Tesla partners with Uber to offer $3,000 discount on its electric cars to drivers

Tesla is partnering with Uber to offer its electric cars directly to drivers with discounts up to $3,000.

Uber has been increasingly investing in electrifying the vehicles that its drivers use.

In 2020, Hertz announced an important effort to electrify its fleet of rental cars, led by a massive purchase of 100,000 Tesla Model 3 vehicles to be delivered over the next year.

Shortly after, Hertz announced that on top of adding Tesla vehicles to its rental fleet, the company also made a deal with Uber to offer its drivers access to the Tesla vehicles. Fifty-thousand Tesla vehicles have been made available for rent to Uber drivers.

Uber also bought some vehicles directly from Tesla.

Now, we learn about a new partnership between Tesla and Uber that involves the former selling its vehicles to drivers directly on the ride-hailing platform.

Uber has its own ‘vehicle marketplace’ with deals for drivers to acquire new or used vehicles.

Tesla has been added as a “partner” on the platform, and it offers discounts on Model 3 and Model Y for up to $3,000.

The amount of the discount is based on the driver’s rating:

It would appear that both Tesla and Uber are contributing to those discounts as they are for inventory vehicles delivered by December 2023, which is good for Tesla.

The automaker is trying to deliver as many vehicles as possible as part of an end-of-the-year push to deliver a record number of vehicles and achieve its guidance of 1.8 million vehicles in 2023.

On the other end, there’s a requirement to complete 100 trips by February, which is to Uber’s benefit.

There wasn’t such a requirement in previous similar deals, like with the Bolt EV last year.

Electrek’s Take

This is cool. EVs make so much sense for Uber drivers if they have easy access to charging. They can save hundreds of dollars and sometimes over $1,000 per month just with gas savings.

However, on Tesla’s side of things, it is interesting that the company is now directly partnering with Uber, when it was supposed to make the platform irrelevant with its own ride-hailing network powered by its self-driving vehicles.

The automaker called it ‘Tesla Network’ and it was supposed to launch ahead of making its vehicles self-driving through software updates, but it never did amid several delays in the self-driving program.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for that one.