Tesla FSD turns off more U.S. consumers than its attracts, survey finds
Elon Musk reacts during a press event with U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured), at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 30, 2025.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
Elon Musk’s fervent promotion of Tesla‘s self-driving technology isn’t doing much to win over prospective buyers.
According to a new survey, more U.S. consumers say that Tesla’s FSD, or Full Self-Driving (Supervised) systems, would push them away from the brand rather than drawing them to it.
The Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report for August, published by political consulting firm Slingshot Strategies, polled 8,000 Americans. Only 14% of those surveyed said FSD would make them more likely to buy a Tesla, while 35% said the technology would make them less likely to purchase one.
The remaining 51% said the availability of FSD would make no difference to them in terms of their car buying decisions. Nearly half of consumers surveyed by Slingshot said they think FSD technology should be illegal.
For Tesla, the troubling results land in the middle of a sales slump resulting from an aging lineup of electric vehicles and increased competition from rivals. There’s also reputational damage in response to Musk, his incendiary political rhetoric, work with the Trump administration and support of Germany’s far-right AfD party.
Sales of Tesla cars in Europe plunged 40% in July from a year earlier, the seventh consecutive month of declines.
In the robotaxi market, Tesla is lagging Alphabet-owned Waymo, and Baidu’s Apollo Go. It’s now in the early stages of testing a ride-hailing service in Austin, Texas, and in the San Francisco Bay Area, with hopes to reach more cities this year. Cars in Austin have human supervisors on board, while those in San Francisco have drivers at the wheel.
Musk, the world’s richest person, has said the future of Tesla hangs on its ability to deliver autonomous vehicles and related services. He recently said a new variant of the Model Y, which launched in China, won’t “start production in the U.S. until the end of next year,” and “might not ever, given the advent of self-driving in America.”
For now, Tesla still relies on EV sales for the vast majority of its revenue, though Musk has touted FSD as one of the company’s big advantages over competitors.
Last month, executives suggested that Tesla has a market education problem when it comes to driving adoption of FSD.
“The vast majority of people don’t know it exists,” Musk said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call. “And it’s still like half of Tesla owners who could use it, haven’t tried it even once.”
Musk said he would start telling customers about FSD when they bring their cars in for service, and would begin reaching out to drivers, sending them videos of how it works.
Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja said on the July earnings call that people who subscribe to the premium FSD option get something like a “personal chauffeur” for about $3.33 a day.
The version of FSD Supervised that Tesla sells today is available to owners for $99 per month or an up-front purchase. The system gives users a limited set of self-driving capabilities on residential and city streets.
On Thursday, Tesla sent out a promotion offering 0% APR financing for customers ordering a new Model 3 by Sept. 1, as long as they add FSD Supervised to their order, or transfer it from their previously owned Tesla.
‘Holding AV manufacturers responsible’
Musk has said in posts on X that FSD can “can operate in all conditions,” will “save lives” and will be a “life-changing product” for many people. He’s also shared user-generated videos showing Tesla owners using FSD without their hands on the wheel.
However, in owners manuals, Tesla lists many conditions in which FSD Supervised may not be reliable, and warns users to keep their hands on the steering wheel at all times, and be ready to take over steering or braking.
Among the subset of survey respondents actively looking to buy a fully electric vehicle, only 20% said they were more likely to buy a Tesla because of FSD, while 33% said they were less likely. Evan Roth Smith, Slingshot’s head of research, said a lack of clarity and honesty in the company’s marketing could be a factor.
Most consumers polled by the firm want clear and strong regulations in the U.S. governing autonomous vehicles, whether they’re fully or partially automated.
“There is strong support for holding AV manufacturers responsible for accidents and requiring stricter regulatory and advertising guardrails around features such as FSD,” the Slingshot report said.
Smith said the data shows that beyond its FSD woes, Tesla has “the worst reputation of any EV maker in the U.S.”
