Tesla Stock Tanked in 2022, and Now They're Offering $7500 Discounts on EVs

It’s been difficult to escape the news regarding Tesla CEO Elon Musk these days. Ever since he purchased Twitter two months ago, the news hasn’t stopped—and it hasn’t stopped Tesla’s share price from taking a massive tumble. It’s down 45 percent since Musk bought Twitter and around 70 percent since the start of the year.Amid rumors of softening demand, Tesla has started offering incentives to new buyers. Some current owners are getting a 30-day trial of some Enhanced Autopilot features, which are usually a paid upgrade.Tesla is also offering various discounts around the world, including $7500 for Model 3 and Model Y buyers in December, along with 10,000 miles of free Supercharging.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s long, strange trip to purchase the social media site Twitter continues to get longer and stranger. As the auto industry watches what’s happening to the microblogging site under the world’s most-famous automaker CEO, Tesla shareholders aren’t exactly enjoying the ride. The price of one TSLA share price would cost you just under $200 at the start of 2022. Today, the price is just over $123.

There are a number of reasons for that almost 70-percent drop, but the most obvious recent impact has come from Musk’s public display on Twitter. Since Musk bought Twitter two months ago, the stock has fallen 45 percent. The fact that Musk sold $3.6 billion of Tesla stock last week—and almost $40 billion since late 2021—hasn’t helped. Musk has since promised not to sell any more Tesla stock for two years, but he has contradicted himself in the past.

Of course, Tesla is impacted by non-Musk-related factors, and tech stocks have been in an overall decline this year. Still, ABC News notes that the tech-heavy Nasdaq only fell around half as much as Tesla has since January 1, 2022.

Another factor impacting Tesla’s stock price is lowered demand for its all-electric vehicles. In response, Tesla has lowered prices on some models and has started offering some current owners of its EVs free trials of the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, an advanced driver-assistance version of its Autopilot, for 30 days. Enhanced Autopilot features include navigation with Autopilot, automatic lane changes and automatic parking and summoning. These features are usually paid upgrades and require specific sensors to be installed. As Electrek notes, Tesla is shifting away from installing ultrasonic sensors in every vehicle but hasn’t updated 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 price changes on Tesla, the automaker started offering a $3750 discount to U.S. customers on two models, the Model 3 and the Model Y, at the beginning of December. This amount doubled, to $7500, last week for customers taking delivery this month. Tesla also added another incentive—10,000 miles worth of free energy at Tesla Supercharging stations—for EVs delivered in December. Tesla buyers in other countries are also being offered various discounts, Reuters notes, including $5000 in Canada and around $850 in China.

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