The US retail giant Costco often uses its overseas presence to test novel sales ideas before applying them in the US, and the stores in Japan and Taiwan have been at the forefront of those efforts.
Costco Taiwan has now announced a partnership with Tesla that will see its electric cars being sold in the company's retail stores as part of a 2-week trial event.
As an incentive, the first customers who buy a Tesla car in Costco stores will be getting 3,100 free Supercharger miles, as well as a travelling case for a Level 2 charger.
When Elon Musk learned about the Tesla-Costco partnership, though, he immediately put the kibosh on the whole idea, saying that he "just canned this program" as it was "not approved."
Still, this is not the first partnership between one of Elon Musk's companies and Costco. The Starlink Standard Kits of SpaceX first went on sale in Costco Japan with a free subscription period thrown in, and then exactly the same offer made its way to the US Costco stores as well.
If Tesla is testing the waters to wiggle its way into the Costco Auto Program, that would be a pretty interesting partnership.
Costco already sells a number of vehicles and services via the program, including Hyundai electric cars like the Ioniq that can be had with a Costco membership card discount.
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