Dispatch ·
Tesla's Refer and Earn Terms Carry a 24 February 2026 Date
The rulebook has a revision date on it. That date is the fastest way to tell whether a referral page you are reading is describing the current programme or a retired one.
Referral write-ups age badly and rarely say so. The most useful thing to know about the current programme is not a number — it is that Tesla's Refer and Earn terms carry a revision date of 24 February 2026, and that a great deal of what is published about the programme predates it.
Why a revision date is the single most useful fact
The referral programme is not a fixed feature of buying a Tesla. It has been suspended, revived, re-shaped and re-priced repeatedly. Each revision leaves behind a layer of pages that were accurate when written and are now describing something that no longer exists — a cash discount, a free-Supercharging-for-life award, an eligible model that has since been removed.
Those pages almost never carry a date. So the practical test is not "does this page sound right?" but "was this written after the rulebook changed?" A revision date gives you a line to measure against.
What changed around that date
Two things happened close together in early 2026, and reading them separately is what causes confusion:
- 14 February 2026 — the one-time FSD purchase ended in North America. Full Self-Driving became subscription-only. That did not change the referral programme's text, but it changed what the referral benefit is worth, because the benefit is denominated in months of a thing that now has a monthly price.
- 24 February 2026 — the Refer and Earn terms were revised. The revision preceded the March change that removed Model S and Model X from eligibility.
Read together, the sequence is: the product changed, then the rulebook changed, then the eligible-model list narrowed. A page written in January 2026 gets all three wrong while sounding entirely plausible.
How to date a referral page in about thirty seconds
Look for the eligible-model list
If it includes Model S or Model X as referral-eligible, it predates March 2026.
Look at how the benefit is described
If it describes FSD as something you buy outright, or quotes a purchase price for it, it predates 14 February 2026 in North America.
Look for a cash discount off the car
Upfront cash discounts were removed in favour of software and credit benefits. A page promising money off the sticker is describing an older programme.
What to do with this
If you are about to order, the rulebook's date matters less than one mechanical fact that has survived every revision: a referral cannot be attached after the order exists. Everything else can be corrected later; that cannot. The full walkthrough is in how to apply a referral code at checkout, and the code itself sits on the referral link this desk publishes if you want it applied before you configure.
Sources
Everything above is checked against these before publishing, and again whenever the note is updated.
- Not a Tesla App — Tesla FSD cost and price increase history
- Tesla Support — Refer and Earn (blocks automated retrieval; consult directly)
Independent field notes by Alex Marchetti. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Tesla, Inc. If you order using the code in the site header or the bar at the bottom of the screen, a real Tesla owner may earn Tesla Credits — it costs you nothing and never changes your reward.