FSD Radar: know first, and know for sure.

Executive summary

On February 14, 2026 Tesla stopped selling Full Self-Driving outright. It is now $99 a month, forever. Every used Tesla whose first owner bought FSD before that date carries it to the next owner (unless it was moved to another car first), and about a third of those cars never say so in the listing. Finding them first is worth thousands of dollars to a buyer. One solo developer, FSD Hunter, is doing about $100k a year of revenue serving that need with a $9.99 app. We can build a clearly better business next to him.

Why we win

The decisions, made

You asked me to make the calls. Here they are; each is argued in its section.

Name

FSD RadarWordmark "FSDRadar", handle @fsdradar. "Radar" is the brand, "FSD" the descriptor, so the name survives if Tesla retires the term.

Domains

fsdradar.com + fsdradar.app + findfsd.comAll unregistered on Sep 23, 2026. ~$45/yr. Staging stays on this subdomain until then.

Product form

Web app first (installable PWA)Push alerts in the browser. iOS and Android store apps follow in month 6 as thin wrappers of the same code.

Pricing

Free + $29 Hunt Pass (90 days)Plus Pro $12.99/mo, $4.99 VIN reports and a $149/mo dealer tier. No auto-renew on the Pass.

Market

United States at launchCanada in month 9. His Canada coverage is thin and shrinking ("under 30 FSD cars").

Stack

Next.js + Postgres + Python workersTypeScript web and API, Python for ingest and vision, Stripe billing. Ingest on its own small server.

Data

Licensed and permissive sources firstTesla's own inventory, eBay's official API, Carvana, CarMax, Bring a Trailer; a Marketcheck feed from month 9. No Facebook, no logins, ever.

Company

FSD Radar LLC (California)Formed before public launch. ~$870 in year one including the $800 franchise tax. Trademark filed at $3k/mo revenue.

Launch

Private beta week 7, public week 9From a go on October 1: public launch around December 1, 2026, ahead of tax-refund season, the busiest used-car months of the year.

Growth

Free VIN tool + content + communitiesSEO pages built on the verification question, Tesla forums and YouTube creators. Marketing capped at 30% of net.

Team

Michael + Claude Code, no hiresAbout 10-15 hours a week of your time for steering, testing and community. Code, content and ops are agent work.

Endgame

Run for cash, decide on a sale at month 24Micro-SaaS trades at 2.5-4x annual profit; expect 1-2x here because the FSD window has an end date. Likely buyers: the incumbent, EV-data companies, used-car marketplaces.

The opportunity

An information gap worth thousands of dollars per car, locked behind a data-engineering problem most people cannot solve. That is the whole business.

What changed in 2026

The rule the product encodes

Tesla's own support page (identical Internet Archive captures from February 15 and June 10, 2026): "If the previous owner purchased FSD (Supervised) outright and is not transferring it to a new vehicle, you will receive the vehicle with FSD (Supervised)."

Screens can lie: a subscriber's car and a Luxe car both show FSD on the display. This is exactly why our flagship feature is the purchased or subscription verdict, backed by the VIN build record and the screen photo together.

What the car is actually worth to a buyer

Reviewers throw around "$8k", "$16k", "$20k". Repeating that would get the pitch shot down in one search. The defensible numbers:

Size of the prize

Supply is growing fast

Other figures from his posts: 250-400 used Teslas are listed per day across US sources; of 120,000+ VINs he reviewed, only about 40% of listings include a photo of the software screen. Of 10,542 used Teslas on KBB/Autotrader, only 958 mention "full self driving" at all, against a ~14% attach rate. About a third of the FSD cars for sale never say so (958 is 9% of listings against a 14% attach rate). That gap is the product.

Demand is hot too: used Teslas are the fastest-selling used cars in America (32.4 days on market versus 54.1 for gas cars), and used Tesla prices rose 4.3% from September 2025 to January 2026 while other used EVs fell 3.6%.

The clock

Plan for a 24-36 month window on the pure-FSD product, and use it to build a detection engine and dealer business that outlive it.

