They also ranks first in customer satisfaction survey -- 4 years running:
https://thedriven.io/2021/11/15/tesla-dominate-top-10-most-s...
https://thedriven.io/2021/11/15/tesla-dominate-top-10-most-s...
Sure on the surface a Model 3 price tag looks luxury, but look at full cost of ownership and things start looking downright reasonable. No mandatory scheduled maintenance, no gas costs — charging the thing at home is laughably cheap, brake pads last in to the 100-200k kilometre range thanks to regenerative braking. Don’t forget all the subsidies too against the purchase price.
If you drive a lot, the numbers start getting awfully close to non-luxury vehicles.
And all of this is before you consider the non-monetary drivers of value such as how fun it is to drive, tech gadgets, etc.
The same is apparent in clothing: I have an expensive, recognizable jacket that I expect to last for the rest of my life. It's undeniably a luxury item, because it costs several times more than even a premium, high-quality jacket would. But it'll probably save me money over the next 60 years, since I won't buy half a dozen merely nice jackets instead.
how many millions of americans have a gross yearly income of maybe 35k?
randomly chosen Montgomery county in Kansas:
The median income for a household in the county was $30,997, and the median income for a family was $38,516. Males had a median income of $29,745 versus $20,179 for females. The per capita income for the county was $16,421. About 9.20% of families and 12.60% of the population were below the poverty line, including 16.80% of those under age 18 and 10.90% of those age 65 or over.
randomly chosen Benton county in Washington:
The median income for a household in the county was $57,354 and the median income for a family was $69,834. Males had a median income of $57,496 versus $36,575 for females. The per capita income for the county was $27,161. About 9.3% of families and 12.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 19.3% of those under age 18 and 6.1% of those age 65 or over.[13]
Medians don't work that way. Maybe you're thinking of the average.
The median for 45-55 year olds is much higher than the population overall. It’s the highest of any 10-year cohort, IIRC.
People who do have one new enough not to have a major defect will overlook small issues with the build quality and other complaints that people have about Tesla, because they've bought into a luxury and lifestyle brand. When someone else dies in a Telsa fire or dies in an autopilot accident, they convince themself it was the operator "doing it wrong" instead of an inherently defective product. When story comes out about Tesla remotely disabling functionality on a car capriciously, there has to be "more to the story" instead of it being a shocking erosion of consumer rights.
somebody might sell you a mostly okay running older BMW 7 series for $4500, fully loaded with all the options but take a look at the parts and labor cost to fix something on it.... you might as well throw away the whole car.
E.g, in 2011 paid $16,000 for a 2003 E320 wagon in perfect condition. It was $70,000 brand new, so the original depreciation is eye-watering. Since then I’ve probably put $2,000/year * 10 years into it, so less than half the depreciation. It’s still functionally new, with a fair share of small aesthetic issues.
I once bought a car with negative value, in that I spent more on deferred maintenance in the first month than I paid for it. That was a magnificent vehicle, though, once I fixed it up; identical to this — https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1987-mercedes-benz-300sdl-...
But in reality, I don't have the energy for dealing with this sort of thing. In fact, sometimes I have a bad dream that I bought some high-maintenance older car and am stuck with it.
But, call 'em whatever you want. My point was, the demographic who buy new cars which compete in a luxury-priced segment are a demographic who are motivated by the technology of the product rather than value/price/maintenance.
Check your local car prices, b/c that is not really that expensive and certainly nowhere close to "rich" territory.
A fully loaded F-150 is $78k. I would be shocked if you also said anyone driving an F-150 is by definition rich.
Also, a cheap used car may be drastically less expensive to buy for most people, but they will ultimately pay thousands of dollars of maintenance, part replacements, fluid changes and gas which a Tesla really never has to deal with, ever. No one seems to talk about this.
Someone driving a fully loaded new one has to be pretty comfortably upper middle class to rich.
And also a fully loaded F150 buyer is culturally a different market segment than a Model 3 buyer. There's no real comparison between them.
I know people like this.
I also saw a statistic that something like 45% of Americans couldn't immediately come up with $1000 for an emergency the same day. Just in case we need a benchmark measure of relative wealth and prosperity between the typical six figure FAANG employee and people working jobs that pay a great deal less.