If you bought a Model Y a week ago, I'm especially sorry. Even people who bought a Model 3 LR when it was discounted in December just got hosed, 7-10K or thereabouts.
Oh well, that's part of what happens when the manufacturer is also the only seller.
Interestingly, when GM did something similar to 2022 Bolt customers, they cut them a check to make them feel better about the slashed price on the 2023 model. Tesla definitely won't do any such thing, of course. Most manufacturers probably wouldn't. It's interesting that GM chose to.
I'm also seeing some regret on the part of Ioniq 5 owners who say they'd have bought a Model Y at this price instead of the I5. It's interesting how many people bought competing EVs just because Tesla was too expensive.
It's a car; a depreciating asset. I think people got way too attached to the idea that cars were going up in value. In this case, they tried to curb demand by increasing prices when everyone seems to have been doing the same. Countless dealerships added BS overhead as supply was so low last year. That's all changing.
Exactly. It's getting an entire year's worth of extra depreciation in an instant. It's just on paper until you go to sell, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.
Anyone buying a car in the last year or two had ample data that it was a bubble due to supply issues causing sellers to be unable to maintain the volume. i bought a used model 3 for 35k usd before the bubble, saw the prices for that same car and mileage spike to 65k and then drop to 45k and now still 40k
I do find it interesting that with all the data out there, i find it hard to see a graph of prices over time for cars. not the instantaneous prices, thwy are ineascapable, but the trend and history.
Re Ionia 5 customers: If so, I don’t think that regret will last long — the Hyundai EV products have better ergonomics, a real support network, and they’re not electric MAGA hats. And non-Tesla charging networks will improve.
Most people will have moved on to other cars by the time the CCS1 network reaches parity with the supercharger network, though. Right now it's still a compelling reason to buy a Tesla. Maybe the best reason.
Tesla actually did give model 3 performance owners in 2018 the option of getting a check for $5k after they made the performance upgrade option free. The only downside was you would lose your free supercharging for life. But that was back before Elon was a massive d-bag.
Interesting. Well, maybe as a consolation prize for slashing the price on the Performance model so much, they could give away the Performance Boost to anyone who bought a LR relatively recently. Please. :)
Why did you drive it for a whole ten years if it was such a disaster? Seems like an excessively long time to tolerate something that's causing you such headache.
The answer to that is complex, and involves personal finances, shame, papering over concerns, the desire to use electricity as fuel, not understanding what the other options were, etc. etc.
People get attached to bad ways of doing things all the time. This was no different.
That's because he has not taken delivery. If Tesla didn't do this automatically he would just cancel his order and place it again to get the new price, thus generating more churn for Tesla.
The Model Y was approaching premium car prices without the premium interior. In 2020, they were hovering at $50k but when the pandemic started they raised the price practically every week. If you’ve driven an Audi, BMW, Mercedes you kind of know what to expect and where the luxury price comes from. Except the Model S I never got the impression the 3 and Y were worth that price Tesla was charging. And I think the market made that determination as well. It’s great technology but 60x $1000 car payments is still a big commitment for a lot of people. There just aren’t that many buyers in that class.
In my experience the majority of the Teslas are luxurious noise comes from the fact it's often the first "luxury" car people have owned
People who normally drove "boring" cars like Civics and Camrys because they saw cars as a utilitarian purchase swung for a Tesla because it was more of a tech purchase than a car purchase.
So a lot of people insist it's the best car they've ever driven, and they're not lying... they just haven't driven many non-utilitarian cars.
I'm surrounded by middle aged high-tech-earning Bay Area Tesla-owning colleagues who used to drive (or still have as their second household car) BWMs, Audis, Lexus etc. I'm one of them.
We didn't buy a Tesla because it was a step up from a Camry, but because Teslas are so much more fun to drive. It's really that simple.
It can't be quite that simple in general. There have always been really fun cars, even some that were sedans. Maybe the niche Tesla figured out how to exploit was stoplight racers. Enthusiasts have never had trouble finding fun daily drivers.
Who knows... My opinion is anecdotal and reductionist, but reducing the argument to "most of those poor saps just don't know any better" isn't any better. And you don't need to be a car enthusiast or stoplight racer to enjoy the feeling of instant torque.
