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Tesla's offer of free, unlimited Supercharger access was supposed to have ended in early 2017, but it's been on a form of life support since then. Unless you were buying a regular Model 3, you could get the no-cost charging by ordering your EV with a referral code from an existing owner. Now, however, even that exception appears to be coming to an end. Elon Musk has pointed out that the referral program is about to end. After September 16th, owners will only get to hand out $100 in Supercharging credit to Model S, Model X and Model 3 Performance buyers -- just enough for a few top-ups.
While there is a chance this isn't a permanent end (this is the company that brought back the Roadster), we wouldn't count on it given the finality of Musk's statement. Previous referral programs started the day after their predecessors ended.
The end to the offer isn't surprising, even with Tesla's repeated extensions. Superchargers may cost you less than filling up a gas-powered car, but they're still expensive to operate -- Tesla had to factor the cost of Supercharging into every sale when the perk was free for every buyer. And when the automaker is still bleeding cash, it's likely determined to cut costs and boost revenue whenever possible.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/16/tesla-ends-lifetime-free-supercharging-offer/
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 17 2018, @10:19AM (4 children)
Free recharging at the superchargers is a real incentive for me. Ending that incentive on a temporary basis to get through a cash crunch is one thing, but on a permanent basis it takes the bloom off the rose.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by StarryEyed on Monday September 17 2018, @12:42PM
When someone sells you a "lifetime" of anything in the Tech world, they mean three years, even if the provider doesn't realize they mean three years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 17 2018, @06:08PM
With the premium that you would spend, you could probably buy a used $3k car on craigslist and use the difference to get a lifetime supply of free gas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:33PM (1 child)
It was never really free. They just accounted for it in the price of the car.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday September 19 2018, @10:32AM
Indeed:
"Base prices for the 2017 Tesla Model S sedan range from $69,500 to $140,000, depending on the package."
$69,500 buys you an awful lot of petrol (gasoline). Especially in the US.
Current Avg. $0.83 per litre.
That's 83,000 litres (22000 gallons) or thereabouts.
Personally, that would be enough to buy a car half-the-price and then fill it up over 600 times. I fill up once a month at the moment, which would last 50 years. Even if I filled up once a week, that's 11.5 years of fuel.
For that price (with my very-inefficient but 2016 model European car), I'd be able to get that car brand new and.... 385,000 miles of fuel. The car would never last long enough to do that, though, no matter how much I spent on it.
Now, I'm mixing US gas prices and EU-sized cars, but if you want to be eco-friendly the price is a good measure of how much material was purchased, shaped, modified, etc. in the manufacturing process and the rarity/difficulty of extraction.
If you bought a small, second-hand car and a "lifetime" of fuel for it, it would be cheaper than buyer a Tesla by an enormous amount.
You don't buy a Tesla because you get "free" topups. That's so far from the point, it's unbelievable. If you wanted to buy a Tesla because you're not burning oil, that might be a small gesture that way. But you're paying through the nose to do that.
I hate Tesla. I really do. But you shouldn't be buying them on the basis of such stupid and unbelievable promises, and think you're doing yourself a favour. You might be doing the *environment* a small favour, at great cost. That's about it.