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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

If you bought a Model Y a week ago, I'm especially sorry. Even people who bought a Model 3 LR when it was discounted in December just got hosed, 7-10K or thereabouts.

Oh well, that's part of what happens when the manufacturer is also the only seller.

Interestingly, when GM did something similar to 2022 Bolt customers, they cut them a check to make them feel better about the slashed price on the 2023 model. Tesla definitely won't do any such thing, of course. Most manufacturers probably wouldn't. It's interesting that GM chose to.

I'm also seeing some regret on the part of Ioniq 5 owners who say they'd have bought a Model Y at this price instead of the I5. It's interesting how many people bought competing EVs just because Tesla was too expensive.

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> Oh well, that's part of what happens when the manufacturer is also the only seller.

I am not seeing the connection. If the manufacturer reduced the price it was selling at to the middlemen, why would the middlemen (assuming there are numerous) not also lower their price to win more customers?

Or the implication that the middlemen keeping the prices high is somehow a good thing?

Tesla raises and lowers prices instantly in response to the market. They're essentially doing the markup that dealers do, except they get to keep it for themselves. And they don't have competitors who can sell you a Tesla.

How is this dynamic changed by adding a middleman?

The Model Y was approaching premium car prices without the premium interior. In 2020, they were hovering at $50k but when the pandemic started they raised the price practically every week. If you’ve driven an Audi, BMW, Mercedes you kind of know what to expect and where the luxury price comes from. Except the Model S I never got the impression the 3 and Y were worth that price Tesla was charging. And I think the market made that determination as well. It’s great technology but 60x $1000 car payments is still a big commitment for a lot of people. There just aren’t that many buyers in that class.

In my experience the majority of the Teslas are luxurious noise comes from the fact it's often the first "luxury" car people have owned

People who normally drove "boring" cars like Civics and Camrys because they saw cars as a utilitarian purchase swung for a Tesla because it was more of a tech purchase than a car purchase.

So a lot of people insist it's the best car they've ever driven, and they're not lying... they just haven't driven many non-utilitarian cars.

I'm surrounded by middle aged high-tech-earning Bay Area Tesla-owning colleagues who used to drive (or still have as their second household car) BWMs, Audis, Lexus etc. I'm one of them.

We didn't buy a Tesla because it was a step up from a Camry, but because Teslas are so much more fun to drive. It's really that simple.

It can't be quite that simple in general. There have always been really fun cars, even some that were sedans. Maybe the niche Tesla figured out how to exploit was stoplight racers. Enthusiasts have never had trouble finding fun daily drivers.

Who knows... My opinion is anecdotal and reductionist, but reducing the argument to "most of those poor saps just don't know any better" isn't any better. And you don't need to be a car enthusiast or stoplight racer to enjoy the feeling of instant torque.

People buy Teslas because they're fun to drive, because they believe EVs help the environment, because of the charging network, because of the autopilot (which has been really excellent in my case), because of the promise of FSD (which is something that should never have been released), or because they think Musk is a great buddy. And any combination of those points. I'm sure you'll find some who think the fart app is cool, and, yes, there'll be some who think it's a luxury car.

I live in SF, work at a "FAANG adjacent" company so I'm surrounded by the same crowd.

The minority of us who had fun to drive cars in the first place are not the ones going with Teslas for the fun driving experience. (if anything I know more who do in spite of the driving experience for practical reasons... I was one of them when I first got here from NYC)

I mentioned Civic and Camry because they're common in the entire US, but most BMWs/Audis/Lexuses driven in the Bay Area are similarly utilitarian models.

There might be a few more M3/M4s in our parking lot than you'd find in a random one across the country for example, but they're still drowned out by SUVs and sedans with base engines.

Maybe we're talking past each other because I'm assuming "fun to drive" in terms of driving dynamics, where by "fun to drive" you might mean the tech part.

That would be more in line with my original point, and I could actually see being common.

Because our mottos are "do more with less," "happiness is what you get divided by what you expect," "leave the world better than you found" (as opppsed to the mottos "enjoy yourself a little," "what, you are too good to have some fun," "what is creation for if not to be a blessing"). Compared to a 90s style Accord, VW Superbug Saturn, 2 Priuses, a Leaf, the Model 3 was indeed the funnest car i have driven, (till i had to stick the transflag on it to annotate the political statement).

I did rent a BMW on my last vacation in Europe, and it wasn't just the interior details looking good, it was the silence and the smoothness, like all the parts fit and were damped against vibration, that impressed me.