FSD Hunter, dissected

A good operator with a genuinely liked product, a monopoly on the app stores, and a business model that caps him. Respect him, then go where he will not.

The cost trap he is in

Only ~40% of listings show the software screen. To cover the other 60% he pre-checks every used Tesla through Tesla's paid API: "Last month alone, June 2026, I made about 12,000 VIN requests." At the $0.10 list price that is about $1,200, so his "several thousand dollars each month" implies more calls, other paid endpoints or costs we cannot see. Either way it is a fixed, speculative cost recovered from a one-time $9.99. In his words: "Spent a small fortune on Tesla API hits for build reports. May not be sustainable." The data bill is not our real edge, since we pay the same $0.10 per decode; the edge is keeping ~92% of each dollar on the web and a funnel that lets buyers find us.

What his users complain about

From 65 real reviews across both stores and his forum thread:

Feature parity: what we must match on day one

Reviewers like his filters and alerts. We match these before we try to beat anything (exact feature names from his store listing):

The wider field

On the app stores he is alone. On the web, the field is crowded with free or single-feature tools, and nobody combines coverage, speed, certainty and a business model.

Positioning and brand

Three pillars, in priority order

Filters, favourites and colour pickers are table stakes the incumbent already has. Match them, never lead with them.

Why "FSD Radar"

• It says what he does not do: it watches, and it tells you first.
• No collision: "FSD Radar" matches nothing on either app store (a search returns weather apps). fsdradar.com, fsdradar.app and findfsd.com were all unregistered on September 23, 2026.
• Not a knock-off name. "FSD Finder" was your first idea; fsdfinder.com is parked with a reseller, and "Finder" next to "Hunter" invites an App Store copycat rejection (guideline 4.1) and a passing-off complaint. We want to look like the upgrade.
• Built to outlive the term. Tesla is already renaming parts of its Autopilot vocabulary after a December 2025 California ruling. "Radar" is the brand; "FSD" is the descriptor we can swap later.

Visual identity

Mark

FSDRadar

A radar sweep with one bright contact: the car you are looking for. Works at 16px as a favicon and as an app icon. Designed for this plan; a designer polish pass is budgeted at ~$300.

Palette and type

Radar mint on night blue, deliberately far from Tesla red. Space Grotesk for headlines, Inter for text, JetBrains Mono for data. Dark by default, like a cockpit instrument.

Voice

Trademark rules (non-negotiable)

A search of the US register found Tesla owns no live US registration for FSD, FULL SELF-DRIVING, AUTOPILOT or ENHANCED AUTOPILOT; "FSD" in the vehicles class belongs to Koni B.V. Tesla does own TESLA and enforces it against look-alike marks. The incumbent has shipped under "FSD" for two years unchallenged. So the rules are about Tesla, not FSD:

• Use Tesla's words to describe the cars, never to describe us. "Finds used Teslas with Full Self-Driving" is nominative fair use.
• Never "Tesla" in our name, domain or app title. Never the logo, the T badge, the wordmark styling or Tesla red. Never "official", "certified" or "powered by".
• Every surface carries: "Not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Full Self-Driving and Enhanced Autopilot are trademarks of Tesla, Inc."
• File FSD RADAR as a word mark in classes 9 and 42 once revenue passes $3k/mo (~$700 all in).

Product

A fast web app that works on any phone or computer, installs to the home screen in two taps, and pushes alerts like a native app. Store apps come later as a second door, not the only one.

Decision: web first, store apps second

The flagship: the verdict

Every listing gets one clear verdict, the evidence behind it and a confidence score:

We say "FSD indicated", never "has FSD", on every listing, exactly as the incumbent does. It is honest, and it is our accuracy defence.

Scope by release

The AI4 hot list, our launch demo

The single most contested segment, in the incumbent's own words (July 2026): "So far in July I have indexed 28 AI4 Y's that have sold. And currently there are 11 in the US. There's usually about 4-6 new ones each week. Very tough to get ahold of." Eleven cars nationwide, a handful a week, and buyers racing for them. A dedicated instant feed for AI4 cars with owned FSD is the most compelling thing we can show on launch day.

