TSLA FSD Won’t Sell Itself Without Major Marketing Push, Fund Manager Says

• Tesla said earlier this month that it continues to see improved FSD adoption, with about 1.3 million paid customers globally.
• Tesla is now eyeing EU-wide approval for FSD, in addition to approval in China.
• Tesla does not engage in traditional advertising, relying on word of mouth and its several affiliated X accounts to disseminate information and promote its products.

Gary Black, Managing Partner of The Future Fund LLC and a veteran Tesla (TSLA) commentator, publicly urged the electric-vehicle maker Tuesday to treat its communications strategy as a critical weakness and invest heavily in marketing Full Self-Driving (FSD) driver assistance technology to mainstream consumers.

In a detailed post on X, Black argued that overly optimistic Tesla bulls continue to assume FSD’s technical superiority will drive adoption on its own — a mindset he compared to the “delusional” 2020–2021 forecasts of 20 million vehicle deliveries by 2030 that were later quietly dropped after two years of declining vehicle sales in 2024 and 2025.

“Far too many $TSLA bulls think FSD is so good it will magically sell itself,” Black wrote. “TSLA needs to invest in world-class comms to educate potential consumers about the benefits of FSD vs others’ unsupervised autonomous platforms. Only then will TSLA FSD take rates move higher from their current mid-teens level to the 40%–50% take rates…”

Tesla does not engage in traditional advertising, instead relying on word of mouth and its several affiliated X accounts to disseminate information and promote its products.

FSD Adoption

Tesla said earlier this month that it continues to see improvements in FSD adoption, with about 1.3 million paid customers globally. The company received approval for FSD in the Netherlands earlier this month, making it the first European country to approve the technology. Tesla is now eyeing EU-wide approval, in addition to approval in China.

Unlike what the name suggests, Tesla’s FSD is yet to enable wholly autonomous driving in customer vehicles and requires active driver supervision.

Black, for his part, has often called upon Tesla to better market its ease of charging and full self-driving driver assistance technology to reach more consumers.

At the May 2023 Tesla shareholder meeting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that the company would "try a little advertising and see how it goes". He acknowledged that relying solely on X was "preaching to the converted" and didn't reach a wider audience.

Musk envisioned ads that were informative, aesthetic, and "not something you regret watching". The goal was to educate consumers on features like safety, affordability, and utility, particularly as competition in the EV market intensified.

However, the team hired for traditional advertising was disbanded in 2024, with Musk criticizing their output as “too generic” without specific references to Tesla.

Retail Sentiment On TSLA

On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around TSLA stock stayed within the ‘extremely bullish’ territory over the past 24 hours, while message volume remained at ‘high’ levels.

TSLA stock has gained 32% over the past 12 months. 

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