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Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

I get the strong impression that even as a loss leader, the $35,000 figure was based on some back of envelope calculations. We know that they have had to expand or increase the cost in several ways since they started production.

I know they really want to make the Model T of electric cars, but it took about a decade of development for Ford to deliver one under $500. And I don't think Tesla has quite mastered the science of car production yet.

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Maybe unrealistic in the end but I think they realized it was cheaper to not change up the assembly line too much and instead just build them all with the same interior options. Removing extra speakers is easy, not installing all the ambient lighting is simple, swapping out a leather interior with cloth isn't as that not only is a large item it means you need to secure supplies for an option that may not have sufficient uptake to get a good discount.

plus the added bonus is that you can yourself choose to buy features you skipped out on earlier. It also would be a boon for resale as well. Letting the buyer decide to add options you passed on.

35k base model should probably been adjusted for inflation but Musk's ego boxed Tesla. Let alone that its one thousand or twelve hundred in delivery plus taxes on top of that 35k price so there never really is a 35k car. In the end I look at it this way, if your budget is so inflexible that less than a five percent change in price is make or break you should not be buying it in the first place.

Getting to 37k isn't a bad accomplishment. It may not be the big number, but its still a pretty good price point. Hopefully this is the end of the chaos pricing has been the past few weeks.

I wonder if there will ever be a sub 30k car by Tesla someday. The average new car is around 37k now, so about half the market is under that.

Maybe if Musk actually listened to the people he hires, they could have, you know, foreseen these kinds of things. The kind of things that car manufacturers forecast on a daily basis. Why is Tesla so uniquely chaotic?

I believe it was an outright lie, an effort to solicit deposits and lure people into a bait-and-switch of higher priced models. All evidence to date suggests I'm right. Of course, they're never going to come out and say 'we fooled you' but I don't know what level of evidence people need before they reach the conclusion for themselves.

'Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence."

Deception and stupidity are merely implementation details of untrustworthiness. It doesn't matter.

Incompetence? Isn't Elon a genius?

And what evidence would that be

"All evidence to date suggests I'm right".

Can you give us some examples of all of this evidence?

The evidence that 3 years later, no base models have actually been delivered, those that were finally able to order them were bait and switched into upgrading or face even longer delivery timelines?

When you see a $35000 brand new Tesla actually for sale, please let the rest of the world know. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27120534/tesla-model-3-li...

Unless you have some other definition of bait and switch.

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