Tesla completes sponsorship program on February 1 – but why?

January 20, 2019 by Paul Fosse

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Note: there is a long introduction to my story with electric vehicles, the defense of these vehicles and the choice of a 3 Tesla model. To go directly to the Tesla reference program, go to the section called "But what about the referral program?

The purpose of this article is to tell you about my experience with the Tesla Referral Program and why I think it ends.

I speak and write about cars since about 1974. I was very interested in the transition from rear-wheel drive to front-wheel drive. It seemed like such a big change in the industry. But compared to the transition from gasoline cars to electric cars, it is small.

Front-wheel drive cars consume a little less fuel and have a slightly better fuel economy, but they do not disrupt the oil industry and do not threaten to ruin the careers of thousands of engineers and production badistants. in the automotive industry. No, it's a much bigger transition.

I have been interested in this transition since about 2010. I had already heard about electric cars, but I really thought it was a joke. But I remember seeing articles about the upcoming Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt. Gasoline had climbed to nearly $ 5 a gallon and I wanted to try something to save money.

My brother-in-law in Brazil said that many people converted their taxis to use natural gas, which saved them a lot of money. However, if your installer made a mistake, your car exploded. It did not seem very safe. I've looked at the only production car that uses natural gas, the Honda Civic GX, and that seemed a lot safer. I found out that there were only a few resorts in Tampa and I thought that this could be a problem, but the range was good at around 250 miles.

The Leaf and Volt could charge at home, which seemed much easier, and the savings were similar. I was not worried about long trips, because I would take my Honda Odyssey for those. I decided to buy a sheet or a volt. They were both out at about the same time and I chose the sheet for 3 reasons.

1. The Sitting Leaf 5 and the Seating Volt 4. I have a family of 5, so the Leaf could accommodate the whole family. In the end, it was not so important for my family, but it was better for carpooling with kids.
2. I was (and to some extent, still) unhappy with GM for taking the bailout.
3. The Leaf was about $ 5,000 less and I thought if I needed more independence, I would sell cars to my wife.

So, after 18 months of waiting, I bought the Leaf on December 1, 2012, making me one of the first owners of electric vehicles in Florida (with the exception of some Tesla Roadster owners and people who converted their cars in their garages). I was invited to the local AAA office for the grand opening of their Level 2 Chargers and was interviewed by several local TV channels. I insisted that the car was "normal". It was pretty fast at first, very quiet and of course without emissions. Speaking of my paper to hundreds of people (and maybe a million to the morning news), I convinced my supervisor to buy a sheet via a special lease at $ 199. Most people thought it was a good idea, but they did not like the style or the hbadle of short-range and the need to find charging stations.

When I heard that the Tesla Model 3 was going to cost $ 35,000, it was supposed to be fast, beautiful and have a range of over 200 km. I was interested. Not enough interested in queuing or leaving work, but enough to go online to make a $ 1000 reservation an hour before it is revealed. Do not forget that I paid over $ 35,000 for my high end sheet! I thought that if I could get a Tesla for the same price or a little more expensive, it would be a good deal!

When I set up my order two years later, I was disappointed that the $ 35,000 car was not available and that I had to either buy a more expensive model or wait a little longer. I discussed it with my wife and even though I wanted the short-range model, she still wanted the long-range model. We chose a color (I told her about Midnight Silver) and she spoke to me about the performance wheels, claiming that the aerodynamic wheels had a geeky appearance. Since I did not drive much on the highway, I was undecided about the improved autopilot, but I decided to get it because I really want to drive my full steering wheel when he goes out and that has saved you $ 1,000. you $ 2,000).

When I got the car, it was all that I hoped to be fast, fun and beautiful! As I wrote before, people were much more interested in model 3 than sheet. Almost all people who see and drive in the car comment on their vision of the future and will buy an electric car at some point. Most are not ready to make the change today. It's just too different for them to absorb all this new technology. I understand. I felt the same way when I saw the iPhone for the first time. It was good, but I just did not understand how it would change everything.

Traveling to Sarasota

I had read CleanTechnica for years and seriously considered going to a conference on electric vehicles in which they participated in Cocoa, Florida. Unfortunately, the conference was held during the week and I did not want to take a vacation to go there. But I wanted to meet some of the EV experts who worked at CleanTechnica. When I read that Zachary was back in Sarasota and had not yet piloted a Model 3, I knew I would have to let him drive mine.

It was back before you could go to a Tesla dealer and drive them at any time. In July 2018, the dealers still had no demonstration. So I went with my friends and I met Zachary! After this trip, Zachary encouraged me to start writing a bit for the site. I had been promoting Tesla on my Facebook calendar for years, but the reception was not particularly warm. Most of my friends on Facebook did not like Tesla because they had received help from the government and thought the company would pull out as soon as the grants ended. I've found that when you're writing for an EV Pro site, you get a much better reception.