People buy Teslas because they're fun to drive, because they believe EVs help the environment, because of the charging network, because of the autopilot (which has been really excellent in my case), because of the promise of FSD (which is something that should never have been released), or because they think Musk is a great buddy. And any combination of those points. I'm sure you'll find some who think the fart app is cool, and, yes, there'll be some who think it's a luxury car.
I live in SF, work at a "FAANG adjacent" company so I'm surrounded by the same crowd.
The minority of us who had fun to drive cars in the first place are not the ones going with Teslas for the fun driving experience. (if anything I know more who do in spite of the driving experience for practical reasons... I was one of them when I first got here from NYC)
I mentioned Civic and Camry because they're common in the entire US, but most BMWs/Audis/Lexuses driven in the Bay Area are similarly utilitarian models.
There might be a few more M3/M4s in our parking lot than you'd find in a random one across the country for example, but they're still drowned out by SUVs and sedans with base engines.
-
Maybe we're talking past each other because I'm assuming "fun to drive" in terms of driving dynamics, where by "fun to drive" you might mean the tech part.
That would be more in line with my original point, and I could actually see being common.
Because our mottos are "do more with less," "happiness is what you get divided by what you expect," "leave the world better than you found" (as opppsed to the mottos "enjoy yourself a little," "what, you are too good to have some fun," "what is creation for if not to be a blessing"). Compared to a 90s style Accord, VW Superbug Saturn, 2 Priuses, a Leaf, the Model 3 was indeed the funnest car i have driven, (till i had to stick the transflag on it to annotate the political statement).
I did rent a BMW on my last vacation in Europe, and it wasn't just the interior details looking good, it was the silence and the smoothness, like all the parts fit and were damped against vibration, that impressed me.
When i look at the shabby model 3 interior, i see soneone that forced into reality a mass produced pure electric vehicle, when the common wisdom was it was impossible, and with the great result of helping of us surviving the carbon burn en route to a truly advanced civilization. Now that the path is showm, others will follow, but kudos.
A shame he has now surrounded himself with so many yes men as to force his mind out of the great common reality, but perhaps he has done enough good in the world, it is ok for him to inhabit a world of delusions for a while.
I’m not sure what the significance of the length of loans is? Surely it’s the overall amount of interest that matters.
I probably wouldn’t want to be paying a loan at the point I would want to be trading something in — but even then I keep things more than even 84 months and you can always just pay it off.
I acknowledge it’s psychological, but the significance - to me - is that these long loan terms exaggerate how expensive a vehicle a person can “afford”. I haven’t bought a new car recently, but I would be shocked if salespeople aren’t hyper focused on that long term/low monthly bill when trying to upsell vehicles/trims.
> Oh well, that's part of what happens when the manufacturer is also the only seller.
I am not seeing the connection. If the manufacturer reduced the price it was selling at to the middlemen, why would the middlemen (assuming there are numerous) not also lower their price to win more customers?
Tesla raises and lowers prices instantly in response to the market. They're essentially doing the markup that dealers do, except they get to keep it for themselves. And they don't have competitors who can sell you a Tesla.
Yeah, I don't really see sympathy with those paying more for the same thing because timed it worse than someone else.
This happens in concert tickets, airlines, even appliances all the time. Heck even housing - asking a new family to our neighborhood then telling them what you got your (very similar) house for 3 years (or sometimes even 3 months) ago...
The GM bolt rebate came with a condition saying that you wouldn't join any class action against GM w.r.t. the battery fires they were having. GM is also somewhat more desperate to sell bolts because it saves them buying emissions credits.
It's getting increasingly clearer that Tesla won't be able to maintain both high margins and huge growth figures (despite the market believing they will be able to pull it off ,for some reason, because nothing else would have justified their extremely high valuation). So probably.
Tesla seems to be making bets in huge volumes of cars sold.
Possibly with their manufacturing decisions (a couple of really big plants making only a couple of varieties of models, with the models not changing much from year to year) they'll be driving unit costs way down such that they can reduce their sales price and keep their margins.
If it's a bad bet they're sitting on a lot of stranded manufacturing assets. If it's a good bet they'll look pretty smart.
Their unit prices have historically had pretty dynamic pricing both up and down, though in the past 18-24 months it's mostly been up.
I think they'll do fine. It's just that their peak valuation was unreasonably high. Basically many expected it to become the Apple of the automotive world (i.e. both huge volumes and much higher margins than anyone else) and that's probably unfeasible longterm due to a variety of reasons if their competitors eventually catch up.
