Tesla Launches Car Rental Program - rent a Cybertruck from Tesla in SoCal for $75/day with FSD & Supercharging included

[YDR37]

Update: as of right now, both the San Diego Miramar and Costa Mesa stores are completely booked. So Tesla isn't accepting any more rentals at these locations at this time.

Will check back later to see if things have changed.

Update: A week later, nothing has changed. Both locations remain sold out. No indications that Tesla is adjusting rental pricing or capacity.

When Tesla announced the rental program, the news was everywhere. However, there's been no coverage (that I can find) of the fact that the program sold out almost immediately and has not reopened.

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[YDR37]

Another Update: The Tesla jobs site now has postings for "Rental Readiness Specialists" at five additional locations: Boston MA, Nashville TN, Fort Worth TX, Houston Central TX, and Austin South TX. So it seems like the rental program may have been deemed successful, and is being expanded.

What to Expect
The Tesla Rental Program is looking for a Rental Readiness Specialist to work on one of the most progressive vehicle brands in the world. The Rental Readiness Specialist is a key contributor to the Tesla experience by coordinating the receipt of incoming new and used vehicle inventory. This position is responsible for fleet/lot management, movement of vehicles, vehicle readiness, rental invoicing, and customer hand off. Candidates must have a high level of accountability, and personal satisfaction in doing a great job.

What You’ll Do

• Perform vehicle inventory movement, charging, and cleaning
• Coordinate with registration and logistics teams and perform plating, and paperwork verification
• Perform vehicle readiness inspections and report vehicle concerns
• Communicate with customers for scheduling rental pickups and drop-offs and issues while on rent
• Prepare documents for customer arrival and conduct hand-off
• Conduct insurance company or customer invoice generation and payment receipt
• Detail and/or light service advisory experience is preferred

 

[hemiarch]

Even if it is purely for marketing, I’m glad they are chasing this down.

 

[mongo]

If they allowing towing, a rental Cybertruck with free Supercharging is cheaper than the kWh you would use pulling a large trailer 200 miles.

 

[YDR37]

Update: The rental program was announced in November and was quickly booked up. However, I just noticed that Tesla is accepting rental requests again at the San Diego Miramar and Costa Mesa locations. Seems like the same deal as before, but now scheduled to run through February 15.

Click on the links to register. The reservations may go fast.

I haven't seen any announcements about the restart of the rental program. I don't know if any new locations have been added.

 

[BlueLightning]

CT Rental?

I can see S3XY moving forward, but Tesla has evidently sold all their last of the demo CT.

Down to only two remaining BEASTs demos in area.

Can’t see them building new CT just to rent.

It seems Tesla refuses to provide any more off assembly line new CT at service centers for the demo program?!

 

[SCTesla]

CT Rental?

I can see S3XY moving forward, but Tesla has evidently sold all their last of the demo CT.

Down to only two remaining BEASTs demos in area.

Can’t see them building new CT just to rent.

It seems Tesla refuses to provide any more off assembly line new CT at service centers for the demo program?!

They have seemingly almost stopped production. They sold 4k last Q and that's with Elon buying "thousands".

The lead time is long and the sales are low, which means they slowed production.

 

[Mini2nut]

I’m willing to bet that Tesla is assembling new CT’s in batches as online orders slowly trickle in. I predict deliveries for Q1 will be under 2,000 Cybertruck’s.

At this point all of the first adopters have moved on to the next shiny new thing. Other potential buyers sitting on the fence are most likely waiting on a price drop or the rumored new battery cells coming in 2026.

 

[YDR37]

I don't know if any new locations have been added.

Tesla is treating the San Diego Miramar and Costa Mesa rental programs as scheduled "events". So I went to the Tesla Events page and searched for "events" in several major metro areas across the country, to see if there were any similar "rental events" listed in other places.

Got hits for San Diego Miramar and Costa Mesa, but nowhere else. So my guess is that there are no new locations offering rentals at this time. But I didn't check every possible area, so not 100% certain.

 

[YDR37]

I can see S3XY moving forward, but Tesla has evidently sold all their last of the demo CT.

Down to only two remaining BEASTs demos in area.

I just checked Telsa inventory for "All Deliverable" new Cybertrucks near the San Francisco (94102) and Los Angeles (90012) zip codes. No hits. So either California is completely out of CTs or there is an issue with the online inventory system. Orders take an estimated 4-6 weeks for delivery.

 

[YDR37]

I’m willing to bet that Tesla is assembling new CT’s in batches as online orders slowly trickle in. I predict deliveries for Q1 will be under 2,000 Cybertruck’s.

Less than 2,000 deliveries in a quarter would be very low, but not unprecedented. According to Cox estimates, the Model S sold less than 2,000 units in every quarter of 2025. Lowest quarterly number was 1,280 in Q1 2025. Grand total for Model S for the full 2025 calendar year was only 5,889 units.

