That's not surprising, the nominal break-even time (e.g. not accounting for the time value of money) is over eight years if you blow 10K on FSD as a one-time purchase. And when Tesla isn't feeling desperate to convince people to upgrade, the 10K license you bought stays with the car. The average new car owner would spend less with the monthly option.

And of course there's the fact that you can turn monthly FSD off if you feel the value isn't there. The commitment is much lower, so it's easier to convince people to give it a trial run.

I don't pay for it, though. I still haven't been that impressed with it (we've gotten a couple free months to play around with it). I think in some areas it works pretty well, but in my neighborhood it makes regular attempts to scratch the car.