With Tesla having announced that it is shuttering the forums on its website to instead focus on the new Tesla Engagement Platform, owners and fans of Tesla's cars will need to look elsewhere to continue the conversation. Fortunately, there are many other Tesla communities online in one form or another, so finding alternatives isn't too tricky. However, much of the response to the forums being closed has been negative.
The forums will become read-only as of March 15, 2021, with Tesla pointing users to the new platform thereafter by saying: "To continue the conversation with the Tesla community visit engage.tesla.com." It says the new platform will provide a home for the work of its public policy team and Tesla Owners Clubs, but its functionality is not a replacement for that of the forums and one forum user said: "The replacement is nothing more than a company PR platform."
The best known and most widely used alternatives to the official forums are those of Tesla Motors Club (TMC), which was set up as an independent Tesla community in 2006 and stakes a claim as the largest community of Tesla enthusiasts. Its forums are categorized for discussion about the different Tesla vehicles, Tesla as a company and its technology, general topics, regional TMC communities, and marketplace posts. At the time of writing, the forums list almost 140,000 members, over 203,000 discussions, and the best part of 5.3 million messages posted. TMC also offers news, video content, groups, regional club listings, and a vendor directory.
Other Tesla Forum Alternatives
Tesla Owners Online, meanwhile, was set up around 2015 and, unlike TMC, is purely a forum. Based on its members list, it has over 41,000, which is good going, despite falling well short of TMC. Like TMC, though, there are forums for discussion under general, region-specific, and marketplace categories, as well as forums for each of Teslas vehicles, listings for useful third-party software, and links to some other notable sites.
Finally, for those who aren't wedded to the traditional forum format, there are a number of Tesla communities on Reddit, which of course does function like a forum in many respects. The r/TeslaMotors subreddit is the largest of the communities with 1.1 million subscribers and calls itself an "unofficial forum of owners and enthusiasts." Its smaller sibling "for laid back discussion" so as not to flood r/TeslaMotors with off-topic discussion, is the r/TeslaLounge subreddit with around 30,000 subscribers. One way or another, one or more of these should fill the void left by the closure of the Tesla forums for those in need.
Sources: Tesla Motors Club, Tesla Owners Online, r/TeslaMotors, r/TeslaLounge