Obviously Tesla will still be valued at premium even compared to the legacy car makers who transitioned successfully to EV (and that makes sense from a financial perspective e.g. high debt levels and various other obligations). But it really made no sense for Tesla to have a higher market worth than all the other car manufacturers combined..
Now line these up with TSLA's stock price. What pattern do you see?
When a "whale" sells huge amounts of stock, it just causes the price to drop. No matter what the fundamentals are.
--------
Now "why" is Elon selling TSLA stock? Is it just to fund Twitter? Or is Elon cashing out of TSLA because he's losing confidence in it? Hard to say, its not like the man is very honest about his intentions (and he shouldn't be).
But its always a good idea to keep an eye on the actions of the insiders and how they trade.
Even if there are correlating events, I think TSLA drops overall because it simply isn't worth 10-15x GM, Ford, or Toyota. It's just a car company in the end, and there's plenty of competition for making cars. There was a hype bubble around automation for a while, but the market won't likely stay irrational forever.
I used to report auto sales as part of my role as a business analyst more than five years ago. During that time my editor used to chew me out for including Tesla sales, saying quantity > quality. The amount being sold at that time was of course, dwarfed by ICE sales (still the case even in Cali) and there weren't as many competitors in the EV scene.
Sometimes I wonder whether he still would be chewing me out for trying to deep-dive into EV sales. Just food for thought.
So you're linking the used car chart specifically, which changed a lot more than inflation. Is that to say they're greedily following the market, promises be damned?
As far as inflation goes, Dec 2019 to Dec 2022 is about a 15% increase, which would bring the equivalent of that $35000 car up to $40500. This $3k price drop still leaves a more than $3k gap in inflation-adjusted price.
I think it's fair to go based on actual launch date. They knew they weren't going to offer it right away. Inflation was normal from 2015-2019 so that should have been baked into the announcement.
Imagine if it had launched with inflation included. Here's your $35000 car, for only $38500. I don't think people would have been happy.
If they sold it at $35K, the scalpers would be the ones profiting, since used car prices would be above new car prices. I'd rather that the manufacturer gets the money rather than slimy middlemen like scalpers(or car dealers for other manufacturers).
> In the US the entry-level version of its Model Y now costs $52,990
This is still more than the top level trim of the VW ID.4, and comparable to the top level trim of the Ioniq 5 and EV6. Of course the range is still better on the Teslas.
However, there is a greater realization that for day to day driving 250 miles of range is sufficient, especially if you can charge at home.
For multi car households (common in the US), you can also have a secondary gas car for long road trips.
Nonetheless, a price war for EVs is good for their adoption, and hopefully also drives down used EV prices too.
MSRP sure, but dealers are still marking most EVs up. And it seems like very few low-trim level cars are actually being made, so in practice buying any of these EVs ends up being more expensive than one might first expect.
If I go onto cars.com and search for new ID.4s in my area, they're listed between $47-55k. $47-64k for Ioniq 5s and and $51-69k for EV6s. Ok, $68,660, but still, that's an expensive Kia!
We all know that Tesla's programming uses RADAR, I mean doesn't use RADAR because RADAR is stupid. I mean, we're adding RADAR back and removing ultrasonic, because ultrasonic is useless. Each time Tesla changes their feature set, they're changing their programming, and we have reason to believe it doesn't work as well as advertised.
Meanwhile, the other car manufacturers are basically putting in bog-standard RADAR + Camera + Ultrasonic suites from Mobileye, which basically has no issues.
I know Tesla fans just wanna pretend that their neural network training will solve everything, but surely they have to understand that the feature set / inputs into that neural net need to remain constant? Like, you can't just add RADAR, then remove RADAR, then add it back again, and hope that the training continues to improve.
I don't think neural nets solve everything mind you. But 'if they did', you surely have to at least have consistent training data.
------------
And btw: Phantom Braking is an issue on all Teslas, since they all have emergency auto-braking and FSD is "just a software unlock" (ie: we know FSD is representative of the emergency braking software's quality).
IIRC, Autopilot / FSD / etc. etc. was Mobileye back in the day, until Mobileye fired Tesla as a customer. That was when Tesla began to write their own in-house software, and I don't think it ever matched the quality of Mobileye... despite the hype.
