Tesla killed off its customer referral program on February 1st, citing high costs — presumably because the company was giving away dozens and dozens of $250,000 cars for free — but in a typical Elon Musk about-face, the company just announced it’s bringing the referral program back with a few tweaks on top.
Tesla brings back its customer referral program — with fewer free cars
Tesla’s giving away one Model Y a month and a Roadster quarterly
Tesla’s giving away one Model Y a month and a Roadster quarterly
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
Basically, your benefits for convincing your friends and family to buy a Tesla have been reduced quite a bit, but they’re still nothing to sneeze at. Do it, and you’ll get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging, plus get entered into two “drawings”: a monthly chance to win a Tesla Model Y Founders Series, and a quarterly chance at that coveted, signed-by-Elon-Musk-founders’ version of the Tesla Roadster.
(You get two chances at those prizes, per referral, if your car comes with free Supercharging already. But it’s not a raffle; see update at the bottom of this post.)
Still, that’s not anywhere near as generous an offer as the previous referral program, which not only offered six months of free Supercharging per referral and a wide variety of other rewards (including free Tesla Powerwall batteries, free high-end wheels, and fun “adventures” like the chance to watch a SpaceX rocket launch, though it’s possible some of those will also be reinstated), but also a 2 percent discount on a Tesla Roadster that could, slowly, add up to a guaranteed free car, according to Electrek’s reporting.
There are some telling terms and conditions now, too: credits expire after 12 months, free Supercharging expires after 3 years, and Tesla says it won’t honor codes when customers are buying and selling them or otherwise acting in bad faith.
Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, though: 12 free Model Ys and 4 free Roadsters per year still means quite a prize for the lucky few.
Update, 11:13 PM ET: Elon Musk says the “drawing” for a free car actually isn’t a raffle, but rather rewards those who refer the most customers within a given period -- after which they’re disqualified from winning those prizes again.
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