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Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

So now we have to pay for test drives?

I don't think this model makes sense for the long term. Eventually there will be enough competition that Tesla will need to go through an actual Sales/Marketing process like every other product.

But as long as they have a huge wait list for cars, and huge numbers of people who are willing to pay for cars without testing them this makes sense.

My response to your question is "Why should I (a preorder customer) pay a premium for Tesla's business model that allows YOU to do a test drive?"

Until the demand of the wait list customers has been fulfilled, catering to the HARD SELL customer is actually making my experience worse and more expensive.

1. $37,100 Tesla with a free one hour dealership test drive.

2. $35,000 Tesla plus a $100 rental payment for a 24 hour test drive.

You honestly prefer the first option?

If you want to try a bunch of cars since you are undecided you might pay extra compared to now, since other brands won’t give you a discount and you still paid for the Tesla test drive.

If there's a 5% chance you'll buy a Tesla, the math still adds up to where you're better off spending $100 to test drive it over a free test drive and paying $2100 more for the car.

It's more than a 20 minute test drive. You get to keep the car for a while, park it, load/unload it, try out car seats in it, etc. It is very informative compared to a dealership test drive.

Hmm. Not this time, but in 2015 when I bought an Audi, they let me have the vehicle (once I showed I was serious about buying/considering the vehicle, but without money or signature anywhere) from Friday evening til Sunday afternoon. Only thing they said was "Don't drive it to California and back, please" (from Seattle).

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