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> "I also happen to know a lot of the people who bought a heavily discounted Tesla in Q3 feel kind of burned that right at the beginning of Q4 Tesla announced the new Autopilot hardware (that isn't retrotfitable on old vehicles). "

Wow I guess this is the best proof of how Tesla is really changing the way auto owners think, this is something that wasn't unthinkable before Tesla and their over the air updates. Can you imagine a BMW owner complaining that his 2015 model does not have stuff that new 2017 models will get??

No, but I can imagine a BMW owner complaining that the 2016 model came out 3 weeks after he bought his 2015, with no notice from BMW, the sales guy, or the press. And that the 2016 model came with a bunch of new features he really wanted and would've been willing to pay for.

> no notice from BMW, the sales guy, or the press

Tesla has done this for a long while. Newer larger battery pack options, newer interior and tech package options, and completely new performance and configuration options (insane, dual motor, and autopilot 1.0 all hit at once)

While there wern't announcements ahead of time what was coming, there were often advance notice that there was an announcement coming, and even when there wasn't - there was a big period of quiet from Tesla leading up to it.

For Autopilot 2.0 everyone knew it was coming for at least the Model 3 launch (Elon said as much at the Model 3 announcement), they just brought it forward.

It is really no different to what happens to customers for a bunch of other tech companies. Canon sure doesn't tell anyone when their new models are coming out - you know it'll probably happen at a major trade show, but only if you're someone that follows that kind of thing. The average customer at their camera shop isn't going to have the sales guy say "Hey, wait a week and we'll have the next version available."

Yes, they keep doing it, and if you pay close attention to Tesla, you’re aware of it. You’re also aware of rumors of AP2 coming. If you don’t follow Tesla news, you’re in for a surprise.

Regardless, I think it’s a fair critique: buyer’s remorse is a real thing with Tesla. It’s one thing to buy a $3000 computer from Apple and have it replaced with a much better one the next week, it’s another to buy a $100K car and have a major improvement two weeks later.

Everyone discounts before they launch a new product. You don't need to follow Tesla to know a new product is eminent when you walk into a show room and they knock $10k of the price because you look pretty or walk nicely. Big deals and big discounts with serious need are always informative to the buyer.

Plus people but cars when then want cars, some will always lament they could have waited a bit, but most I expect will be happy to own a Tesla that was (and is) amazing just a few days ago.

I don't think making an good buying decision should need to take subliminal cues into account, like someone predicting a storm by a sudden shift in wind behavior, and forcing your customer base into this buying paradigm is a huge risk for resentment and product dissatisfaction.

Car manufacturers generally telegraph their intentions for introducing new technologies in advance of actually unveiling the new models. People who buy a new 2016 Honda Accord generally can find out exactly what's going to be in the 2017 model just by googling around a little. Not the case with Tesla.

At the end of the day however, it is not Tesla's responsibility nor in their best interest to educate their customers to make intelligent purchasing decisions.

If you want change in this regard, it's not going to come from Tesla.

It can lead to buyer hesitance, which is a problem. Why buy now when the car can suddenly become better? Without any understanding of when it would get better, or how much, the fear of the regret can be substantial.

Well if BMW communicate upcoming changes much better than Tesla do, maybe I'll buy BMW instead. Shrug.

depends what kind of brand they are trying to develop. with cars many people are still traditionalists and stick to what they were happy with.

It doesn't help that Tesla tends to have long delays for cars.

For instance, let's say I pre-ordered a Model 3 now. But I won't get it the first half of 2019. And then a month later, Tesla announces Model 3 with Autopilot 2.5 hardware or whatever, holographic HUD, and so on. And that new car will ship within 2 months. Then I'd feel pretty screwed by Tesla...

You don't understand the Tesla order process. People waiting in line for Model 3 have not picked the exact details of their cars -- they do that right before the car is produced. If new stuff is announced, it's immediately available. So the only people who are pissed are those whose cars are in the assembly line.

In short, the delay between reservation and receiving the car is not an issue.

If they announced upgrades and that the new car was shipping in 2 months you would be at whatever current build was being deliver (sans any cosmetic changes they may request your input on). If the manufacturing lines are updated to add features as a baseline after you order but before your build, you will get whatever they are.