But features on paper are one thing, trustworthiness is a feature as well.
If I ever bought a Tesla, I sure would not buy nor trust any FSD. You can say the same about a lot of other such "badly implemented features" in many products from other companies as well - a good comparison includes that depth as well.
Heads up Display. Apple Carplay / Android Auto. A button that makes my windshield wipers work. Lumbar support on the front passenger seat.
Its... gotten quite sad how bad the Tesla interior is. Meanwhile, real luxury cars with actually cool technology are putting augmented reality head up displays on the windshield.
The Teslas have these besides the back massager which I probably wouldn't miss... I do wish the main console had better physical buttons and Car Play/Android Auto, though.
The new price of the long range Model Y, $52990, is still $4000 higher than the $48,990 base price that's printed on my February 2021 invoice.
Back then, the delivery time of a Model Y was only 3 weeks, ridiculously short compared to any other car or car brand at the time. Shortly after, delivery times shot up to over 6 months or more, and the price went along with it.
The price that I paid was IMO fair. I've had zero issues with it, it's much more fun to drive than the more expensive German car of my wife, I love autopilot for long distance driving (I will never buy or use FSD though), and 30k miles later, I've saved around $5k (ok, let's make it $3k) compared to using gas in the 2 years that I've owned it.
But I would never have bought it for yesterday's price of $65k.
How does that $5k savings number work out? If electricity were free, that'd be an implied gas price of $6/gal for the entire time (for a 35 mpg car). Anywhere with gas prices that high (e.g., California) probably has high electric prices to match (e.g., 30c/kWh in CA would imply $8.50 per gallon at a conservative 4mi/kWh).
The night time PG&E EV rate in the Bay Area is something like $0.25c/kWh and $0.15c/kWh flat-free in Truckee where we spend a lot time. We also have solar.
It's probably a bit less than $5k, but still a good first-order engineering approximation.
My take on this is that Tesla are still targeting the top ~10% (maybe?) of the car market and so it's unsurprising that they're starting to struggle with their pricing.
Something I think a lot of people, particularly in car enthusiast circles, or highly paid Hacker News reader circles, is just how little people want to pay for cars. A £45k car is an expensive car for most people.
Bearing in mind that there are plenty of good cars at £25k (new) and plenty of supply of second hand cars that are only a few years old and much cheaper.
As a comparison, I'm happy to spend £2k on a laptop, but the vast majority of people are buying in the £500-1k range (or replacing with a cheap tablet etc). A £2k laptop is probably in the top ~10% of the laptop market, as much as it might seem totally normal to me.
Tesla really need to expand to more of the market, with, say, a $35,000 car. I'd love to see a small hatchback for £20k from them, and I think it would do very well in Europe. Much better than an £80k ~tank~ truck.
I agree but there was an article shared here the other day that outlined how new car prices are higher than ever. The average new car (non-luxury) price was/is around $45K
Good point, although that may be a bit US centric, and that's only new cars – much of the market is second hand cars.
I don't know the numbers for Europe/UK, but anecdotally, that sort of price doesn't seem at all common to me, whereas I do know people who would only ever consider buying second hand cars. Plus the fact that trucks aren't a thing here probably brings down our prices significantly.
A quick look at the Office of National Statistics suggests that the average UK price is £36500 for electric/hybrid, or £29000 for petrol/diesel (still the majority of the market here). That seems quite a bit lower than the US, and is still only the new car market.
They are, but Tesla is still massively above average prices(at least here in UK). Even the cheapest model at(now) £42k would be very much a luxury purchase and in fact would be subject to "premium vehicle" tax every year. The best selling vehicle in the UK at the moment is still a Nissan Qashqai, a family friendly crossover, starting at £26k. A basic model 3 doesn't compare in terms of usability, Model Y does but it's £20k(another very decent car) more than the Qashqai.
And finally, I imagine most Brits can't actually afford a £42k vehicle - even on decent finance that's £500-600 a month - that's how much I pay in mortgage for my house.
Not that I expect many people are doing total cost of ownership calculation, but even with a higher upfront cost, EVs have a lot of cost benefits with much less maintenance and fuel costs. You do spend more on tires though.
