Tesla Ends Car Referrals, Pays Owners in FSD — SkimNews
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- Tesla launched a U.S. referral program that pays in FSD (Supervised) instead of car discounts: the referred owner gets one free month, and the referrer gets a free month or a $99 Tesla Credit once that owner starts paying, with rewards capped at 12 per calendar year — up to a year of FSD or $1,188 in credits that expire after 12 months and can't be cashed out.
- Refer and Earn no longer lists any qualifying vehicle purchase: buyer benefits now apply to solar panels only, while referrer benefits cover solar, up to 30 first demo drives per account lifetime and the new FSD referral. Model 3, Model Y and Cybertruck appear only under loyalty benefits for existing owners buying another Tesla product, and Model S and Model X aren't listed at all.
- Tesla didn't announce the change, and the page is stamped "Updated February 24, 2026," so it's unclear when cars came off the list. The program relaunched in August 2024 with $1,000 off a Model S, X, Y or 3 for the buyer and $500 in credit for the referrer, after being killed and revived several times over the past decade.
- FSD (Supervised) eligibility is narrow: referrers must be paying monthly or own it from before Tesla stopped selling it (one-year grant recipients are excluded), the friend must already own a registered Tesla with compatible hardware and no FSD purchase in the past 12 months, and new-car free-trial recipients stay locked out until 12 months after that trial ends.
- Tesla stopped selling FSD outright on February 14, leaving new U.S. customers able to subscribe only at $99 a month, and reported 1.74 million active FSD subscriptions in its Q3 shareholder letter, up 67% year over year — a count that includes past upfront buyers and excludes free trials.
- Elon Musk's 2025 CEO Performance Award sets a milestone of 10 million active FSD subscriptions, the reason Tesla started disclosing the count in January. Only paid conversions count toward that total; the free month handed to a friend does not.
- Tesla app version 4.62.0 or later is required to share a referral link, and Tesla's own pages disagree on timing — the FSD referral page says the referrer is rewarded when the friend subscribes during the trial, while the main Refer and Earn page says after it.
Why it matters: Tesla isn't buying new cars with referrals anymore; it's mining the 8.9 million vehicles it already sold, of which just 1.74 million pay for FSD. Each conversion adds $99 a month against the 10 million-subscription milestone in Musk's 2025 CEO Performance Award, while car buyers and referrers now get nothing for a sale.
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