Canon sure doesn't tell anyone when their new models are coming out

Big difference between buying a camera and buying a car.

Depends entirely on perspective - for a student just getting into photography, buying a DSLR from Canon is pretty evenful and a significant portion of their income/savings.

For a young professional, buying a $35k car is probably just as eventful and significant to their savings/expenditure.

You sure? Cause in this analogy, the 2015 model was at a serious discount while the 2016 has no discount at all.

I'm sure. It's one thing to be told "Hey, there's a new model right around the corner. But we have this guy on a steep discount to clear out inventory."

vs. "Hey, we have this great sale going on. What, new model? Naww, we are just having a sale!!"

The incumbent MFG's literally have "new inventory" sales on their last-years model to clear out inventory. They let you know well in advance that a new car is coming with new features so you can make an informed decision.

> It's one thing to be told "Hey, there's a new model right around the corner. But we have this guy on a steep discount to clear out inventory."

Is this not what "hey this 1-2 year old model is on super duper sale right now, it's really cheap, you should buy it!" means? Is a steep discount on older stock not always code for "better shift these before new model comes out"?

You see Apple fanboys fall for this one every time, too. "Yay I got a new iPhone 5 last week and it was SO CHEAP, I'm a genius... wait wtf they just announced the iPhone 6."

“Fanboys” don’t, they’re well aware a new iPhone is coming in September. And no, Apple doesn’t lower old iPhone prices until after the new is on sale.

I think we know which path leads to better sales.

Both, depending on where in the company lifecycle the sales happen.

The upstart, by virtue of simply not yet having that many potential repeat customers around, is targeting first time buyers. The goodwill created by having as little obsolescence as possible far outweighs the extra sales they might get through it. This tradeoff changes significantly once a company is established and the number of potential repeat customers is high. Now it's always a balance between repeat sale likelihood and repeat sale cycle duration.

Different forms of obsolescence have different effects in different markets. E.g. unlike smartphone makers, car manufacturers tread very carefully when it comes to longevity. Red book value and all that. So what do they do? They have perfected the generational model update cycle. New generation cars are literally designed to make the predecessor look old, because that is the most acceptable repeat sale driver. Tesla just isn't there yet.

And which path leads to buyers remorse.

It's similar to iPhones, countless complaints yet those same people keep buying them.

Really? iPhones seem to have somewhat predictable cycles. I have owned 4 and every time I pretty much knew when a new one would come out.

iPhone 7s or maybe iPhone 10 will ship around September 20th 2017.

I doubt any auto dealer's sales person will gamble to let a customer know that he should not buy the car right now and he should wait for later...they have bonuses to collect, and the faster they move old inventory the better bonuses are.

I thought Tesla doesn't sell through dealers?

edit: I'm absolutely positive I'm missing the joke here

The fact that they 'don't sell through dealers' just means that they are the dealer. All of the usual sales guff still applies.

So that's what I mean - I thought there was no opportunity to haggle for a Tesla - they're a shop and the price is what it is. I thought?

This might be true if you think that all salespeople are scumbags and that the Internet doesn't exist as a source of information on future models.

Can you image going to a BMW dealership and having the salesguy tell you "You shouldn't buy this car, we have new ones coming out in two weeks"?

Even in the case the 2015 model was heavily discounted? Seems like a classic deprecation strategy.

They don't reduce prices on "last year's car" unless its been driven as a demonstrator. There were scattered rumors of a few cars being discounted - Tesla said we shouldn't ever do that but it seems a few places did it. There's never been heavy discounting.

New models of cars come out every year. It seems something easy to be unsympathetic about; Nostradamus could have predicted that new cars with new features are right around the corner. That's the perpetual status quo.

I can see why that would be irritating. But they did it the last two years - announce updates in Oct/Nov. And they will do it again next year. The difference from regular cars is there's not such a long lead time between announcement and delivery, it just kind of hits the market right after. They are going for a cell phone kind of experience, where it's continually improving.

Doesn't BMW update models roughly on the same schedule every year?

Yes, the manufacturing gets reset with very minor updates, but nothing too major.

