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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

The way luxury car brands usually do this is by slowly lowering the price, $1K-$2K a month, or offer incentives.

Tesla couldn't do that here because they need to quickly come in under the cutoff for the new laws.

But if they didn't want to take a huge PR hit, they could have sent checks to all the recent buyers. Say $13K to someone who bought in the last month, $10K if you bought 1-2 months, and so on.

Then the new prices would fit the new laws and the recent buyers would actually be happy and do marketing for you instead of being angry and do anti-marketing, which will be more powerful since they just bought it. Going and telling their friends "I just bought a Tesla and you should not" will be way more costly to them than the checks.

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I'm not sure if "I just bought a Tesla and you should not" is a compelling argument if it's followed by "because it's a great car and I like it but now it's cheaper!"

People, not being idiots, aren't going to torpedo their own argument by saying Tesla is great and cheaper.

They are going to rant about being nicked and dimed on FSD versus other car brands. They will say the trim isn't up to luxury standards and they feel they paid too much. They will say it's nice not buying gas, but it's too expensive up front.

In a word, they will rationalize why they are correct to feel badly about the price drop, and tell themselves the price drop was merely a trigger to make them realize how much of a flawed and expensive car they bought.

And they may be right.

I think the argument would be "wait and see if they drop the prices again before buying".

People act like price changes have never happened with car dealers.

The Prius for the first several years always had extra tacked on. Then it suddenly cost less as the numbers in production went up. That was with dealers.

Luxury cars are regularly unobtainable at list -- you have to pay more, get service plans, buy options, or sometimes buy more than one. Again at dealers.

If we took every complaint about the sales process from marques that use dealers, the automotive journalism industry would have nothing else to write about.

Buy a car for a price that is justified by the use and enjoyment you will receive from it. If you're price is based upon speculation of the future price of the car, you shouldn't be buying a luxury vehicle.

Dealers play tricks all the time, but the price they pay from the manufacturer is what we're talking about. Tesla took the dealers out so they could keep all the profit, and now they're paying the price for that by also taking all the blame.

People rightly blamed dealers for marking up prices, but they also had a recourse -- go to another dealer. With Tesla they have no such recourse. They just pay what Tesla asks or not. So they rightly blame Tesla for pricing shenanigans.

> The way luxury car brands usually do this is by slowly lowering the price, $1K-$2K a month, or offer incentives.

lowering the price for 2-3mos will make some people wait for next month to get it for a cheaper price. if enough people does that, it could affect their quarter.

i do like the incentives idea. if someone complains within x days, give them the same incentive or offer something else.

I don't know what specific laws you mean but they dropped the price worldwide, no?

There are a bunch of new US tax credits that have income and vehicle price limits.

Unless they complain on Twitter.

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