Tesla raises the price of Model S and Model X – but adds free Supercharging
The list prices increased by around 18 per cent (Model S) and 15 per cent (Model X) in Germany. In Germany, the Model S with all-wheel drive now starts at 109,990 euros; previously, it was 17,000 euros less. At 114,990 euros, the Model X costs a whopping 5,000 euros more; in both cases, the Plaid version with three electric motors costs 10,000 euros more than the all-wheel drive model with two motors. Both models are currently no longer available in Poland.
In the USA, Tesla only increased the price of the Model X by 5,000 dollars. With the price increase, the Model X no longer qualifies for the US subsidy scheme, but that is only relevant in the short term. After all, US President Donald Trump is known to want to abolish the US tax credit for electric vehicles altogether.
Nothing has changed regarding the vehicles themselves, but the overall offer has. In the US, Canada, Puerto Rico, Europe and the Middle East, Tesla has reintroduced free Supercharging when purchasing a Model S or Model X – meaning drivers do not have to pay for electricity when using Tesla’s own fast chargers. In addition to the markets mentioned, the offer is only valid as long as the vehicle is in the first customer’s hand.
However, the US portal Electrek points out that these restrictions were also in place when free Supercharging was offered until 2016, but that it was “hard to enforce.” In fact, used Model S and Model X vehicles with the very same feature, namely free supercharging, are still traded on used car marketplaces today. In addition to used vehicles, company cars and “vehicles used for commercial purposes (like taxi, rideshare and delivery services) are excluded from this promotion.”
While Tesla has offered a certain charging credit at the Superchargers (e.g. for 10,000 kilometres) as part of promotions in the recent past, the return of free Supercharging without a quantity limit comes as a surprise. In 2020, Elon Musk said, looking back on the offer (available until 2016), that they had been “fools” and that it was not a “good incentive structure.” In fact, he said that “free Supercharging forever is not coming back to any vehicles.”
However, with the limited publicly available data, it will hardly be possible to assess the impact of the promotion in addition to higher vehicle prices. That is because Tesla only lists the Model S together with the Model X and the Cybertruck as ‘Other’ in its delivery statistics – in 2024, the latter accounted for 85,133 vehicles out of total sales of more than 1.7 million Teslas.
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