It's tough because if you are custom ordering a car mid-year there's a question as to whether to wait for a production allocation in the new model year or not.

No, there is no "schedule every year": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_5_Series

There is a difference between the platform update, and model year updates.

I am actually complaining quite a lot that my 2016 Mercedes does not have(and probably won't have the option to retrofit) Android Auto compatibility, while the 2017 model has it. It's literally the same head unit, with a firmware upgrade - it pisses me off.

For the past 2 years they also announced new stuff at the October/November boundary. 2 years ago, it was the autopilot hardware with the camera in the front and radar. Cars before Nov 2014 didn't have the camera in the front (some of the them had the front radar). It was obvious to anyone paying attention that this is the time frame when they announce updates.

I am complaining about my recently purchased 2016 Mercedes e-class doesn't include similar autopilot features as 2017 e-class.

Check :)

Correct me if I misunderstood your comment, but I'm not sure how that's relevant. The point here was that Tesla's upgrades were seemingly random and unannounced, leaving buyers unsure of whether to take advantage of a discount or whether it was a "trap." In my experience with conventional car companies one can usually ask the company or read postings on when the next model year will be released, but minor changes are typically not made at random times.

It's strange from the other side too. With technology it's normal to be able to get updates, but for new tech to eventually come out that makes the old stuff obsolete. A clear sign that this is about to happen is... deep discounts on the existing product.

> Can you imagine a BMW owner complaining that his 2015 model does not have stuff that new 2017 models will get??

I am complaining, at least inwardly :-)

I take it you don't spend a lot of time on car forums. People complain about this kind of stuff all the time.

It's actually a very Apple strategy - discount the old iPhone, the fans realize a new one is in the pipeline but nothing's announced, and then the new one is finally released.

The iPhone is on an extremely predictable release cycle. Especially fans would absolutely know that one comes around the last week of September every year. This scheduling got changed only _once_ (moved from June to September), and this was not kept secret.

But the iPhone is predictably released each year, so I'm not sure this is really the same.

But differing times of year. So fans use the discounts as a leading indicator of releases on the month to 2 month scale.

>Really great news! But something that shouldn't be overlooked is the discounts they gave in Q3 to push deliveries up.

Elon stressed in the call that they did not give significant discounts, and the few that did happen were not to be repeated.

The exact quote:

"Our vehicle gross margin increased Q2 to Q3. One of the other things I've seen out there is that somehow we achieved these numbers as a result of widespread discounting. That is absolutely false. There were a few discounts but they were few and far between and that has been absolutely shut down to zero. You can see that in the fact that the vehicle profitability increased, even excluding ZEV credits, Q2 to Q3."

I'm guessing this is a bit of misdirection. Outright discounts on the purchase price probably were rare and not supposed to happen, as he says. However, from what I've seen from new buyers in that period, it was nearly universal for Tesla to waive the $1,200 "destination fee," which is effectively a $1,200 discount on the purchase price. They also have a referral program going which gets you $1,000 off, although that's been going for something like a year now and isn't new for Q3. That's a $2,200 total discount on many vehicles, which isn't a whole lot on a car that starts at $66,000, but it's something.

Exactly! There were very few discounts, and they were never sanctioned to begin with. Elon made it clear in that internal email that these were not allowed by Tesla's internal policy. Had nothing to do with this quarter's profitability, as reaffirmed by him in today's earnings call.

Did the Q3 email say that it was to boost sales to show profitability?

I think it's fair to assume that they discounted the price because they were close to announce an "hardware" update.

The Q3 email specifically said it was to boost sales to show profitability. You can find it via Google, it was publicly leaked.

That doesn't make your latter point wrong though, that was probably true too!

I checked the Q3 email [1] and while it is indeed about motivating their teams to reach profitability, it doesn't mention any discount.

Here you go:

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-06/full-text-...

This email does not mention anything about discounts. It does not even mention sales. It does talk about "building and delivering every car we possibly can".

I think GP just linked to the email because I cited it but forgot the link.

Along with discounts, it's worth mentioning there were also some accounting changes in Q3 and they cashed in all of their ZEV credits for the year. So the profit didn't come easy.

How do significant discounts create more profitability? Isn't that like "we lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume."?