Deliberately not building

No social feed or forum, no accident or history data (Carfax owns it), no in-app messaging with sellers, no financing, no listing photos rehosted. We are a detection engine and we stay one.

Technology and data

The whole reason a second entrant can win is one design decision: pay for expensive data only when a buyer asks for it, and let them pay for it.

The cost architecture, inverted

Tesla's Fleet API documents a /vehicles/{vin}/specs endpoint at $0.10 per result, usable with a partner token for any vehicle without owner authorization. It publishes the price, not the response format: one ten-cent test in week one confirms FSD is in the payload, and a second call on a car known to have had its FSD transferred shows whether the record changes after sale. If Tesla ever denies access, we fall back to photo reading plus Tesla's own inventory data and label results honestly, which is how the incumbent ran profitably for 18 months.

The pipeline

Where the data comes from

Every source was probed live on September 23, 2026. Order of build:

Vision is a rounding error, accuracy is not

Costed for 500,000 listing images a month, the two-stage pipeline (a cheap triage model, then a stronger model on the ~10% that survive, both batched) runs $60-130 a month, under a cent per listing. Single-stage OCR services cost $375-750; a rented GPU costs more than all of them. The real risk is misreading: "Autopilot" is a substring of "Enhanced Autopilot", and mistaking EAP for FSD moves a car's value by thousands of dollars. Mitigations from day one: quoted evidence, exact-string checks on the quote, cropped screen regions, "unreadable" as an answer, and a human check on every FSD-positive until a 500-listing test set proves 95%+ precision.

Stack

Build reality: Claude Code sessions write the code with you steering. MVP in 8 weeks, v1 by week 16. The hard parts, in order: source adapters that do not break, the verdict, and alert latency. The rest is ordinary web work.

Business model and pricing

Free to look. Pay for speed and certainty, for exactly as long as you are shopping.

Why a 90-day pass, not $9.99 once or a subscription

• It fits the job. Buying a used Tesla takes 2-8 weeks. A 90-day pass covers the whole hunt and does not feel like a subscription trap.
• The anchor is brutal in our favour: the buyer is avoiding $99 a month, forever, on the car they are about to buy. The Pass costs less than one month of that.
• $9.99 once is underpriced, and his users say so: "would have gladly paid 49.00", "I'd pay a lot more for this". He raised his price four times with no hit to his rating.
• Same price everywhere. Web checkout by default. In the store apps we link to web checkout where store rules allow and use in-app purchase at the same price where they do not.

The dealer tier: the second engine and the real hedge

Dealers are billed through Stripe outside the stores at ~97% take, cost us almost nothing to serve because the consumer engine already computed everything, and keep paying after consumers finish shopping. If Tesla ever reopens FSD purchase, a tool that prices software options across a lot is still a business. Base case: 18 dealers by month 24, about $2.7k/mo, which is most of year two's growth.

Unit economics

Affiliate is the creators' 30% share on the ~15% of passes they refer, averaged over all passes. Fixed costs run about $500/mo at launch and ~$1,800/mo fully loaded with a licensed feed and full decode coverage. Break-even is ~20 Hunt Passes a month at launch and ~70 at full scale. At $9.99 with a 15% store cut, the incumbent needs ~210 sales to cover the same $1,800.

Financial projections

A 24-month model with three scenarios. Base case: $25k revenue and $5.4k profit in year one, $85.3k and $28.9k in year two. The most cash ever at risk is $1.1k.

Key assumptions (base case)

Cost base

Startup cash: domains ~$45 a year, LLC filing $70, brand polish ~$300 and a ~$400 lawyer review, about $840 with a small buffer, plus two build months of servers. The franchise tax is carried monthly in the cost base. Peak cash at risk in the base case: $1.1k. This is a time investment, not a capital one.

Not in the model: the trademark (~$700 once revenue passes $3k/mo), the week-one tests (~$60), refunds and chargebacks, sales tax where it applies, and income tax on profits.

