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Comment by jdashg | Hacker News Reader

Good. No one else plays this deceptive game, cherry-picking individual costs of ownership. You can advertise (but not promise!) expected savings, but pretending this reduces the price of the car is deceptive.

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> you can advertise (but not promise!)

Did you miss the title of the article? They are trying to stop Tesla from advertising the fact.

> Did you miss the title of the article?

You really shouldn't ask that, since you seem to have missed it.

> They are trying to stop Tesla from advertising the fact.

No, they are trying to stop them from advertising the gas savings in the price, not to stop advertising the gas savings at all.

That is, they want Tesla to stop advertising something other than the actual price as the price.

Then I guess you should be more specific about what kind of advertising you approve.

They started off by saying "Good." (agreeing with the decision) and then explaining what they feel is okay and what isn't.

I'm not sure how more clear you wanted them to be.

They're not stopping Tesla from advertising gas savings, they're stopping them from pre-subtracting it in the advertised price of the car.

Makes sense. Advertising the price as the amount that will come out of your pocket is important, and it's coercive to do otherwise. It's the same way for most consumer products, no reason cars should be any different.

There are ways to advertise the savings that won't be coercive.

By coercive I mean getting you in the door and beginning the sales process when you otherwise would not have.

Ironically, many governments dictate that you can't include government charges like sales tax in price advertisements.

Where? The US/Canada? Most other countries I've lived in/visited require the price advertised to be inclusive of all taxes.

Agreed.

In the UK you're skating on thin ice if you advertise to consumers, sales tax free prices, partially on the basis it looks like tax evasion. Plus the principle of being able to pay the advertised price.

Now its slightly different in shops for the trade where the pre-tax price is front and centre, the post tax price does still need to be displayed though I think.

This is an EU wide directive. The price advertised should be inclusive of all taxes and additional charges. It is so that the buyer (consumer or business) has clear information about exactly how much something will cost them, and so they can compare prices to other suppliers.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pri...

Agreed.

There have been cases around vat free sales, and 'we pay the vat' promotions that have been pulled up by advertising standards though. That as far as I understand isn't an EU specific thing.

It’s mixed in the US. Some things have taxes included by law, e.g., gas at gas stations and airline tickets.

Interesting, my country has it the other way around, you must include taxes in the price as well. The amount you pay at the counter is the amount that's on the price tag.

This isn't generally the case in Europe - all prices on sites and in stores aimed at ordinary consumers are meant to have VAT included by law.

I think it is mostly the US with sales tax. Employement tax (social security/medicare) is also halfway hidden (half never makes it to your paycheck and is paid by the employer, the other half you have to explicitly pay).

Tariffs are hidden in the US, though you probably couldn't say for sure with any one product as it might come from different origins with different tariffs.

What are the "many governments" that dictate this? I'm only aware of the US allowing advertising in a price that's lower than what you end up paying.

Well, in Europe there's an issue with budget airlines advertising tickets for ridiculously low costs that don't include all the costs you're likely to incur when you want to use that ticket. And of course buying houses is complex. But everywhere else, the price advertised has to be the price you pay on purchase. Anything else is deceptive.

Let's be honest though, is anyone fooled by this? If you are plopping down ~50k for a car you should read the text directly on their first. It says the full price as well as the price minus savings in gas, in the same font size. I get it, it's tacky, but it's not like hidden fine-print and fees 10 pages into a contract.

Yes. This fools people. If you look 5 advertisements while flipping a magazine or driving through a road, and only tesla does this, you end up with the idea that they are cheaper. It hurts comparability. They should not be confusing people about the retail price of the car.

For another recent example Ryanair is being fined in Italy not because their practice of not including the hand luggage in the price of a ticket is illegal, but because it hurts comparability with other airlines

The screen shot in the article just shows an asterisk after the price.

Theres a further complication in that most countries offer incentives for buying EVs, so you could legitimately think its one of those that Tesla is helpful illustrating for you.

Finally Europe has decent consumer protections, so the price advertised should be the price payable, and people expect that.

I've been a Tesla shareholder since 2016, and I think the German government is right. I sincerely hope Tesla drops this, not just in Germany but worldwide.

The question isn't "is anyone fooled by this anyway?", it's "why is Tesla using deceptive practices?". IMO, they should feel free to point out cost savings somewhere, but they should not fudge guestimated values into the first price they show you. It's not just tacky, it's bullshit. Energy cost and tax savings vary by region and based on your individual situation, your driving habits, etc. Tax refunds do not affect the cost you have to pay for a car upfront. Elon Musk is an engineer at heart, and I feel like he should know better. Doing things like this loses them the respect of a lot of people.

I personally feel like pricing in tax refunds into the displayed cost of the car is fair game, but pricing in gas savings is bullshit.

Tax refunds is money I'm definitely going to get back in a bounded (and reasonably short) amount of time. If I pay $40k for a car and get $7k back in the same year, it seems reasonable to advertise the cost as $33k (assuming it's clear that $7k of that is a tax refund).

But gas savings feels like bullshit -- it's money I may or may not get back (depending on my habits), the time horizon is unbounded, and even if it were bounded, it's long (an order of multiple years). That feels deceptive to me, and it's surprising they got away with it until now.

I'm not sure you can rely on tax refunds either.

For example, if you buy the car in your name and then you lose your source of income (whatever reason, e.g. health, maternity/childcare) and for example you rely only on your spouse's income, I know at least one country where you can't pass the tax benefits to the other person (not even by transferring ownership of the car)

In the US, the federal tax credit is a "credit" rather than a refund. That means that if you don't pay enough federal taxes in that year, you won't be saving the listed amount. Many state rebates don't work like this, but in some sense it is still misleading for Tesla and other electric vehicle manufacturers to not make this clear.

Do those credits not carry over to the next year?

They do not carry over for personal use. A business can carry them over.

Hello Uber and Lyft!

How many people can afford a Tesla while not having $7k of federal tax liability?

The same way “students” and “homemakers” sometimes buy multimillion dollar properties: offshore money (laundering).

If no one's being fooled by this then surely Tesla will have no problem with just not doing it any more.

Somehow I suspect that they'll keep doing it in every country that hasn't told them to stop.

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