I bought my almost-new Subaru Forester for $17000. There is no amount of maintenance and fuel savings that would make up the ~$18k difference to buy a _used_ Tesla. I could have gone even cheaper but I wanted premium features like AWD and lots of space for my business.
People who talk about TCO for a car are already setting the bar crazy high to justify buying an expensive car that they don't really need.
A lot of people assert that EVs have a lower cost of ownership, but there just isn't a lot of data to support that. Yes, on the one hand you have fewer moving parts. On the other you have a huge amount of new tech and a rapacious service model.
In terms of fuel, well that very much depends on what happens to electricity prices when a lot of people start plugging in their EVs. Again, people assume they will just remain the same in response to an increase in demand, but color me skeptical. The only way electricity prices can avoid rapidly increasing is if it becomes illegal for you to plug in your EV.
You should in general be suspicious of anyone making claims about total cost of ownership calculations, and heavily discount such claims -- whether it is your local IBM/Oracle salesman or your local car salesman. It is usually a mechanism to justify higher up front purchase prices. Next time someone refuses to be price competitive with other options but makes an appeal to TCO, ask them to put that into writing -- that your TCO will be lower otherwise you will get a refund on the purchase price. Just watch their mouth drop.
And it sort of makes sense that ICE’s are cheaper to maintain. There is about 100 years of experience with building reliable engines and doing maintenance on those things versus about 12 years for EV.
Also ICE’s are still way ahead in energy density (energy per kilogram/pound) even if you count the big engine with it
I wouldn't at all be surprised if we get a flood of relatively cheap to maintain EVs from China, as a parallel of the durable and cheap cars we got from Japan in the 80s. Except this time, it wont be so much that the components themselves are reliable as that they are standardized and all the DRM is removed so that they can be affordably serviced. I don't think the future is very bright for domestic auto makers. First, they foolishly declare they will stop selling ICE vehicles, handing that entire market segment over to asian competitors, and then they screw the pooch with EVs via user-hostile designs. 2021 was the first year since the 1930s that GM wasn't the best selling car maker, being dethroned by Toyota - a company that really does make lower TCO vehicles.
With EVs that won't be a problem - they are absurdly cheap to maintain.
With Tesla, things are a lot simpler. Original buyers were the people who were excited to own an EV. Now that EVs has gone mainstream, that segment is gone, and people became more attentive to details of the cars they buy. And, Tesla's interiors suck. Model 3 looks like a dirt cheap Chinese car, Model S like a mid-range European family car. Exterior is cool, but inside it feels like a car 3x it's cheaper. I can imagine it becoming a major impediment in sales now as the "early adopters" market is fulfilled.
Then again, maybe it's OK in U.S. where most of the cars are crappy on the inside - my ex had an American BMW X5 and it felt like cheap crap too, quite unlike it's European cousin. But it won't fly here in Europe.
I think it's also a safety thing. I am always surprised at parents who clearly have enough money when they get their kids really f'ed up cars. I even know of a family who lost their kid in a car crash, and it would've most likely been fine had they not "tried to teach him a lesson" and gotten him a reasonable car.
So yeah, my main reason for driving a pricier car is, well, less chance of death and leaving behind my family.
The title quotes one financial analyst who expects a price war, but is there any evidence of that happening? My understanding is that all non-Tesla EVs are sold at a loss. I’d be surprised if they lowered their prices soon in a similar fashion.
People who are shopping on TCO aren't buying Ioniq 5s, EV6s, or Teslas. If they are, they're delusional. These aren't cars you buy to save money. If that's your goal, a Bolt has >250 miles of range and costs 26K. Or 11K if you live in Oregon and have a moderate income. It's tough to find a car from any manufacturer with any fuel source that can touch the TCO on that.
Are we sure this isn't just because Tesla is tainted by association with Musk, and the whole world has finally realised what an awful human he is? I'd be embarrassed to be driving one.
Outside of our tech bubble, most people probably couldn't tell you anything about Musk. I think what we're seeing here has little to do with his antics, and everything to do with high production, niche market, and faltering economy.
This needed to happen. Even with tax credits EVs are not as good as a fuel efficient gas cars. I think the price needs to come down a little bit more to compete with hybrids, but this is a step in the right direction. I also think that the high-end models need to have a better trim - because if you shell out that kind of money you ought to enjoy it.
109 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadOh well, that's part of what happens when the manufacturer is also the only seller.
