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npunt

Legit: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245165/tesla-model-3-pr...

New Prices

Cheap Interior

Standard Range (220mi) - $35k

Partial Premium Interior

Standard Range Plus (240mi) - $37k

Premium Interiors

Mid Range (264mi) - $40k

Long Range (325mi) - $43k

Dual Motor Long Range (310mi) - $47k

Dual Motor Performance (310mi) - $58k

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> The company says it is shifting all sales worldwide to online only, so you’ll no longer be able to buy a car in one of the company’s stores. By moving all sales online, Tesla says it will be able to lower the price of its cars by 6 percent, which is how it was able to finally get to the $35,000 price point.

> As a result of this change Tesla says it will be “winding down many of our stores.”

Buried lede here

So presumably they are hoping many $35k buyers will be tempted by the $37k which presumably has a better margin for Tesla

Yup, the availability of "nice feature for 2-4k more" really drags up the price. I started looking at $35k, ended up wanting the $47k.. but that's a $12k increase...

Especially if the range limit continues to be imposed only by the car's software.

From what I was told at the dealer, the software range limit was only on the Model S produced during a certain span of time and now all long-range Teslas have larger batteries than their stock counterparts.

There was an X too and a second different Model S with it.

I don't think anyone will actually buy $35k model. They made it so undesirable that it's almost laughable. Reminds me of 2004 Honda Accord DX model with $16995 with roll-up manual windows, plastic hub caps and manual tranny that hardly anyone bought.

Most will opt for $40k premium model. Though 37k is much better value, it's missing the core features that tickle fancy of Tesla buyers.

Standard Interior Includes:

    Manual seat and steering adjustment
    Cloth seats and base trim
    Basic audio
    Standard maps and navigation
    Center console with storage and 4 USB ports

Partial Premium Interior Includes:

    12-way power adjustable heated front seats
    Premium seat material and trim
    Upgraded audio – immersive sound
    Standard maps & navigation
    LED fog lamps
    Center console with storage, 4 USB ports and docking for 2 smartphones

Premium Interior Also Adds:

    rear heated seats
    Premium audio – 14 speakers, 1 subwoofer, 2 amps, and immersive sound
    Satellite-view maps with live traffic visualization and navigation
    In-car internet streaming music & media
    Internet browser
    Location-aware automatic garage door opener

I drove a couple of Hondas like that, and I kind of liked them. Ever try replacing a window motor? :)

Old Civic DX, CX, back in the days when they put double wishbone suspension on them.

> roll-up manual windows, plastic hub caps and manual tranny

Two of those I don't care about, and the manual transmission is a big win for me, so yeah, I'm with you.

> it's missing the core features that tickle fancy of Tesla buyers

Can you clarify what you mean here? I would think that the "core features that tickle fancy" would be things like autopilot, but that's an expensive add-on package regardless.

Manual everything tends to be popular with the "I don't want a bunch of shit breaking when this vehicle is old" crowd.

If I had ~40k burning a hole in my pocket I'd get the base spec with the big battery and all the self driving bells and whistles.

I can see the most basic model with the biggest battery being popular with the kind of people who buy an accord and put 200k on it over 8yr.

I drove a 1994 Honda Accord DX stick for 20 years. It had 247000 miles on the meter when the dash stopped working three years before I replaced it with a Chevy Spark EV. Great car, it was still on the original clutch although it was using a bit of oil.

Now I have a Model 3 Performance because it’s amazing, it’s what I was saving for driving the Accord all those years.

What features? 37k has everything I need besides that sweet Performance model acceleration.

At only $2,000 more I doubt it has a better margin. I think they just want more buyers to be happier with their purchase, while still providing the $35k option they promised for those who prefer to stick strictly to that price regardless of features.

It wouldn't be surprising if the 240 mile range battery and the 220 mile range battery are actually the same part. (As I understand it, there is a trade-off between battery wear and what voltage you change and discharge to. So, the people with the "low capacity" battery may benefit by having a somewhat longer overall usable battery lifetime.)

