How I gifted 30,000km of free Tesla Supercharging

Back in 2019 I bought my first Tesla – it was a Tesla Model 3 Performance – and while I was waiting for the car to be delivered, I included referral links in my reviews and social media descriptions for anybody else already buying a Tesla.

The referral link allowed the buyer to claim 1500km of free Supercharging when their vehicle was delivered.

Ultimately, I wanted people to use the link to get 1500km of free Supercharging, which they did, but it also meant I received 1500km.

I had no interest in using the free Supercharging, nor did I want to profit from anybody using my referral code. So instead I pledged that I’d donate money to charity if I personally used any Supercharging miles.

Fast forward four years and I had around 30,000km of free unused Supercharging credits that were expiring at the end of April 2023 – and I sold the Model 3 Performance and bought a Model Y instead.

There’s no way to technically ‘donate’ or gift Supercharging credits to anybody, so I came up with a plan.

In theory any car linked to my Tesla account would be eligible to use the Supercharger credits, so after testing out the theory with my brother who drives a Model 3, I put a call out on social media and asked if anybody wanted to help dig into the balance of free charging I had left.

I had a stack of people respond to the social media post, but the catch was they needed to transfer ownership of their vehicle to my Tesla account in order to use the free charging credits.

At this point a lot of people weren’t keen on the concept of giving me full control of their car. But, much to my surprise, there were a number of takers.

So we started the process of transferring the cars to my account. These brave souls then had around two months to use as much of the 30,000km of free charging as humanly possible over that period.

The five people who took up the offer ended up using around 20,000km of free charging over a two-month period (an average of around 500km of travel per week each).

Unfortunately the rest of the credits expired a few days ago and are now permanently gone. But, it felt good to do a good deed!

If you’re wondering, the reason I didn’t use a Supercharger during my years of ownership was because we have very cheap off-peak charging at home.

Each time we travelled I’d also book a hotel or accommodation with access to charging to avoid using a Supercharger.