Interestingly, when GM did something similar to 2022 Bolt customers, they cut them a check to make them feel better about the slashed price on the 2023 model. Tesla definitely won't do any such thing, of course. Most manufacturers probably wouldn't. It's interesting that GM chose to.
I'm also seeing some regret on the part of Ioniq 5 owners who say they'd have bought a Model Y at this price instead of the I5. It's interesting how many people bought competing EVs just because Tesla was too expensive.
It's a car; a depreciating asset. I think people got way too attached to the idea that cars were going up in value. In this case, they tried to curb demand by increasing prices when everyone seems to have been doing the same. Countless dealerships added BS overhead as supply was so low last year. That's all changing.
Sure, but cutting prices 20% on new ones means your asset you bought last week just depreciated substantially faster than planned.
I do find it interesting that with all the data out there, i find it hard to see a graph of prices over time for cars. not the instantaneous prices, thwy are ineascapable, but the trend and history.
People just started listening to him for some reason.
Drove a Tesla for ~10 years. What a disaster of a vehicle to own. Great delight to drive, huge headache owning it.
People get attached to bad ways of doing things all the time. This was no different.
People who normally drove "boring" cars like Civics and Camrys because they saw cars as a utilitarian purchase swung for a Tesla because it was more of a tech purchase than a car purchase.
So a lot of people insist it's the best car they've ever driven, and they're not lying... they just haven't driven many non-utilitarian cars.
We didn't buy a Tesla because it was a step up from a Camry, but because Teslas are so much more fun to drive. It's really that simple.
People buy Teslas because they're fun to drive, because they believe EVs help the environment, because of the charging network, because of the autopilot (which has been really excellent in my case), because of the promise of FSD (which is something that should never have been released), or because they think Musk is a great buddy. And any combination of those points. I'm sure you'll find some who think the fart app is cool, and, yes, there'll be some who think it's a luxury car.
The minority of us who had fun to drive cars in the first place are not the ones going with Teslas for the fun driving experience. (if anything I know more who do in spite of the driving experience for practical reasons... I was one of them when I first got here from NYC)
I mentioned Civic and Camry because they're common in the entire US, but most BMWs/Audis/Lexuses driven in the Bay Area are similarly utilitarian models.
There might be a few more M3/M4s in our parking lot than you'd find in a random one across the country for example, but they're still drowned out by SUVs and sedans with base engines.
-
Maybe we're talking past each other because I'm assuming "fun to drive" in terms of driving dynamics, where by "fun to drive" you might mean the tech part.
That would be more in line with my original point, and I could actually see being common.
I did rent a BMW on my last vacation in Europe, and it wasn't just the interior details looking good, it was the silence and the smoothness, like all the parts fit and were damped against vibration, that impressed me.
When i look at the shabby model 3 interior, i see soneone that forced into reality a mass produced pure electric vehicle, when the common wisdom was it was impossible, and with the great result of helping of us surviving the carbon burn en route to a truly advanced civilization. Now that the path is showm, others will follow, but kudos.
A shame he has now surrounded himself with so many yes men as to force his mind out of the great common reality, but perhaps he has done enough good in the world, it is ok for him to inhabit a world of delusions for a while.
I was stressed at having a 36 month loan as a public school teacher (I did not, of course, spring for the BMW).
I probably wouldn’t want to be paying a loan at the point I would want to be trading something in — but even then I keep things more than even 84 months and you can always just pay it off.
I am not seeing the connection. If the manufacturer reduced the price it was selling at to the middlemen, why would the middlemen (assuming there are numerous) not also lower their price to win more customers?
Sounds like people who are more committed to the brand than the product. Hyundai makes quality cars, Tesla does not... anymore.
Hard to feel sorry for people blowing their budget on a car when they all functionally do the same thing at the end of the day
This happens in concert tickets, airlines, even appliances all the time. Heck even housing - asking a new family to our neighborhood then telling them what you got your (very similar) house for 3 years (or sometimes even 3 months) ago...
Possibly with their manufacturing decisions (a couple of really big plants making only a couple of varieties of models, with the models not changing much from year to year) they'll be driving unit costs way down such that they can reduce their sales price and keep their margins.
If it's a bad bet they're sitting on a lot of stranded manufacturing assets. If it's a good bet they'll look pretty smart.