Model source: tools/model.py in the site repository; every chart and table on this page is generated from it, so changing an assumption and rebuilding updates the whole plan.

Go to market

The incumbent has never marketed. The whole demand channel is unclaimed, and the web is where we claim it.

What people actually search for

A sweep of 694 Google autocomplete suggestions found people search for the car and for the verification problem, never for a tool. Two suggestions matter most: "fsd hunter alternative" and "fsd hunter app free", public proof of demand for a competitor and resistance to $9.99.

This is a low-thousands-of-searches-a-month niche, strong enough for a focused business on SEO and community, not for paid ads at scale. Every free keyword tool blocked our research, so we buy ~$50 of real keyword data in week one before spending on ads.

Launch sequence

1. Private beta, week 7: 50 hand-picked hunters from Tesla forums and Reddit, free Hunt Passes in exchange for feedback and a found-car story.
2. Public launch, week 9 (~December 1, 2026): a genuinely useful post, not an ad: "How FSD transfer works now, and a free checker", on r/TeslaLounge, r/teslamotors, r/ModelY, r/TeslaModel3, Tesla Motors Club and the big Facebook Tesla buyer groups. The incumbent found his first users on TMC and X; the channel is proven.
3. The alternative page: /fsd-hunter-alternative, factual and fair: faster alerts, more sources, free to try, owned-vs-subscription verdicts, works without an app.
4. YouTube creators, months 3-5 (from launch): ~15 Tesla channels with 10k-200k subscribers get a free Pass and a 30% affiliate share to cover "how to find a used Tesla with FSD included". The highest-return channel in this niche, and untouched.
5. Content engine: 25-30 guides over 12 weeks: FSD transfer rules, every Tesla option code, APF vs APFB, what SC01 is, HW3 vs AI4, what an FSD Model Y is really worth, the places dealers hide FSD. Each ends in the free VIN checker, which ends in a saved search.
6. Apple Search Ads on "fsd hunter" once the store app ships (month 6). Competitor-name bidding is allowed; small volume, very high intent.
7. Proof that compounds: an "I bought it" button turns wins into testimonials and a public counter: "$X of FSD found for our buyers". The incumbent's reviews are full of these stories and he captures none.

Channel plan

Marketing spend follows revenue: it never exceeds 30% of net or $3,000 a month.

Timing matters

Tax-refund season (February to April) is the busiest time of year for used-car buying. Launching around December 1 gives us two months of content, rankings and reviews before the peak, instead of arriving after it.

Roadmap and decision gates

Twelve months from a go on October 1, 2026. Gates are pre-committed now, so we stop or pivot on evidence, not hope.

Decision gates

• Week 1

  The three cheap tests. (1) Two $0.10 Tesla /specs calls: is FSD in the payload for a known-FSD VIN, and does the record change for a car whose FSD was transferred away? (2) Marketcheck's free 500 calls: how often do seller comments reveal FSD? (3) ~$50 of keyword data. If there is no VIN oracle and no text signal, the product is photo-only at ~40% coverage: decide then whether to continue, not in month six.

• Week 8

  MVP ready for public launch (week 9) with 5,000+ live Tesla listings refreshed under 15 minutes, 95%+ precision on a 500-listing test set, and a hit-rate check: our launch sources find at least 60% of the FSD cars in a hand-built national sample (below that, the licensed feed moves forward). If not shipped, stop. Sunk cost: about $1.1k.

• Week 16

  1,100 signups and 55 paying customers (the base case's first two live months). Under half of that (550 / 27): pivot to the dealer product only (bigger tickets, far less consumer work) or stop.

• Month 12

  $5,000/mo revenue. Under $2,500: stop marketing and run it as a low-effort passive asset, or sell it.

• Any day

  Tesla reopens FSD purchase or transfer. Freeze the consumer roadmap that day and move everything to the dealer tier and other hidden options.

Your time

About 10-15 hours a week: reviewing builds, testing on your phone, posting in the communities, dealer calls from month 7. Claude Code sessions do the code, the content drafts and the monitoring. If that stops being true, the week-8 gate catches it.

