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$35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

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41–50 of 741 posts

Re: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

#41
post #7

It's so shady that their advertised price includes some hypothetical "potential gas savings", and the actual price is behind a tiny "learn more" link.

It might be shady and of course some people will despise it but if the net effect is sales increased, then they should do it.

Re: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

#42
post #9

Interesting to point out that the $35k is the full price, which goes down when additional discounts are applied. If you get the short range model with no options, it starts out at $35k, then goes down all the way to $24,950 after including the $3,750 Federal tax credit, $2,000 New York EV rebate (clearly it's geolocating by IP address here), and "$4,300 estimated 6 year gas savings". OK, so that last bit is BS, and i…

The gas savings is definitely shady. But including the federal tax credits and destination fee is fair I think. As far as I'm aware, no auto maker includes the destination/docs/handling fee in the MSRP. The Tesla fee amount is comparable to other automakers also (it's on the high side at $1,200; but it's not too different from Toyota's $930 and Honda's $920). Presuming your location due to geolocation is a bit too fa…

I still think that $30,450 overall is a good deal, and I'd go for that if a car made sense for me at all (it doesn't though, being in NYC). It's just purposely confusing the way the price is manipulated downwards using questionable-at-best pricing practices.

Re: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

#43
post #26

It currently costs about $2.50 to manufacture a battery cell. There are 7,700 cells in a standard battery pack. That’s $19,250 in cells before battery pack assembly. I don’t know how they are making money on this. I’m inclined to believe they’re losing money, or someone is somewhere in the line. Maybe they expect those battery costs to decline rapidly in the near future? What do you think?

Maybe its cheaper to make the batteries in China?

Doubtful, otherwise the Gigafactory would make little sense.

Re: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

#45
post #24

Here in Germany I just see a black page with the logo and the text: "The wait is almost over - Great things are launching shortly"

In the UK at least, there's a GeoIP lookup that gets done and you get bounced off elsewhere if it doesn't think you're in the US.

https://3.tesla.com/model3/design?redirect=no works for me to prevent this behaviour.

Re: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

#46
post #7

It's so shady that their advertised price includes some hypothetical "potential gas savings", and the actual price is behind a tiny "learn more" link.

Absolutely - I made a comment a few years ago around the Model S pricing when they compared it to a E or S class Mercedes.

The base price of a given vehicle is $35k, and then I'd spend either $1500/yr on fuel and maintenance o, or $500/yr on fuel and maintenance if it's - for example - electric, on top the of the base price.

Spending $1000 less per year does not magically mean the car is now $34k. If anything, the price has gone from $36.5k to $35.5k for that first year.

I don't even understand the mental gymnastics you have to do, or how ignorant you have to be to not understand that.

Unless I'm taking crazy pills? Someone please correct my logic otherwise.

Re: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

#47
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota probably makes you click through to find 0-60 time.

And range, for that matter. The # of miles you get off a tank of gas is not a highly-surfaced metric for vehicles. It's certainly not in the trim level name. You always have to dig into the detailed stats to find it.

Perhaps, but range is not a huge concern for most vehicles: Range rarely differs significantly between trim levels and all are generally 300+ miles.

Tesla's specifically dividing their trims by range, but chose to use "standard range", "standard range plus", "long range", etc. instead of just telling us the range. And their "standard" range is well below the standard range of an average car.

Re: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

#48

It currently costs about $2.50 to manufacture a battery cell. There are 7,700 cells in a standard battery pack. That’s $19,250 in cells before battery pack assembly. I don’t know how they are making money on this. I’m inclined to believe they’re losing money, or someone is somewhere in the line. Maybe they expect those battery costs to decline rapidly in the near future? What do you think?

They manufacture their own batteries in their Gigafactory outside of Reno, NV. They make more Li Ion batteries than any other battery manufacturer. Their batteries cost less than $2.50.

https://electrek.co/2018/11/20/tesla-gigafactory-battery-cel...

Re: $35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now

#49
post #7

It's so shady that their advertised price includes some hypothetical "potential gas savings", and the actual price is behind a tiny "learn more" link.

Just did some napkin math and the potential gas savings number seems reasonable. (I expected it to be inflated and still think it's a dark pattern to include it.)

  Model 3:
  (50 kwh battery)
  * (0.166 $/kwh for Los Angeles residential power)
  / (220 mi range)
  = 3.8 $/100 mi of fuel
  
  Average ICE sedan:
  (3.00 $/gal average regular gas in LA)
  /(30 mi/gal)
  = 10 $/100 mi of fuel

If you drive 12000 mi in a year, it comes to about $4.5k in savings over 6 years. That drops a ton if you would have purchased a Prius or other hybrid though, and to zero w/ cheap Texas gas.

So it's a reasonable number if you're a Californian who would have bought a BMW instead of a Model 3. For everyone else, it's likely too high.

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