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Tesla has been riding a huge wave of success recently. Their stock is soaring, they achieved their fourth straight quarter of profitability for the first time ever, they released the Model Y ahead of schedule, and they are building a Cybertruck factory in Texas. But they have a bit of an interesting $20 million problem lingering over their heads. Or is it actually their secret advantage? Let’s talk about it.
Nearly three years ago in 2017 Tesla announced their next generation fully electric supercar. The 2020 Roadster will be the quickest car in the world – hold on, wait, I said 2020 didn’t I? Well, we are entering the last quarter of 2020 and still no Roadster. This is not new information by any means. Here’s what Elon told Joe Rogan earlier this year. But by far the question I get asked the most by friends and family is: Andy, when are you getting your Roadsters? And it seems like my answer is that my Roadsters are always perpetually two years away no matter what year it is. So first of all, you may be wondering: how am I getting multiple Roadsters (plural)? Well, that brings us into Tesla’s conundrum.
See, Tesla has something that really no other car company has: an internal referral program that provides every Tesla owner with their own unique referral link to share with others, and if someone orders a Tesla using a referral link, both people get 1,000 free Supercharging miles. Cool, right? But the referrer gets an additional perk which is a chance to win a brand new Tesla vehicle. If you didn’t know, I’ve been Tesla’s top referrer since 2018, and through the referral program I have won two upcoming Tesla Roadsters, and the crazy thing is I’m not the only one getting free Roadsters. In fact, Tesla is supposedly giving away over 80 free Roadsters through the referral program. But these aren’t just the plain old base Roadsters – no – these are Founders Series Roadsters that cost $250,000 each, and Tesla said they’re only producing 1,000 of these founders series roadsters. This comes to a total of $20,000,000 worth of vehicles that Tesla is giving away soon. But more interesting is it may be even more than $20,000,000. To see if this is a curse or a genius strategy, let’s take a look at how we got here.
Tesla first launched the referral program in 2015, and since then it has gone through several different iterations. Back in 2018 when I got my Model 3 the program was in Phase 9 and in that phase Tesla was offering some awesome prizes for referrals such as a kid size Model S, priority access to software updates, unique performance wheels, and an invite to a future Tesla event – all of which I received. But Tesla also did something pretty unheard of during phase 9 – they announced “Secret Levels” which could be unlocked after getting 5 referrals. These secret levels offered some even more incredible prizes such as experiences like attending a SpaceX rocket launch which I was lucky enough to do last year. But even as amazing as that was, the most exciting secret level prize was the ability to win discounts on an upcoming Founders Series Roadster. 10 referrals unlocked a 10% discount with the ability to get a 100% discount after hitting 55 referrals. But it gets even crazier. I emailed the Tesla referral program in November 2018 when I hit 55 referrals and in their response they said: “If you earn more than 55 you begin working towards your second Roadster in the same fashion.”
So Tesla was not only giving away discounts for one Roadster but two Roadsters which is a $500,000 value per person. In December 2018 I became the top referrer and not too long after that, the head of the referral program left Tesla, and around that same time Elon announced that they were officially ending the referral program as a cost cutting measure. Here’s where it gets interesting. When phase 9 of the program “ended” on Feb 2nd 2019 there were roughly 80 Roadsters claimed to be won for free. However, those 80 do not include the dozens of people who likely won a 90% or more discount off a Roadster. Or what about the dozens or more people who won anywhere from 50-85% discounts? How many of those people will buy a Founders Series Roadster? Since Tesla is only producing 1,000 of these how many will be sold at the full retail price after honoring all the discounts? Seems like the number of people buying at full price could be relatively small.
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So are these free Roadsters that are worth millions of dollars of unseen revenue a big problem for Tesla? Some people think so. But what if it’s actually their secret advantage? If we look at this from a different perspective we know that giving away a $250,000 Roadster does not mean it’s an actual $250,000 expense for Tesla. Giving away a Roadster essentially has two costs for Tesla: the actual cost of producing the car which should hopefully be much less than $250,000 and the opportunity cost of giving away a car that someone else possibly would have purchased at full price.
