December 9th, 2019

*for potential sales*

Latest in Tesla news over the weekend Tesla not-so-quietly begins to charge $9.99 for "Premium Internet".

While this does not impact myself since I received my car prior to July 1 2018 and was grandfathered into free Premium Internet for life, it will impact those who took delivery shortly after that date.

Since that time, Tesla has been instead giving 1 year free premium internet. A $120 value. And they extended this slightly until now when they just began charging for this premium internet feature.

With deliveries around 90K and quickly approaching 100K Tesla stands to increase revenue by around 100K * $9.99 * 3 per quarter resulting in ~$9M in additional earnings per quarter.

With the quick flick of a switch Tesla sent out an email informing customers ineligible for free internet a notification that their free days are over.

With Tesla Giga 3 Shanghai deliveries getting the greenlight, in a year from now we can expect another drastic increase in the number of premium internet users paying in per quarter.

And let's be clear, this is a cumulative figure. Meaning revenue from Premium Internet is expected to grow by $9M/qtr. By next year, this will be worth close to $40M/qtr in revenue for Tesla.

Pretty great flip of the switch I'd say.

Update Dec 10 2019

I guess my numbers assume 100% conversion on people paying the $9.99/mo. Maybe not practical. Also, charges don’t begin until Jan 1, so we wont know conversion rates for a while.

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Software Developer always striving to be better. Learn from others' mistakes, learn by doing, fail fast, maximize productivity, and really think hard about good defaults. Computer developers have the power to add an entire infinite dimension with a single Int (or maybe BigInt). The least we can do with that power is be creative.