Tesla is bringing back its Full Self-Driving transfer program as an incentive to buy this quarter despite Elon Musk’s claim that it would be a “one-time offer.”
For years, Tesla owners who bought the up-to-$15,000 Full Self-Driving Capability package were asking for the capacity to transfer it when trading-in their vehicles for a new one.
The logic was sound: Tesla never delivered the self-driving capacity as promised. It only makes sense to allow owners to transfer the package to a new car for those who still believe that Tesla could eventually deliver through a software update.
Despite being the right thing to do, Tesla always resisted the idea.
Eventually, it agreed to do it, but only for orders placed in Q3 2023. CEO Elon Musk even wanted to make it clear that it was just a “one-time thing”:
This is a one-time amnesty, so it needs to be — you need to take advantage of it in Q3, but — or at least place the order in Q3 within — within reasonable delivery time frames. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, hope this makes people happy. But want to — I mean, this is a one-time thing, OK?
We criticized this move because it wasn’t about Tesla doing the right thing for its customers, but instead, it was simply creating a “demand lever” to try to produce more orders during that time period – and using their own inability to deliver a promised product to do it.
We also suspected that despite Musk’s clear statement encouraging buyers to use the transfer now because it will be a “one-time amnesty”, Tesla would offer it again.
Sure enough, Tesla announced in February that it would again offer FSD transfer until the end of the quarter – as an incentive to buy.
Last night, Tesla started to offer Full Self-Driving transfer on all new Tesla vehicles other than the Cybertruck. The offer is stackable on top of every other incentives that Tesla is currently offering, and likely will offer later in the quarter.
We reported yesterday that Tesla already started offering deep discounts on inventory vehicles really early in the quarter.
Electrek’s Take
If you needed confirmation that Elon is willing to lie, or at least mislead, to sell vehicles, now you have it.
Tesla is literally using its inability to deliver a promised and sold product as a way to incentivize existing owners to upgrade their cars. FSD transfer should be an open offer to all FSD owners as long as Tesla is not delivering the actual promised product. That would be the right thing to do.