Self driving has an ongoing cost to Tesla for them to keep it updated and to improving upon its performance.

It’s only a subscription because it doesn’t make financial sense to purchase it outright for $15k up-front (with a 6% interest rate, you’d need to own the car for 102 months to pay less than paying for the FSD subscription for those 102 months, and it costs more per month in your loan than the subscription https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSjfzhdfj0FU... )