Tesla starts shipping cars at less than 50% charge, gives free Supercharging miles

Tesla is starting to ship its electric cars with a 50% state-of-charge for safety reasons. It is giving buyers 150 free Supercharging kilometers to compensate them.

When you take delivery of a new electric car, it is preferred that it is fully charged so you can enjoy it immediately.

Tesla always tried to deliver its vehicles with as much charge as possible within the circumstances, which can often be difficult – especially during the end-of-quarter delivery pushes.

Now Tesla has started to inform some buyers that it might deliver some cars with a state-of-charge below 50%:

Due to a new industry policy, your vehicle must be shipped with a max 50% charge – meaning your Model [*} charge status may be lower than our usual standard at your delivery appointment.

I tried to find the “industry policy” Tesla is referring to and I couldn’t find anything official, but I did find that now many shipping companies now require electric cars to be between 20% and 50% state-of-charge to be allowed on their ships.

This is likely being more rigidly enforced since the Felicity Ace cargo ship fire. There were electric cars on the ships, but the cause of the fire is still unknown.

Tesla says that it is giving buyers affected 150 km of free Supercharging to compensate them for the inconvenience:

We are giving you 150 km of free Supercharger for the inconvenience. You will be able to redeem your Supercharging credits a few days after delivery in the Loot Box in your Tesla app.

This likely only affects buyers taking delivery of vehicles that were shipped by sea, which is an increasing number of vehicles these days because Tesla ships a lot of vehicles from Gigafactory Shanghai in China.