Tesla has lowered the amount of referral credits existing owners can earn when they refer someone to buy a new Model S or Model X, as well as reducing the cash discount those buyers can get on their purchase. The changes come just a few days after Tesla slashed prices on the two flagship vehicles.
When Tesla relaunched the referral program earlier this year you could earn 3,500 credits when a Model S/X was purchased with your referral code. Buyers would also receive a little less, 2,500 credits. In June Tesla revised the program to further incentivize Model S/X purchases, upping the amount of referral credits to 20,000 for the referee, and eliminating the credits for the buyer but instead providing a C$1,300/US$1,000 discount off their purchase price, as well as a free 3 month trial of Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta.
On Wednesday night Tesla reduced the amount of credits you can earn to 10,000, the same as when referring someone to buy a Model 3 or Model Y. For buyers the discount was also reduced, down to C$650/US$500, the same discount as the Model 3/Y. The 3 month trial of FSD has remained the same.
While the reduction in the amount of referral credits and the discount are disappointing, they are not too surprising considering Tesla just slashed prices on both vehicles. Just a few weeks after launching the Standard Range (SR) variant, Tesla removed that from the lineup and decided to instead cut the price of the Long Range (LR) variant to below that of the SR, now starting at $99,990 in Canada and $74,990 in the US.