Their unit prices have historically had pretty dynamic pricing both up and down, though in the past 18-24 months it's mostly been up.
Obviously Tesla will still be valued at premium even compared to the legacy car makers who transitioned successfully to EV (and that makes sense from a financial perspective e.g. high debt levels and various other obligations). But it really made no sense for Tesla to have a higher market worth than all the other car manufacturers combined..
I'm of the opinion that TSLA's stock has largely dropped due to Elon Musk selling $40,000,000,000+ worth of stock over the last couple of years.
Look at every major TSLA price drop. They coincide with Elon Musk's sells. Ex: Elon Musk's December 14th filing (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000089924322...), or Elon Musk's November 11th filing (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000089924322...), etc. etc. Feel free to search SEC's "EDGAR" database for Form 4, Tesla and Elon Musk.
Now line these up with TSLA's stock price. What pattern do you see?
When a "whale" sells huge amounts of stock, it just causes the price to drop. No matter what the fundamentals are.
--------
Now "why" is Elon selling TSLA stock? Is it just to fund Twitter? Or is Elon cashing out of TSLA because he's losing confidence in it? Hard to say, its not like the man is very honest about his intentions (and he shouldn't be).
But its always a good idea to keep an eye on the actions of the insiders and how they trade.
Sometimes I wonder whether he still would be chewing me out for trying to deep-dive into EV sales. Just food for thought.
OP:
> The Model 3 dropped to $43,990, a $3,000 reduction.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now
> February 28, 2019
> $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now
https://electrek.co/2020/11/16/tesla-stops-selling-35000-mod...
> Nov 16 2020
> Tesla stops selling $35,000 Model 3 with new 2021 model year refresh
As far as inflation goes, Dec 2019 to Dec 2022 is about a 15% increase, which would bring the equivalent of that $35000 car up to $40500. This $3k price drop still leaves a more than $3k gap in inflation-adjusted price.
Imagine if it had launched with inflation included. Here's your $35000 car, for only $38500. I don't think people would have been happy.
Why does the article above say "available now" February 28, 2019?
Oh, the model 3 in general launched in July 2017. But that didn't include the $35k version.
This is still more than the top level trim of the VW ID.4, and comparable to the top level trim of the Ioniq 5 and EV6. Of course the range is still better on the Teslas.
However, there is a greater realization that for day to day driving 250 miles of range is sufficient, especially if you can charge at home.
For multi car households (common in the US), you can also have a secondary gas car for long road trips.
Nonetheless, a price war for EVs is good for their adoption, and hopefully also drives down used EV prices too.
So it looks like Teslas are selling relatively better in the US than Europe?
If I go onto cars.com and search for new ID.4s in my area, they're listed between $47-55k. $47-64k for Ioniq 5s and and $51-69k for EV6s. Ok, $68,660, but still, that's an expensive Kia!
We all know that Tesla's programming uses RADAR, I mean doesn't use RADAR because RADAR is stupid. I mean, we're adding RADAR back and removing ultrasonic, because ultrasonic is useless. Each time Tesla changes their feature set, they're changing their programming, and we have reason to believe it doesn't work as well as advertised.
Meanwhile, the other car manufacturers are basically putting in bog-standard RADAR + Camera + Ultrasonic suites from Mobileye, which basically has no issues.
I know Tesla fans just wanna pretend that their neural network training will solve everything, but surely they have to understand that the feature set / inputs into that neural net need to remain constant? Like, you can't just add RADAR, then remove RADAR, then add it back again, and hope that the training continues to improve.
I don't think neural nets solve everything mind you. But 'if they did', you surely have to at least have consistent training data.
------------
And btw: Phantom Braking is an issue on all Teslas, since they all have emergency auto-braking and FSD is "just a software unlock" (ie: we know FSD is representative of the emergency braking software's quality).
IIRC, Autopilot / FSD / etc. etc. was Mobileye back in the day, until Mobileye fired Tesla as a customer. That was when Tesla began to write their own in-house software, and I don't think it ever matched the quality of Mobileye... despite the hype.
If I ever bought a Tesla, I sure would not buy nor trust any FSD. You can say the same about a lot of other such "badly implemented features" in many products from other companies as well - a good comparison includes that depth as well.
That said, EVs are very much compressing what "top level" even means because even cheaper EVs perform better than more expensive ICE cars.
