Tesla is attempting to boost sales by convincing owners of older Model S and Model X vehicles to upgrade by letting them transfer their free unlimited Supercharging onto new purchases.
That’s surprising considering just a few months ago, Tesla was trying to get owners to give up their free Supercharging to get a new car.
For the first few years of selling Model S and Model X, Tesla was offering free Supercharging for the vehicle’s life.
It was a really enticing offer since you could technically not have to pay to power your vehicle ever. Of course, that’s if you don’t charge at home and only use the Supercharger network, which is not ideal for most people, but it is an extremely valuable perk for some power users.
In 2018, Tesla ended the perk after claiming that it was unsustainable – though it did temporarily bring it back as a sale incentive at times.
There are still today a few hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles with unlimited free Supercharging around the world.
At some point, Tesla said it was paying about $20 million yearly to support owners on free Supercharging.
Earlier this year, Tesla made a first effort to try to get those vehicles off the perk by offering owners an extra $5,000 discount if they trade in a Model S and Model X with unlimited free Supercharging.
The automaker then ramped things up by even adding up to six years of free Supercharging on a new car if you give up your free unlimited Supercharging for life.
Now Tesla seems to want new orders more than it wants to retire its free Supercharging program, as it now offers owners of older vehicles to transfer the free Supercharging to a new order:
Top comment by Brian Peterson
The comments are kind of strange.
So what if Musk said free Supercharging does not incentivize optimal behavior? There is a lot of space between good and optimal.
Secondly, how is this unsustainable? It fundamentally changes nothing because, presumably, Tesla will remove the free Supercharging from the traded in car.
Tesla will make money on the new car, make money on the trade-in, make money on the new owner of the trade-in Supercharging and there will be no change monetarily for Tesla regarding the original owner’s Supercharging behavior.
Three wins and a draw.
The offer is valid for new Model S, Model X, and Model Y orders with deliveries by the end of the year.
Electrek’s Take
It’s not a bad offer because a lot of owners who have been holding on to their Tesla with free Supercharging are doing it because they are extensive Supercharger users and the feature has too much value for them to give up.
For an average EV owner, free Supercharging is worth a few hundred dollars a year, but for some people who rely heavily on the charging network, it can be worth thousands of dollars.
I could see a few tens of thousands of people taking Tesla up on this offer this quarter.
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