When i look at the shabby model 3 interior, i see soneone that forced into reality a mass produced pure electric vehicle, when the common wisdom was it was impossible, and with the great result of helping of us surviving the carbon burn en route to a truly advanced civilization. Now that the path is showm, others will follow, but kudos.

A shame he has now surrounded himself with so many yes men as to force his mind out of the great common reality, but perhaps he has done enough good in the world, it is ok for him to inhabit a world of delusions for a while.

I’m simply shocked by the length of loans people will take on cars. BMW will give you a term of 84 months!?

I was stressed at having a 36 month loan as a public school teacher (I did not, of course, spring for the BMW).

I’m not sure what the significance of the length of loans is? Surely it’s the overall amount of interest that matters.

I probably wouldn’t want to be paying a loan at the point I would want to be trading something in — but even then I keep things more than even 84 months and you can always just pay it off.

I acknowledge it’s psychological, but the significance - to me - is that these long loan terms exaggerate how expensive a vehicle a person can “afford”. I haven’t bought a new car recently, but I would be shocked if salespeople aren’t hyper focused on that long term/low monthly bill when trying to upsell vehicles/trims.

> just got hosed

It's a car; a depreciating asset. I think people got way too attached to the idea that cars were going up in value. In this case, they tried to curb demand by increasing prices when everyone seems to have been doing the same. Countless dealerships added BS overhead as supply was so low last year. That's all changing.

> It's a car; a depreciating asset.

Sure, but cutting prices 20% on new ones means your asset you bought last week just depreciated substantially faster than planned.

Exactly. It's getting an entire year's worth of extra depreciation in an instant. It's just on paper until you go to sell, but that doesn't mean it isn't real.

Anyone buying a car in the last year or two had ample data that it was a bubble due to supply issues causing sellers to be unable to maintain the volume. i bought a used model 3 for 35k usd before the bubble, saw the prices for that same car and mileage spike to 65k and then drop to 45k and now still 40k

I do find it interesting that with all the data out there, i find it hard to see a graph of prices over time for cars. not the instantaneous prices, thwy are ineascapable, but the trend and history.

> If you bought a Tesla, I'm especially sorry.

Drove a Tesla for ~10 years. What a disaster of a vehicle to own. Great delight to drive, huge headache owning it.

Why did you drive it for a whole ten years if it was such a disaster? Seems like an excessively long time to tolerate something that's causing you such headache.

The answer to that is complex, and involves personal finances, shame, papering over concerns, the desire to use electricity as fuel, not understanding what the other options were, etc. etc.

People get attached to bad ways of doing things all the time. This was no different.

> I'm also seeing some regret on the part of Ioniq 5 owners who say they'd have bought a Model Y at this price instead of the I5.

Sounds like people who are more committed to the brand than the product. Hyundai makes quality cars, Tesla does not... anymore.

A friend just ordered a Model Y a couple days ago and apparently got 20% refunded.

That's because he has not taken delivery. If Tesla didn't do this automatically he would just cancel his order and place it again to get the new price, thus generating more churn for Tesla.

Tesla actually did give model 3 performance owners in 2018 the option of getting a check for $5k after they made the performance upgrade option free. The only downside was you would lose your free supercharging for life. But that was back before Elon was a massive d-bag.

I'm not sure Elon was not a massive d-bag back in 2018 - he just didn't have the platform (Twitter) to show those traits off back then.

He didn't? He joined Twitter in 2009.

He was on Twitter in 2018.

People just started listening to him for some reason.

Interesting. Well, maybe as a consolation prize for slashing the price on the Performance model so much, they could give away the Performance Boost to anyone who bought a LR relatively recently. Please. :)

The GM bolt rebate came with a condition saying that you wouldn't join any class action against GM w.r.t. the battery fires they were having. GM is also somewhat more desperate to sell bolts because it saves them buying emissions credits.

Should’ve bought something cheaper if you care about that.

Hard to feel sorry for people blowing their budget on a car when they all functionally do the same thing at the end of the day

Yeah, I don't really see sympathy with those paying more for the same thing because timed it worse than someone else.

This happens in concert tickets, airlines, even appliances all the time. Heck even housing - asking a new family to our neighborhood then telling them what you got your (very similar) house for 3 years (or sometimes even 3 months) ago...

Re Ionia 5 customers: If so, I don’t think that regret will last long — the Hyundai EV products have better ergonomics, a real support network, and they’re not electric MAGA hats. And non-Tesla charging networks will improve.

Most people will have moved on to other cars by the time the CCS1 network reaches parity with the supercharger network, though. Right now it's still a compelling reason to buy a Tesla. Maybe the best reason.

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