I also found something interesting as I was researching for this video. The official Tesla Referral program page states the following about the Roadster discounts: “Discount off the base price will be displayed in the Loot Box. Discounts will expire one year after the Roadster becomes available for order.” The key phrase there is “discount off the BASE price”. It also stated this in the official secret level loot box page back when it was first appearing where it said “the ability to purchase a founders series Roadster at a discount off the BASE price.” The word base keeps showing up. If we visit the Tesla Roadster page you can see it says the base price is $200,000. So does this mean Tesla will only offer discounts up to $200,000 off and possibly require the winners to pay the remaining $50,000 for the founders series? That would at least bring in some money that they missed out on compared to giving it away completely for free. Or do they mean “base price” as in the full $250,000 but not including any add-ons like Full Self Driving, paint color, upgrades, etc. Nobody knows, not even me.
So by now you may think Tesla was crazy for giving away millions of dollars worth of Roadsters for free. But Tesla is smart. They know that most of these free Roadsters are going into the hands of some of the most influential owners including Tesla focused YouTubers like myself or Ben Sullins all the way up to huge YouTubers like Marques Brownlee, and of course other content creators such as bloggers and podcasters. My buddy Ryan from Ride the Lightning podcast and Trevor from Tesla Owners Online are also among the few who have won two Roadsters. Tesla also knows that some of these people who won Roadsters may have violated the program rules so they have the right to say “Sorry John Doe, you posted your referral link in your social media bio so you’re disqualified”. So I’m assuming not all of these 80 Roadsters will actually be given away, especially due to some of the winners also not being able to afford the income taxes required to take delivery of such an expensive car. I think I’ll owe at least $150,000 just in taxes alone to get both of my Roadsters.
Overall, I think the Roadster is Tesla’s marketing ploy and it has been from the beginning. Tesla spends $0 on traditional advertising while other car manufacturers like General Motors spent nearly 3 billion dollars on advertising in the United States alone last year. Tesla is making a bet that their 20 million dollar Roadster giveaways will be a better investment than billions of dollars spent on traditional advertising. They know the Roadsters in the hands of influential content creators will draw a ton of attention to Tesla as a brand and thus increase people’s interest in possibly buying one of the “normal” Tesla vehicles. It’s like having a restaurant with a famous dessert. People come for the dessert, but end up spending the most money on appetizers, entrees, and tips. If you don’t believe me think about why Tesla brought back the referral program last year merely weeks after shutting it down. They published a blog post announcing the rebirth of the program saying: Customer referrals have been a key part of our growth, helping Model 3 become the best-selling electric vehicle in the world. While our previous Referral Program was very successful, it came with significant costs and ending the program last year allowed us to pass those savings along to customers. We’ve since restructured the program to save the company money while also offering exclusive rewards such as a chance to win a Founder’s Series Model Y monthly and a Founder’s series Roadster supercar quarterly, both signed by Elon Musk and Franz von Holzhausen.”
And since bringing the program back, Tesla has added Model Y to the program and increased the incentive for solar referrals. Tesla obviously knows something about the referral program that we don’t. They had the program for years, then they ended it, then they brought it back again and are still giving away free cars. There’s someone at Tesla who has proven to Elon, or maybe it’s Elon himself that knows the referral program is worth it – worth it enough to bring it back from the dead after promising to give away millions of dollars worth of Roadster discounts. Since the program was brought back in 2019 there have been roughly 30,000 more referrals that have taken place according to a website that tracks stats about Tesla referrals. It’s especially important in this day and age for a company to have some sort of unique advantage. I think Tesla’s referral program seems to be one of theirs.
Unfortunately even I, the top referrer in the world, have no information about when the roadsters will be delivered. I’m personally guessing it will be sometime in 2022 because 2021 will be the year of the Cybertruck. What do you think about the Tesla Referral program? Do you think it’s a problem or is it a good idea? Let me know in the comments below.