Car rental giant Turo will start advertising which Teslas on its marketplace are outfitted with the automaker’s advanced driver assistance system, Full Self-Driving (Supervised) — or FSD, a collaboration that could boost further adoption of the driving software.
📌 The Core Development
Eligible Turo “hosts” who rent out their cars on the platform will also receive a free one-month trial of FSD. Turo said it is working with Tesla to directly access the automaker’s API to verify which cars have FSD enabled.
The announcement comes just a few days after Tesla offered updated figures that show the carmaker is finally getting more customers to pay for the software, which can handle most driving tasks but still requires human supervision.
🔍 Background & Sector Context
Last week, Tesla revealed that around 1.7 million customers have paid for FSD globally, out of more than 10 million cars built and sold to date. The company said more than 75% of customers who took delivery of a car in North America during the third-quarter paid for an FSD subscription. That was a roughly 20% increase from the second quarter, though the company’s U.S. sales have been in decline .
Tesla has spent much of the last year re-working some of its showrooms to focus more on FSD as a selling point. In a post last week, the company’s chief executive Elon Musk said the effort is working.
📊 Industry & Real-World Impact
“People are buying FSD with a car attached, not the other way around,” wrote Musk.
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🔮 Strategic Outlook & What Lies Ahead
“Customers are now coming in and saying: ‘Can we get into an FSD drive?’ They’re not asking for [Model] 3, [Model] Y, or Cybertruck,” Tesla’s finance chief Vaibhav Taneja said on last week’s earnings call.
For Turo, the addition of FSD rentals gives the company a chance to boost what are already some of its most heavily-rented vehicles. Turo said Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y are the third and fourth-most popular vehicles on its platform this year. “[T]his integration further increases host earning opportunities as interest in self-driving technology grows,” said Turo.