Legal posture and company setup

Designed around the law from day one, because the rules here are specific enough to build to. Not legal advice: a one-hour lawyer review before public launch is in the plan.

The biggest platform risk is not trademark

It is Apple's guideline 5.2.2: an app that displays content from a third-party service must be "specifically permitted to do so under the service's terms of use", with authorization "provided upon request". There is no fair-use defence to a store policy. This is the strongest argument for web first and for our source order: lead with Tesla's own data, eBay's licensed API and a written feed agreement, so "show us your authorization" has an answer before the store apps ship.

What the scraping case law says in 2026

Our operating rules

1. No accounts, no logins, anywhere. This alone removes most of the exposure.
2. No listing photos republished. We store extracted facts and a tight crop of the software screen as evidence, and link to the listing.
3. Stop on request. A cease-and-desist or a deliberate block ends collection from that source the same day.
4. Prefer licensed and permissive sources, and use a commercial fetch service with its own terms instead of running a proxy farm.
5. Hedge every claim: "FSD indicated", confidence shown, one-tap "this is wrong" reports.
6. Watch the rule that matters. A weekly automated check of Tesla's FSD support page; one sentence there underpins the business.

The most useful data point: the incumbent has operated openly for two years, stating in his own terms that listing data "may be derived from automated collection of publicly available data", without being sued or delisted. Not permission, but observed tolerance.

Company setup

Risks and mitigations

Twelve risks, placed by likelihood and impact. The top row holds the five that could sink the business; two of them, Tesla reopening FSD and Tesla changing the resale rule, are policy risks we cannot control, which is why the hedge is built into the roadmap rather than bolted on.

Endgame and next steps

The endgame

Small software businesses with one operator sell for roughly 2.5-4x annual profit on marketplaces like Acquire.com, but a buyer will discount a business whose core market has a visible end date, so plan on 1-2x. Base case year two is about $28.9k of profit, which points to a $30k-60k exit; the bull case ($120.2k profit) points to $120k-240k. The dealer tier and other hidden-option detection are what lift the multiple. The likeliest buyers: the incumbent, an EV-data company (Recurrent, Tessie, TezLab) or a used-car marketplace that wants the detection engine. The default plan is to run it for cash and decide at month 24 with real numbers.

Why this is worth doing

• A proven, growing need with one paid competitor who has told the world his costs are unsustainable and that he will not build a website.
• About $1.1k of cash at risk in the base case (~$3.7k in the bear case), with a hard stop at week 8 if it is not working.
• A detection engine and dealer relationships that outlast the FSD window.
• It showcases exactly what you do: full-stack product work plus AI systems, built and shipped.

What happens after you say go

Say the word in a new prompt and the build starts. These are the only things that need you personally; everything else is agent work.

1. Buy the domains (~$45/yr): fsdradar.com, fsdradar.app, findfsd.com. They were free on September 23 and will not stay free forever.
2. Form FSD Radar LLC in California (~$70 online, then the $800 annual tax) and get the EIN. Can wait until week 6, before public launch.
3. Open a Stripe account and a business bank account in the LLC's name.
4. Create the GitHub repo michaelkuhlman/fsdradar in the browser (this server's GitHub token cannot create repos); everything else about it is set up for you.
5. Approve the three week-one tests (about $50-60 total): one Tesla API call, the free listing-feed trial and keyword data.
6. Tweak anything in this plan you disagree with. The model is live: change an assumption and every number on this page updates.

Sources and method

Research for this plan was done on September 23, 2026 by several research agents working in parallel, then re-checked for changes the same afternoon. Revenue figures for the incumbent are estimates built from public store data and his own public statements; no private data was used and no accounts were created. Tesla's own website blocks automated access from our server, so Tesla policy facts rely on Internet Archive captures and reputable secondary sources, and are flagged for a manual check in week one.

Confidence

Key sources

Full research notes live with the project: the incumbent teardown, the earlier 35-page PDF version of this plan and the September 23 research refresh.