google as an investor. [Heatmap News]
Maybe battery preconditioning isn’t up to par with real-world charging needs. Startup Breathe Battery Technologies aims to fix that. [Automotive News]
Chinese giant CATL says it will launch its first sodium-ion batteries in passenger vehicles in Q2. [Electrek]
A slowdown in the U.S. EV market is, understandably, hitting LG Energy Solutions’ bottom line. [Argus Media]
As Ford spins up Ford Energy, a new business line for energy storage, a familiar face takes the reins: Lisa Drake, Ford’s former EV platform chief. [Detroit Free Press]
Chinese automaker BYD will build a new EV battery plant in Vietnam with a local auto partner. [Just Auto]
🤖 Autonomy News
Someday, your Uber autonomous vehicle could be quite nice: Mercedes and Nvidia are partnering on an S-Class robotaxi. [Bloomberg]
Speaking of Uber, it’s launching a new data-pooling division called Uber AV Labs for its 20 (!!!) autonomy partners. [TechCrunch]
Add one more to that list: Toronto-based AV trucking startup Waabi inked a deal with Uber to launch up to 25,000 robotaxis on that network. [Fortune]
Waymo is under fire again after one AV hit a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica. [TechCrunch]
Another strange incident involved an out-of-control Zeekr-made Waymo Ojai van in Los Angeles. [LA Mag]
Hopefully, it’s past those issues when Waymo launches in London as early as September this year. [BBC]
Suddenly, “unsupervised” Tesla Robotaxi rides are hard to come by after this week’s earnings call. [Electrek]
A big, hard-to-believe Musk claim: amid sinking demand, Tesla’s Cybertruck could be converted into a “fully autonomous” delivery truck. [Austin American-Statesman]
🧠 AI News
The new Mercedes S-Class uses radar, cameras and AI to make its ride quality even smoother over uneven roads. [Gizmodo]
The shift to AI-powered voice controls “signals a fundamental rethinking of how automakers monetize the driver experience.” [Automotive News]
Here’s how Porsche is using AI to boost electric range. [Design News]
📤 Spread the Charge
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❓ How’s My Driving?
This is a work in progress, so all feedback is welcome. Send me your thoughts anytime.
💡 Did You Know?
The granddaddy of subscription features in cars is GM’s OnStar, launched for 1997’s Cadillac models. It was primarily a safety feature that could connect drivers with an operator in the event of an emergency—remember, this was before cell phones—but it laid the groundwork for GM’s connected telematics system that’s still used today.
Until next time,
—Patrick George