Tesla is offering three months of a free Full Self-Driving (FSD) package as an unprecedented end-of-quarter incentive to deliver more vehicles, according to sources.
Over the years, Tesla has created several incentives to encourage buyers to accept delivery by the end of the quarter in order to increase their earnings.
This quarter is unprecedented.
As we have reported in recent weeks, Tesla plans to deliver a record number of vehicles this quarter to reach 500,000 deliveries in 2020 – a long-standing goal for the automaker.
To reach the milestone, Tesla is expected to deliver more than 181,000 vehicles this quarter. That’s more than 40,000 vehicles compared to the latest quarterly delivery record, which was just achieved last quarter.
The automaker offered the usual free Supercharging as a benefit to encourage people to accept delivery, but now, we’ve learned that Tesla is offering a new benefit that it didn’t offer before.
Sources familiar with the matter told Electrek that Tesla had authorized the team to offer three months of a free Full Self-Driving (FSD) package to people who can receive delivery by the end of the year.
Here are the features that new buyers will have access to for three months:
- Navigating on autopilot: automatic steering from the access ramp to the highway exit ramp, including knots and overtaking slower cars.
- Automatic lane change: Automatic lane changes while driving on the highway.
- Autopark: parallel and perpendicular spaces.
- Summon: your parked car will find you anywhere in a parking lot. Same.
- Traffic light control and stop signaling: assisted stops at traffic-controlled intersections.
Tesla sells this package for $ 10,000, with the real value being the promise to enable full autonomous driving capability in the future through software updates.
Recently, we reported on Elon Musk writing in an email to employees that Tesla is in strong demand, but the automaker needs to increase production quickly to meet expectations.
Last weekend, Musk told employees that Tesla could still reach the 500,000-car mark in 2020, but they will need to “push hard” with only a few days left in the year.
Electrek’s Take
As we reported earlier, at first glance, some may think that Tesla is sending mixed messages.
Elon says demand is strong, but Tesla is now adding more incentives to help deliver more vehicles.
The keyword here is “deliver”. Tesla is indeed seeing strong demand, but is trying to give buyers incentives to receive their cars by the end of the year.
Tesla, unlike other automakers, owns the entire distribution system and has a major effect on the automaker’s finances, as it cannot recognize revenue until the vehicles are delivered and has spent the money upfront to manufacture those vehicles.
This makes Tesla strive every quarter to reduce its inventory and deliver as many vehicles as possible by the end of the quarter.
Therefore, even if Tesla has orders in progress, it is sometimes difficult to align deliveries with buyers due to availability, turnaround time or any other reason.
These constant crazy end-of-quarter runs are not helping to improve quality, but Tesla hopes to be able to stabilize things by reducing transit times once it establishes production in Europe and the second plant in the US, Tesla Gigafactory Texas.
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