Its... gotten quite sad how bad the Tesla interior is. Meanwhile, real luxury cars with actually cool technology are putting augmented reality head up displays on the windshield.
https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/electric-suvs-in-the-pre...
does it come with working electronics yet?
Back then, the delivery time of a Model Y was only 3 weeks, ridiculously short compared to any other car or car brand at the time. Shortly after, delivery times shot up to over 6 months or more, and the price went along with it.
The price that I paid was IMO fair. I've had zero issues with it, it's much more fun to drive than the more expensive German car of my wife, I love autopilot for long distance driving (I will never buy or use FSD though), and 30k miles later, I've saved around $5k (ok, let's make it $3k) compared to using gas in the 2 years that I've owned it.
But I would never have bought it for yesterday's price of $65k.
edit: it's actually much less. According to the BLS inflation calculator $48,990 is equivalent to $55,282 now
It's probably a bit less than $5k, but still a good first-order engineering approximation.
Something I think a lot of people, particularly in car enthusiast circles, or highly paid Hacker News reader circles, is just how little people want to pay for cars. A £45k car is an expensive car for most people.
Bearing in mind that there are plenty of good cars at £25k (new) and plenty of supply of second hand cars that are only a few years old and much cheaper.
As a comparison, I'm happy to spend £2k on a laptop, but the vast majority of people are buying in the £500-1k range (or replacing with a cheap tablet etc). A £2k laptop is probably in the top ~10% of the laptop market, as much as it might seem totally normal to me.
Tesla really need to expand to more of the market, with, say, a $35,000 car. I'd love to see a small hatchback for £20k from them, and I think it would do very well in Europe. Much better than an £80k ~tank~ truck.
I agree but there was an article shared here the other day that outlined how new car prices are higher than ever. The average new car (non-luxury) price was/is around $45K
I don't know the numbers for Europe/UK, but anecdotally, that sort of price doesn't seem at all common to me, whereas I do know people who would only ever consider buying second hand cars. Plus the fact that trucks aren't a thing here probably brings down our prices significantly.
A quick look at the Office of National Statistics suggests that the average UK price is £36500 for electric/hybrid, or £29000 for petrol/diesel (still the majority of the market here). That seems quite a bit lower than the US, and is still only the new car market.
And finally, I imagine most Brits can't actually afford a £42k vehicle - even on decent finance that's £500-600 a month - that's how much I pay in mortgage for my house.
People who talk about TCO for a car are already setting the bar crazy high to justify buying an expensive car that they don't really need.
For example, Teslas are more expensive to maintain than the ICE industry average - $832 versus $650 for other cars. https://jalopnik.com/advisor/tesla-maintenance-cost/#:~:text....
In terms of fuel, well that very much depends on what happens to electricity prices when a lot of people start plugging in their EVs. Again, people assume they will just remain the same in response to an increase in demand, but color me skeptical. The only way electricity prices can avoid rapidly increasing is if it becomes illegal for you to plug in your EV.
You should in general be suspicious of anyone making claims about total cost of ownership calculations, and heavily discount such claims -- whether it is your local IBM/Oracle salesman or your local car salesman. It is usually a mechanism to justify higher up front purchase prices. Next time someone refuses to be price competitive with other options but makes an appeal to TCO, ask them to put that into writing -- that your TCO will be lower otherwise you will get a refund on the purchase price. Just watch their mouth drop.
Also ICE’s are still way ahead in energy density (energy per kilogram/pound) even if you count the big engine with it
Then again, maybe it's OK in U.S. where most of the cars are crappy on the inside - my ex had an American BMW X5 and it felt like cheap crap too, quite unlike it's European cousin. But it won't fly here in Europe.
In most of the world (my rough guess) a Tesla costs as much or more than a house. Not an easy thing to invest in that rusts, crashes and wears out.
I have paid for 2nd hand car about 3k. Can imagine to buy new one for 20k but as someone who does not use it daily, 45k seems crazy for a car.
If I want to drive over the mountains or 500miles on a road trip, I just have to remember to pack a toolbox. Generally simple fixes easily done.
Practically speaking, I just rent a car for a couple of days for those harder outings rather than put my elderly car through that.
Anyway, your laptop cost more than my car.
So yeah, my main reason for driving a pricier car is, well, less chance of death and leaving behind my family.