How Tesla Sold Millions of Cars Without Ad Campaigns

Business Onion · Part 1 - The Waiting List · 2:50

On May 16, 2023, a Tesla shareholder asked Elon Musk why Tesla didn't run ads. "So we'll try a little advertising and see how it goes," Musk said, and the crowd cheered. For most of its life Tesla had sold cars with almost no advertising, because the founder was the ad: his reveals, his stunts and his posts. Henry Ford did the same with the Model T a century earlier. Why it worked, what it saved, and what changed in 2023. Part 1 of 3 — THE FOUNDER IS THE AD. Numbers & sources: 2019 spend per car: GM "advertising and promotion" $3.7B ÷ 4.21M vehicles sold to dealers ≈ $880; Tesla "marketing, promotional and advertising costs" $27M ÷ 367,656 deliveries ≈ $73 (company 10-Ks; division ours). US dealers' own advertising ≈ $739 per new vehicle in 2025 (NADA Data 2025, an estimate). Ford Motor Company "did not advertise from 1917 until 1923" (The Henry Ford museum; dealers still advertised); national ads resumed in 1923 (Edsel Ford's memo of Aug 10, 1923). 2020 proposal to start advertising: 1,108,793 votes for, 109,870,646 against (Tesla 8-K, Sept 24, 2020). 2022: 1,369,611 cars built, 1,313,851 delivered (Tesla 8-K, Jan 3, 2023). US price cuts of up to 20% on Jan 13, 2023 (press reports). Sources: Tesla annual meetings of June 11, 2019 and May 16, 2023 (Tesla's official videos); Tesla 10-Ks FY2018–FY2023; GM 10-K FY2019; NADA Data 2025; The Henry Ford, "Advertising the Model T" (2015); Musk on X (May 19, 2019; Apr 22, 2024).