“The drop in the company’s brand reputation this year is remarkable,” he said, adding that recent product liability lawsuits and verdicts may be playing a role.
In early August, a jury found Tesla partially liable for a fatal crash where the driver was relying on its autopilot systems. Tesla, which plans to appeal the decision, must pay around $243 million in damages to victims and a survivor.
In the past two months, the number of consumers who view Tesla cars as unsafe has increased to 36% from 34%, the Slingshot report found, while those viewing Tesla as very safe fell to 13% from 17%.
Honda, Toyota and Chevrolet were seen as safest among the greatest number of respondents.
Tesla didn’t respond to a request for comment. Slingshot said it sent the survey results to the company but also didn’t hear back from the automaker.
Tesla may find that owners in other markets embrace its brand, and FSD, with greater enthusiasm. The company just started offering FSD Supervised in Australia this week.
Read Slingshot’s full Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report for August 2025 here.
WATCH: Wedbush’s Ives says 80% of Musk lawsuit against Apple, OpenAI is ‘noise’
Charges against Jeffrey Epstein were announced on July 8, 2019 in New York City. Epstein will be charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors.
Stephanie Keith | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and former Trump White House advisor Steve Bannon are among those who appeared in partially redacted files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that were released on Friday by Democrats in the House Oversight Committee.
The committee earlier embarked on a probe to evaluate whether the federal government mishandled its case against Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence following a 2022 conviction for recruiting teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein.
President Donald Trump had promised voters on the campaign trail that he would release government documents related to Epstein, who was arrested in the summer of 2019 on sex trafficking charges and died in a New York federal prison, reportedly by suicide, before trial.
However, Trump has refused to endorse the release of any Epstein files since returning to the White House in January, and Republicans in Congress have followed his lead, keeping the documents out of the public’s view.
Democrats in the committee on Friday released redacted pages from a new batch of files they obtained through their probe without giving their Republican peers advanced notice. They were rebuked for the move.
In a statement on Friday, the committee said that the batch included 8,544 documents in response to a subpoena in August, and that, “Further review of the documents, which were redacted to protect the identity of victims, is ongoing.”
The latest batch of documents received by the committee from the Justice Department contained itineraries and notes by Epstein memorializing invitations he’d sent, trips he’d planned and meetings he’d booked with tech and business leaders.
Demonstrators gather for a press conference calling for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files outside the United States Captiol on Wednesday September 03, 2025 in Washington, DC.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
One of the itineraries indicated that Epstein expected Musk to make a trip to his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands on Dec. 6, 2014, but then asked “is this still happening?”
Musk told Vanity Fair in 2019 that he had visited Epstein’s New York City mansion and that Epstein “tried repeatedly to get me to visit his island,” but the Tesla CEO had declined.
In June, Musk wrote in a post on X, that he thought Trump and his administration were withholding Epstein-related files from the public view in order to protect the president’s reputation.
“Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files,” Musk, who was in the midst of a public spat with the president, wrote at the time. “That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”
Trump was mentioned in previously released court documents from the Epstein case, but has not been formally accused of wrongdoing.
Musk started the year leading the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an effort to slash the size of the federal government and reduce the power of various regulatory agencies. He left DOGE in May, and he and the president proceeded to hurl insults at each other in public over a number of disagreements.
However, Trump and Musk remain close enough that they sat together at a memorial service for Charlie Kirk earlier this month after the right-wing activist was assassinated while speaking at a university in Utah.
The partially redacted files also indicated Epstein had breakfast with Bannon on Feb. 16, 2019, and lunch with investor Peter Thiel on Nov. 27, 2017. Bannon is a long-time Trump ally, and Thiel was a major backer of Trump ahead of the 2016 election who spoke at the Republican National Convention.
The files also mentioned that Epstein booked a “tentative breakfast party” with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, historically a supporter of Democrats, in December 2014.
Musk, Thiel, Bannon and Gates weren’t immediately available for comment.
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