According to Electrek, Tesla, which famously doesn’t have a public relations department and doesn’t spend money on advertising, is now looking to change its referral program rewards again, removing the reward of a thousand miles of free Supercharging for people who refer new customers.
I had a thousand miles of free Supercharging because I used the referral code of a cousin when I bought my Tesla. I bought it during the pandemic so I wasn’t going anywhere. I went ahead and supercharged a few times just to see what Supercharging was like. Since my free Supercharging miles expired six months after I bought my car, it’s all gone now even though I used only about two hundred miles of free Supercharging.
It’s certainly true that some people got lots of free Supercharging because they had a YouTube channel with Tesla-themed videos so lots of people used their link when they bought their Tesla. Tesla says it has spent twenty-three million dollars in the last quarter alone on free Supercharging rewards. Tesla relies on owners, and YouTubers to do their advertising for them. And that advertising must be working since Tesla seems to be able to sell as many cars as they can make. I’m seeing Teslas everywhere I drive these days.
According to the article in Electrek, they’re going to stop awarding miles to people whose referral code was used. In fact, they’re going to stop using referral codes entirely. That will prevent some people from getting large rewards because their referral code was attached to their YouTube videos. Instead, they’re going to use the Tesla app to link potential Tesla buyers to current owners who are willing to give test drives. If the potential buyer who took a test drive becomes an actual buyer, the person who gave the test drive will get rewarded. The article doesn’t say what, exactly, the reward will be.
So, thinking about this new situation, it seems like Tesla wants to reduce the number of test drives at the Tesla stores. There was a time when Elon Musk wanted to eliminate the stores entirely, but cooler heads convinced him that people want test drives, and test drives lead to sales. It looks to me like he’s trying again to reduce his expenditures for salespersons. So what does that mean for us, the current Tesla owners?
I suspect that everything will depend on the reward. Do I want to spend time giving test drives to strangers in my personal car? Not really, unless the reward is interesting. Let’s face it, 1,000 miles of free Supercharging would cost about forty-two dollars. And, if that was the reward for making a sale, you’d get it only when you actually made a sale. You might need to take three or four people on test drives, maybe more than that, in order to make a sale. Let’s say it’s four test drives per sale. Each test drive would last around a half-hour. So that’s two hours work to earn 1,000 miles of Supercharging, around forty-two dollars, or $21 an hour. That sounds like a lot if you’re an unemployed person, but it’s not much if you’re a person who can afford a Tesla Model 3 or Model Y. It’s peanuts if you’re a person who can afford a Tesla Model S or Model X, and it’s inconsequential if you’re a person who can afford a Tesla Roadster.
And why does Elon Musk want to do this? He wants to sell cars without spending much money on the sales process. Tesla makes great cars, but I don’t think they’re going to sell themselves. I have to hesitate before I tell someone as successful as Elon Musk how to run his business. I’m not as smart as he is. But I suspect that the reward for making a sale will have to be more interesting than a thousand miles of free Supercharging. So far, the reward is unspecified. Stay tuned, though. We should find out more soon.
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Winter is here, and temperatures are dropping, so one of the most common Tesla questions is about to resurface.
If you’ve landed here after frantically searching about “smoke” coming from your Tesla while Supercharging, take a deep breath—it’s completely normal.
Tesla Smoking While Charging
If you’re Supercharging in freezing weather—even with preconditioning—you might notice steam rising from your Tesla. But rest assured, your car isn’t smoking.
Your Tesla’s heat pump is hard at work warming both the cabin and battery to keep you comfortable and ensure optimal charging temperatures. Over time, condensation and ice build-up in the heat exchanger coils.
Why Does It Happen?
When you reach a Supercharger with your vehicle, the heat pump is still running hot, but without the cold air from driving to keep the heat exchanger coils cool, the ice and condensation quickly start to evaporate—creating what looks like smoke.
Since this typically happens near the front of the vehicle, where a car would traditionally have an engine, new vehicle owners can be startled by the discovery. However, rest assured that it’s just water vapor and it’s completely normal in cold weather.
In fact, this behavior can be experienced in any EV with a heat pump in cold climates. So, if you saw steam coming out of your vehicle and panicked, don’t worry—you’re not alone.
Now that you know what’s happening, go ahead and Supercharge with confidence.
Tesla made a lot of improvements in the 2024 Holiday Update, including more than 15 undocumented improvements that were included in the release. One of these was a stealthy performance improvement to the YouTube app.
Several people have mentioned they’ve seen improved performance on YouTube since this year’s Holiday Update - and there’s an interesting reason why.
YouTube Improvements
The improved YouTube performance in Tesla vehicles comes from an unexpected source—Tesla actually rolled back support for YouTube’s newer AV1 video encoding. Instead, vehicles now default to the older VP9 encoding standard.
While AV1 is highly efficient in terms of bandwidth, it requires considerably more processing power to decode and display videos. VP9, on the other hand, is less computationally demanding but uses more bandwidth to achieve the same video quality. This trade-off means smoother playback and better overall performance, even if it comes at the cost of slightly higher data usage.
Intel Inside
The VP9 video codec that the YouTube app is now using is much easier to decode, making it less taxing on the vehicle’s processor. This change is particularly beneficial for Tesla vehicles with Intel processors, which previously struggled to stream video at just 720p. When using AV1, these vehicles often experienced stuttering, sometimes forcing the YouTube app to automatically downgrade playback to 480p.
With this update, Intel-based Teslas should now be able to stream at 1080p smoothly. Streaming at 1440p is also possible, although occasional stutters still occur as the system keeps up with the decoding process.
Intel-based vehicles are the big winners with this change, but this appears to affect AMD Ryzen-based infotainment units as well, providing even smoother playback.
Chromium Web App
Tesla’s Theater apps aren’t native applications; instead, they run as chromeless web apps, leveraging the open-source browser built into Teslas known as Chromium (the open-source version of Chrome). Although this works quite well, there is a severe limitation - Chromium hardware acceleration isn’t supported on Linux, the operating system Tesla uses for their OS.
As a result, Tesla vehicles rely on software decoding instead of hardware decoding, which would otherwise handle video playback far more efficiently. A potential solution could be for Tesla to transition away from Chromium-based web apps in favor of a Mozilla Firefox-based browser, as Firefox does support hardware acceleration on Linux. This switch could also open the door to better streaming performance and the possibility of expanding Tesla’s in-car entertainment options.
However, Tesla’s choice of Chromium likely stems from Digital Rights Management (DRM) requirements for streaming services like Disney+ and Netflix, which rely on DRM-enabled playback. Firefox on Linux has had inconsistent support for DRM due to codec availability and variations in operating system versions.
We’re hopeful that Tesla will either adopt Firefox or develop a fully native application to improve video streaming, rather than continuing with the current web-based Tesla Theater. This shift could also pave the way for additional in-car applications built on Tesla’s native Linux environment—perhaps even reviving the long-rumored Tesla App Store.
Regardless, this update is a welcome improvement, particularly for YouTube, which remains one of the most widely used Theater Mode apps due to its accessibility, free content, and mix of short and long-form videos. It remains to be seen whether similar improvements are made for Netflix, Disney+, or other streaming platforms.
If you’ve noticed improved performance in Theater Mode, now you know why.