Route-planning 650 miles before the clock runs out
A charging allowance is the only referral benefit you can lose by doing nothing. It is not redeemed with a decision; it is consumed by driving. So the useful version of this page is a spend plan, not a celebration of free miles.
The constraint, stated plainly
Roughly 650 miles, expiring six months from the Grant Date — the day it appears on your account, not the day you ordered. At ordinary Model 3 or Model Y consumption that is about 150–190 kWh, or four to six Supercharger stops of the size people actually take.
Four to six stops in six months is one a month. The failure mode is not difficulty, it is that nothing in your week prompts you.
The journeys that consume it efficiently
- One long return trip. A single 300–400 mile round trip with two Supercharger stops can spend half the allowance in a weekend, and it is the only plan that survives a busy calendar.
- Motorway commuting weeks. If you have a fortnight of long-distance work driving, deliberately charging at Superchargers instead of at home during that period spends the allowance without adding a single journey.
- Winter trips, if the grant falls in autumn. Cold-weather consumption is higher, so the same miles cover fewer real ones — which sounds bad and is actually convenient here, because it empties the allowance faster while you are charging publicly anyway.
The habit that wastes it
Charging at home by default and treating the allowance as a rainy-day fund. If you have a wallbox and an overnight tariff, every convenient charge is a cheap home charge, and the allowance sits untouched until the 30-day warning email arrives. At that point you have a month to invent 650 miles of driving, which nobody does.
The fix is a calendar entry, not willpower: pick a trip in the first eight weeks and route it through Superchargers on purpose.
How to check what a session actually costs you
Open the Tesla app's stall list before you plug in — per-kWh pricing is shown there, and it varies by site and by time of day. That is how you know whether a given session is spending your allowance against an expensive tariff (good use) or a cheap one (worse use). This page will not print a pound figure, because your tariff and consumption are the two inputs and neither is knowable from here.
What the allowance cannot do
- It cannot be transferred, cashed out, converted to credits, or reissued after expiry.
- It cannot be spent by another car — including a non-Tesla at a Supercharger open to other brands, because the allowance is drawn down by a Tesla authenticating at the stall.
- It cannot be extended. Earning again extends credits for a referrer; a buyer's charging allowance has one deadline and no extension path.
If a sale or lease return is coming
Spend it first. An unspent allowance is worth nothing to the next owner and nothing to you once the car has gone — and a car sold in month five is the classic way to lose an entire referral benefit that everything else about the order got right.
The plan, in four lines
Write down the Grant Date and add six months. Book one long trip inside the first eight weeks. Charge publicly during any motorway-heavy fortnight. Check the app's per-kWh price so you spend the allowance where it is worth most. That is the entire strategy, and it takes less time to execute than reading about it.
See also: confirming the miles landed, and why the UK figure is 650 miles and not 2,000 km.
Pillar: What you get · Related: Your 650 miles run on a six-month clock
Your UK Tesla referral code
steven787345
Click Open at Tesla first, then configure your car — the benefit is applied automatically before you pay.