It may move volume up enough for a brief period to display profitability, but the catch is that if the quarter following it does not have a very special attraction of its own that you will likely see the quarter after it substantially lower. Essentially it moves sales from the next quarter to the current one.

Tesla likely reasoned that they would have a huge up in Q4 and instead of having one quarter with profitability (Q4) they could spread it out and show two consecutive profitable quarters with even higher profits in Q4.

This may indicate they will be attempting to raise more money early next year, it's the kind of 'good news' that investors like to see.

Per-unit margin goes down (but is still profitable per unit) but you make up in volume to create a profit.

Tesla's main costs aren't the cost per unit but the engineer/software costs iirc.

@cortesoft - It takes a lot of time and infrastructure investment to ramp up production to those sort of levels.

This has actually been Tesla's business plan all along: start with a low volume, high-priced product (the Roadster) and gradually move towards successively higher volume, lower cost models.

As per the earnings call, the profit per unit actually went up, and the discounts were never sanctioned and also not relevant to this end result.

If they make more profit by selling more units at a lower price... then why don't they always just do that?

They don't make more profit per vehicle, they just made more profit in a short window of time by doing more sales but this may not be sustainable because it just shifts sales around rather in time at a lower profit per vehicle.

Production bottlenecks.

Tesla is constantly behind on producing cars for its customers. They just wanted to generate money now rather than later.

Building lots of cars is hard. It takes a lot of time and money to ramp up production capacity to this level. They've been building cars as fast as they could for years now.

If that was the case why did their gross margins also go up?

ZEV credits count as automotive revenue.

"My girlfriend once challenged me to not talk about Tesla (motors, energy, something) for a 24 hour period. I dunno if I've ever done that honestly. I'm also an owner (no surprise given my fanaticism, lucky to be able to afford one). And I also own some TSLA."

I talk about Tesla a ton as well. My GF is similar, but with dogs. We made an agreement that whenever I talk about Tesla I have to replace 'Tesla' with 'dog'. She does the reverse.

Let me tell you, there is this new dog, it is so fast. And this dog has a low center of gravity which is great for handling. The craziest thing is that this dog can go from 0-60mph in just 2.8 seconds, it is ludicrous!

Out of interest, what levels of discount were on offer?

It was common for Tesla to waive the $1,200 "destination fee," and they also have a referral program going which gets another $1,000 off.

There were also some stories of people getting bigger discounts, like getting the 60kWh to 75kWh battery upgrade at no additional charge. Those were supposedly rare and were not supposed to happen, though.

http://i.imgur.com/6X1zqDp.png

You're telling me I could have gotten a steep discount on an S in Q3? How big a discount are you talking about; I've avoided test-driving one because I don't want to drop that much cash on a car.

It's probably good that you missed it. They made a huge improvement in the Autopilot hardware in cars built after October 10th. Tesla says that with software updates, that hardware will be capable of full self-driving.

I don't see how a discount changes their profits(!) dramatically – especially considering Tesla does its accounting on an accrual basis. It's perfectly possible (and actually wanted) that someone walks onto a car lot with a fat bundle of cash, uses it to buy a car, drives off – and the whole transaction didn't change profits at all.

If the discount is what brought profitability, than wouldn't this mean the car is mispriced?

Nice writeup. I do think this quarter is a bit misleading because of the 139million emission credit. Howerver, I believe they've done just enough to move the needle and support investor confidence.

By the way, huge fan of HashiCorp Mitchell. ;-)

I didn't notice that was Mitchell. Makes sense. The one time I met him in person we talked about Tesla.

Now I need to track down Elon Musk to discuss Consul.

Hah! How random to see someone I used to play warcraft on hackernews posting about TSLA, what up mitch.

Totally agree with you on this, long elon musk is always the play.

My girlfriend also told me to stop talking about Tesla. She would actually get angry when I started talking about Tesla news :(

That sounds like extreme short-term thinking that is used to fool investors and partners until the gig is up next quarter.

They always do a "end of quarter push" of sorts. It's the terrible reality of being a publicly traded company where a few discrete points in time decide the up and down.

Presumably that is also why Elon doesn't want SpaceX to go public. That kind of push could easily end in a giant fireball there.