HankLloydRight
No Roads
Yes, but that's an indirect lost sale. What everyone else seems to be implying is that Tesla is giving away 80 NGRs which is going to COST Tesla $20 million (80*$250k). It's not. Far from it.
But let's play a game and assume that every single NGR referral winner sells their car to potential buyer at full price ($250k), that's only $20 million in 'lost sales'. To put that in perspective, Tesla reported their 2018Q3 revenue was $6.8 billion. Assuming for a moment that 2019 revenue will be 4 times 2018Q3 revenue (although it will probably be much higher than that) -- that's $27.2 billion of revenue for 2019 as a rough, conservative, estimate. The $20 million of "lost sales" for the NGR awards is just.. wait for it... 0.07% of total annual revenue. In other words, a miniscule amount compared to the big picture.
Even taking an extreme view, worst case scenario, Tesla reported $312 million PROFIT in 2018Q3. Assuming again that 2019 is 4 times 2018Q3 profit, that's $1.25 billion in profit. The 80 'lost sales' of the NGRs would equate to just 1.6% of PROFIT in 2019. Again, not a huge number. And not all NGR referral award winners are going to sell theirs.
And since the NGR won't be available until 2020 or 2021 (more likely), and after the Model Y and Semi come online, these 2019 revenue and profit projections are very very conservative compared to what the will likely be in 2020 or 2021.
And none of this analysis includes the millions of dollars of free advertising that Tesla extracted from all the Youtubers and other outlets and websites promoting Tesla and the referral program. If the 80 free NGRs actually "cost" Tesla $20 million, they made out way way ahead of the game.
tl;dr: The 80 free NGRs given away amount to about bupkis compared to the big picture.
