Tesla has been through the ringer in 2018, and the year ended on a rough note for them with the news of shipping delays. Some customers ordered Teslas to get a $7,500 federal tax credit for their purchase. There were some caveats on them, which include sales needing to be under 200,000 to receive that full amount and cars needed to be received before the close of December 31. The nature of Tesla ordering means that people would place an order and then wait for a delivery time. Ideally, it would only be a few weeks in the future, but the company put some shackles on itself this fall – they promised that an order placed by October 15 would get to the customer by the end of the year and enable them to receive the full tax credit.
If Tesla committed delivery & customer made good faith efforts to receive before year end, Tesla will cover the tax credit difference
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 22, 2018
In order to receive this tax credit coverage from Tesla, the customer will have had to received a promise from the company that the car would be delivered in 2018 and made a good-faith effort to receive the car by December 31. Musk has tweeted that the company released every car for sale that they have available. This includes test drive and display cars, which were made available at a discount and took into account vehicles where the original customer couldn’t take delivery before the end of the year.
The reaction to this news from Musk has been mixed, with customers seemingly falling into two camps: Some believe that everything will go smoothly for those who placed orders, while others feel like the company will do whatever it can to make good but will still incur problems. Shareholders are seemingly in the latter camp as the company’s stock dropped eight percent on Monday, but has since rebounded to $318.88 per share as of the date of this article (Wednesday, December 26th).
Tesla’s website is still advertising that if you place an order now, you can still get a 2018 delivery – so they are still luring people in with the promise of the $7,500 tax credit even with only days left in now. The tax incentive drops in half for vehicles delivered from January 1 to June 30, and goes down to $1,875 from July 1 through December 31
Source: Tesla