Tesla is bringing back the capacity to transfer your Full Self-Driving package and/or free Supercharging on a new vehicle despite Elon Musk saying it would be a one-time deal in the past.
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.
Now, Tesla is again allowing FSD transfer for new orders up until March 31st.
Electrek talked to two Tesla stores who confirmed that current Tesla owners with the FSD package and/or Free Supercharging assigned to their vehicles can either trade-in their vehicles for a new one and transfer the features or sign agreements to give up those features on their existing vehicles to apply them on a new order.
All Tesla vehicles except Cybertruck are eligible for the new offer.
Electrek’s Take
I am glad the offer is back, but it’s also clear that this is a demand lever for Tesla, and it wull probably keep using it as such with new deadlines to create an urgency to order. Elon straight-up lied about it being a “one-time” offer last time to try to generate more orders.
There’s no doubt that this should be an offer always available to customers until Tesla delivers on its self-driving promise. That’s just common sense.
Despite my frustration about how Tesla is using its own incapacity to deliver on the feature as a demand lever, I have to admit that it might actually work on me as the owner of a Model 3 with FSD and a Model S with free Supercharging.
I could get a brand new car with both FSD and free Supercharging.