But what about the referral program?

Yes, I'm a bit off topic in telling stories, but the purpose is to give you a context in which I did not start by just trying to get references to Tesla. I have long been interested in electric vehicles and I stumbled upon the reference program.

For my first 6 articles, I did not even include my referral code. Free overeating was only valid for S and X model cars (later, the 3 Performance model was added) and I imagined that everyone I knew and read my articles could not afford car too expensive.

Everything changed on October 6 when Tesla extended the sponsorship program to allow buyers of ALL models 3 to benefit from free overeating! I knew that the $ 49,000 car with tax credit, fuel savings and maintenance was affordable for many other people. I have therefore started to include my referral code in my articles, while encouraging people to use the codes of people they know in person. I did not know if people would use it, but I thought I might as well include it, in case they did not know any Tesla owners.

The price I really wanted was to be invited to the unveiling of Model Y (5 references). Things have changed a lot in 3 months. As I mentioned last week, I now have 75 references and have discovered that there are secret levels that allow you to get discounts on the next Tesla Roadster. It seems like I get 1 Roadster for free and 1 to 40% off. I hope to get a few more referrals in the next 2 weeks in order to get a bigger discount on the second Roadster. Taxes and insurance on the Roadster can be quite high, so it's hard to afford it, even if it's free, so most people who have a lot of referrals are trying to get 2 to be able to sell one to pay taxes. the other – and so can keep it. Otherwise, most will just have to sell it instead of driving it.

On each referral, someone in my position gets another 2% discount on the price of a Founder's Edition, which should cost $ 250,000. Thus, each reference is $ 5,000 before tax, about $ 2,500 after tax. The benefits for the buyer are unfortunately less important. The 6 months of free overeating (9 months if you have not tested a model 3) is worth about $ 200, baduming you use it for 1,000 km per month for 6 months instead of reloading at home 13 cents the kWh.

Note that the price of the boost has increased (it can now be different in each station and is not constant in all the state) and is about 30 cents per kWh. So if you compare that to 9 months at 1,000 miles a month and 30 cents a kilowatt hour, you can save up to $ 675.

Thus, while lower-level prices are roughly equal on the buyer's side and the sponsor's side, the higher prices are much higher for the sponsor. This encouraged some bad behavior, with people advertising their sponsorship codes and sponsorship programs inviting people to quote someone's sponsorship code. The problem is that it is expensive and gives the brand a multi-level marketing scam aspect.

Let's play with some numbers. If Tesla sells 400,000 cars next year and each person uses a referral code from an owner who buys a Roadster, it will offer discounts of up to $ 2 billion on 8,000 Roadster cars. That's about double the expected benefits of Tesla next year. It would be a serious problem.

Now, this would only happen if the references were all given by a group of 8,000 super-referrals. Tesla sold 245,240 vehicles in 2018. If these were distributed to 2,450 super referrals, it would cost $ 1.2 billion in Roadster discounts at Tesla. As you can see on this site, it seems that they have been distributed to about 75 people (including me) likely to receive about 100 free or very heavily discounted Roadsters, costing Tesla about $ 25 million. only about 2% of the potential. Cost. But I think 4 things have worried Tesla:

1. As time went on, more owners would unlock the secret level and cost the company a lot of money.
2. The publicity of the bad actors and the unfairness of the advantages between the buyers and small referents and the great referents (like me) would be bad for the brand.
3. To give too many free Roadsters would hurt the image of this car. If it's to keep it exclusive, they can not build it and give it too much.
4. Giving free overeating encourages people to overeat instead of reloading at home. This is not how the system is designed, and with many more Tesla on the road in the next year, it could result in overcrowding.

Conclusion

I think it's a good decision for Tesla to end the sponsorship program for all the reasons I explained above. I've promoted electric vehicles before the referral program and I will continue to promote them once the program is over.

But I must admit that it changed my behavior somewhat. This encouraged me to write more about Tesla and less about other electric vehicles (although, honestly, in the US, there was not much more exciting than the explosion of Model 3 sales). I have several articles on other topics (hybrid, solar, etc.) that I have delayed to focus on Tesla because the referral program is a limited opportunity in time.

That said, if you want to take advantage of my Tesla referral link to get a free surcharge of up to 9 months (6 months if you tested a car with Tesla) on a model S, model X or model 3, here is the code: https://ts.la/paul92237 – but as I have already said, if another owner helped you more, please use his link instead of mine.

Keywords: Nissan, Nissan Leaf, long-term review of the Nissan LEAF, Tesla, Tesla Model 3, Tesla Long-Term Review Model 3