Tesla quietly bumps non-refundable deposit fee to $250

The big news this week in Tesla world is the AI Day during which Elon Musk announced plans for a humanoid Tesla Bot prototype due to be unveiled in 2022. Over the night, something else happened as the company’s website was quietly updated to reflect a price increase for the non-refundable deposit fee customers must pay when they place an order on the company’s website.

It went up from $100 to $250, which isn’t necessarily the end of the world when you’re already paying a significant amount of money for a car, but the fact it literally happened overnight is a bit frustrating. Not only that, but some people will remember this mandatory order fee used to be refundable back in the day.

Tesla has not issued an official statement to announce the bump in price for the deposit fee, which isn’t all too surprising when you look at previous similar moves taken by the company. The starting prices for some of its cars have increased several times so far in 2021, but none of the price changes were mentioned through an official Tesla channel. These modifications were simply noticed on the firm’s online configurator.

It’s unclear why the $150 increase has been applied, although it might be because the price increase could deter some of the people who make a deposit but are not fully committed to actually buying the vehicle they have on order. If a reservation is made and kept for a significant amount of time, only to get canceled as the delivery date approaches, it causes problems for the automaker in the production process and prolongs how long it takes to ship other cars to actual customers.

Interestingly, the increase to $250 is applicable to all models, but not the Cybertruck, unless the vehicle’s dedicated page has not been updated yet. For the time being, it’s still at $100, but as previously reported, the electric pickup has been delayed to 2022. It is worth noting the Cybertruck deposit fee is still entirely refundable, which might explain why more than 1.25 million people have preordered one. It remains to be seen how many of them will be converted to actual sales.

Source: Tesla