Elon's Offering, But Automakers Aren’t Interested In Licensing Tesla’s Full Self-Driving System

Are you surprised other automakers haven’t come calling? Photo: Jasper Juinen/Bloomberg (Getty Images)

Over the past year, Tesla showed off its Full Self-Driving advanced driver assistance tech in an underwhelming demo video shared by big boss Elon Musk. The tech has also been associated with all manner of high-profile crashes and driving misdemeanors in recent months, so it might come as no surprise that no other automakers have taken Musk up on his offer to license the FSD tech to their own cars.

Walter Isaacson On Elon Musk(s)

Musk first proposed a licensing deal for Full Self-Driving”in June 2023, when he took to Twitter X to offer up the software to his company’s rivals. He reiterated those calls this week, again taking to X to say that that “Tesla would be happy to do such deals,” reports CarScoops.

Musk is eager to work out a way to profit off the FSD system with consumers that currently aren’t tied to the Tesla ecosystem, as it has done by opening up its Supercharger network to rival electric car makers. However, while automakers may be reluctant to throw cash at hardware projects like a new charging network, they’re less reluctant to invest in their own self-driving software, which CarScoops suggests could be a “big money generator for automakers” in the coming years.

In the months since Musk first proposed licensing out the software, no automaker has reached out to make such a deal, reports Benzinga. That’s none. Nada. Zero out of more than 60 auto brands that currently sell their cars on the planet we call home. As Benzinga explains:

Though the company had some tentative conversations, no agreement was entered into. “I think they (rival automakers) don’t believe it’s real quite yet,” Musk then said.”I do want to emphasize that if I were CEO of another car company, I would definitely be calling Tesla and asking to license Tesla’s full self-driving technology.”

Can you blame them, though? It’s been 10 months since Musk first said that his company endeavored to be “as helpful as possible to other car companies” by licensing out “Autopilot/FSD or other Tesla technology,” as he said on X. In that time, cars equipped with FSD have been caught running red lights and driving head-on into floodwaters. There have also been several deadly crashes involving Tesla vehicles, in which investigators are assessing whether or not the system was involved.

If you’re a car company with an image to uphold, would you strap this system into your latest and greatest vehicles?