 

[SCTesla]

Less than 2,000 deliveries in a quarter would be very low, but not unprecedented. According to Cox, the Model S sold less than 2,000 units in every quarter of 2025. Lowest quarterly number was 1,280 in Q1 2025. Grand total for Model S for the full 2025 calendar year was only 5,889 units.

The CT potentially sold around 2k to consumers in Q4.

I know they aren't reliable, but some publications reported Elon's company purchased between 1-2k CTs in Q4 with around 4k being the total known number.

 

[bri75phx]

Hi all,

New member here and very interested in the CT to replace my totaled R1T last year and current 22MY,

I live here in San Diego and rented the CT from the Miramar location Dec 19th until Dec 24th. I was told it would be a AWD but ended up being the beast (which I am mostly interested in) and took the truck up to mammoth mountain for snow and such things with the family as part of a evaluation of if it would meet my family needs. Free internet, free supercharging, etc. Tesla had even updated their policy the day of pickup to allow out of state if desired, just don't go to Canada or Mexico.

We drove from east county of San Diego to Victorville w/o needing to charge. We stayed at the Hawthorne Hotel next to the freeway which also has a walmart and supercharger all in the same parking lot. Stayed over night, travel time about 3 hours.

Next day was about 4 hours from victorville to mammoth with a stop in lone pine (60% on way there) to charge and stretch legs.

Mammoth Mountain had two supercharger sites so no issues recharging. Weather was mostly overcast upper 30/low 40's at night, low to mid 50's day time. Of course when we left that's when it decided to blizzard...missed the snow....sigh.

On the way back was all in one day, 9.5 hours which we learned would be too much for the kids so either schedule time coming home to get kids playtime outside of the truck or spend the night and finish the next day.

The experience was great overall, even my wife who hates Tesla had only minor gripes haha. Kids loved it (1 and 4 yr old). I put on about 950 miles on that trip (odometer was about 6500 miles on that demo vehicle after my trip). The staff were great and very accommodating. I would highly suggest to use this program if available to see what you like, than just a 30 min demo drive.

The only issues I had with the truck was a small rattle on the inside cabin, in front of the driver and the A-piller. The other issue I had was a leaking vault at the top (well known issue). Otherwise nothing else. Told Tesla on return so they could address it. Rattle was not constant and i readjusted my family gear to not get wet.

In addition, based on who many days you rent, you get a certain amount of discount if you buy a new vehicle within 7 days of the end of that rental. Doing the math at least for the CT, for the 5ish days I had it i would have saved about 25 bucks if I bought within 7 days. If you want the best bang for the buck (if it had not changed since then) would be to rent it for one day as I believe it was 1-4 days = 250 discount. So if you do the math, rent for one day = $75, so 250-75 = 175 bucks off your purchase plus any other discounts you can scrounge up

The FSD was great as I believe it was 14.2.2? which was much improved over my 12.3.4? on my used 22 MY. Range was more than acceptable for my back and travel times, little range anxiety.

Honestly I would buy the vehicle I had for the rental if the price was right since the # of miles might be getting close to a "used" status vice new. Until very recently I saw the beast in California going for as cheap as 105K so if they dropped the price to around 100kish to account for the high mileage of a "new" truck, provided it kept the luxe package goodies (mainly supercharging).

Honestly Tesla should have been doing this a long time ago as it seems to be a reasonable program and much cheaper than Turo or the big name rental companies.

Brian A.
San Diego

 

[YDR37]

Tesla is treating the San Diego Miramar and Costa Mesa rental programs as scheduled "events". So I went to the Tesla Events page and searched for "events" in several major metro areas across the country, to see if there were any similar "rental events" listed in other places.

Got hits for San Diego Miramar and Costa Mesa, but nowhere else. So my guess is that there are no new locations offering rentals at this time. But I didn't check every possible area, so not 100% certain.

If you were wondering what kinds of "Events" Telsa sponsors, the Tesla Events page currently shows a total of 36 "Events" scheduled in California:

- 2 are the rental programs at the San Diego Miramar and Costa Mesa stores;
- 7 are recruitment events at various California universities (including Stanford, UCLA, UCSD, UCSB, and UCI);
- 27 are "Introduction to Full Self-Driving (Supervised)" workshops at Tesla stores.

Might provide some insight into Tesla's current public outreach priorities.

 

[YDR37]

Update: The rental program was announced in November and was quickly booked up. However, I just noticed that Tesla is accepting rental requests again at the San Diego Miramar and Costa Mesa locations. Seems like the same deal as before, but now scheduled to run through February 15.

Another update: the Tesla rental program has been extended. Now it's available through March 31.

Still limited to the two Southern California locations listed above, as far as I know. Still seems like a good deal. Click the links to sign up.

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