Tesla Stock Drunk in 2022; Now They Offer $7500 Off

• It’s hard to avoid news about Tesla CEO Elon Musk these days. Since he bought Twitter two months ago, the news hasn’t stopped — and it hasn’t stopped Tesla’s stock price from falling massively. Down 45 percent since Musk bought Twitter and about 70 percent since the start of the year.
• Amid rumors of weak demand, Tesla started offering incentives to new buyers. Some current owners get a 30-day trial of some of the Enhanced Autopilot features, which are usually paid upgrades.
• Tesla is also offering a variety of discounts around the world, including $7,500 for Model 3 and Model Y buyers in December, along with free Supercharging for 10,000 miles.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s long and strange journey to buy social media site Twitter is getting stranger and stranger. As the auto industry watched what happened to the microblogging site under the CEO of the world’s most famous automaker, Tesla shareholders weren’t exactly enjoying the ride. The price of a single TSLA share will cost you under $200 in early 2022. Currently, it costs just over $123.

There are a number of reasons for the nearly 70 percent drop, but the most obvious impact recently came from Musk’s public appearances on Twitter. Since Musk bought Twitter two months ago, the stock is down 45 percent. The fact that Musk sold $3.6 billion of Tesla stock last week—and nearly $40 billion since late 2021—didn’t help. Musk has since vowed not to sell Tesla stock again for two years, but he has contradicted himself in the past.

Of course, Tesla is influenced by factors unrelated to Musk, and tech stocks have seen an overall decline this year. However, ABC News notes that the technology-intensive Nasdaq has only lost about half that of Tesla since January 1, 2022.

Another factor affecting Tesla’s share price is the declining demand for its all-electric vehicles. In response, Tesla has lowered prices on some models and has begun offering some current owners a free 30-day trial of its EV of the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, an advanced driver-assistance version of its Autopilot. Enhanced Autopilot features include navigation on Autopilot, automatic lane changes, and automatic parking and dialing. These features are usually paid upgrades and require the installation of special sensors. As Electrek notesTesla is moving away from installing ultrasonic sensors in every vehicle but has yet to update its software to operate some of these Enhanced Autopilot features (Autopark, Summon, and Smart Summon) in Tesla vehicles that only have camera sensors.

As for the price change on Tesla, the automaker started offering US customers a $3750 discount on two models, the Model 3 and Model Y, in early December. This amount doubled, to $7500, last week for customers taking delivery this month. Tesla is also adding another incentive—10,000 miles worth of free energy at Tesla Supercharging stations—for electric vehicles that ship in December. Tesla buyers in other countries were also offered various discounts, Reuters noted, including $5,000 in Canada and about $850 in China.