If that's the case and the "bigger" battery costs nothing to Tesla, the $37k version has a higher margin if the enhanced interior features cost less than ~$2k.

Possible... that does make sense. It would definitely be smart to use the same parts if they can do it and give both cars good trade offs for the performance / wear. My hunch is though the other upgrades more than meet the $2k difference even when only considering Tesla’s own cost.

It probably does have a larger margin, you'd be shocked at how little it costs automakers to add some features / content. IIRC, an Escalade's interior costs ~$1,000 more to manufacturer than a Suburban's interior. The rule of thumb in trucks is that interior upgrades usually carry a 75%-90% margin for the manufacturer - in some cases, the lower trims actually cost more to build because they're such low volume configurations that the complexity in the supply chain / manufacturing process costs more than the savings of cheaper goods.

Textbook marketing 101 decoy pricing: https://www.paulolyslager.com/decoy-effect-price-tables/

Page says $26,950 for Standard Range for me, with an *

* Prices above include potential incentives and gas savings. Learn More

Weird.

They've been doing that for a long time, trying to explain in TCO terms instead of sticker price. It can be somewhat misleading at times but I get the rationale.

>It can be somewhat misleading at times but I get the rationale.

“Somewhat misleading”? Acting as though money saved on gas reduces your purchase price somehow is just straight up lying. The car still costs $35k when you sign on the dotted line, gas costs don’t factor into that at all. If you want to talk how much it’ll cost you after n years of ownership, talking about gas costs is perfectly valid. Purchase price though?

Disagree. Electric vehicles have a very different cost structure than gas vehicles. For vast majority of buyers this will be their first electric vehicle and market education needs to be done. There's 90+ years of gas vehicle culture education to un-do here.

Total Cost of Ownership is a legit (and even preferred) way to represent cost in most industries. It's just not common in consumer purchasing. This is a variant of TCO. They provide a good calculator where you can figure it out.

I think there's room for discussion about how prominent you make the TCO calculator and the particular copy used in that. This is why I said it was somewhat misleading, because I think it could be better. But I definitely don't think it's lying, that's awfully black and white.

You don’t save any gas if the car is sitting in a service center for months waiting on repairs, which has happened to a lot of people. They should advertise the car at its sticker price. Any extra gas savings should be a bonus.

The price of the car is X.

You don't get to SUBTRACT the cost of gas from X.

You can compare X to some other car's (Y + Gas).

If you put an asterisk by it you can

So if they're all in on being all evolutionary and measuring TCO, they mention depreciation on the car's value, right?

Didn't think so.

Or the cost of installing a 240 line to your garage?

Hmmm.

It’s lying because it’s not an apples to apples comparison. You can buy a similarly equipped Honda Accord for $10k less without all of the Tesla drama.

I really doubt the Accord would have the same acceleration or features as the M3. And it consumes a decent amount of gas which is more expensive than volts.

It's more of an apples+cart comparison. It seems shady because they can't know what kind of car you're coming from - so they average it (in their favor).

They choose to be ignorant of it.

The federal government even publishes per mile total costs for most vehicles that makes it fairly trivial to do.

It’s a bullshit metric. They could honestly present the information in a way that looked good for them as well... or even use it as a cross sell for solar.

But again. The car costs 35000 it doesn't cost 26000. You can't buy it for 26000. There is no amount of driving that will make the car cost 26000.

And it ignores parts of the ownership experience that are more expensive like insurance.

They do some BS about how much gas you will save and say that makes the car cheaper. It seems incredibly dishonest to me unless they actually let me customize that value for my current car and travel habits, as well as factoring aspects of the Model 3 that can be more expensive (e.g. maintenance)

You can customize by clicking learn more. It's under 'gas savings' and has a calculator which updates the price.

The calculator only let's you set "miles driven/year" and the price of gas. Not mpg of current vehicle. So the results are the same regardless of whether I'm driving a Prius that gets 60mpg or an Abrams tank that gets 0.6 mpg. On top of that, the results will be even more meaningless if you currently own an electric car.

Electricity costs are also highly variable

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