I placed my order beginning of May, production completed in early June and it is on transit to me. I email my AO yesterday and got this in writing that it will have the performance upgrade. So finger crossed, either way I am glad. I think it is better to set the expectation low and then surprise in the end.
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75 and 75D variants increased performance from July 1st - software and hardware improvements?
- Thread starter Bluejuice
- Start date
I placed my order beginning of May, production completed in early June and it is on transit to me. I email my AO yesterday and got this in writing that it will have the performance upgrade. So finger crossed, either way I am glad. I think it is better to set the expectation low and then surprise in the end.
There is a significant comprehension failure on these threads about the motivation. I don't see this as a an entitlement issue or even a value issue, though the latter of course plays some part in the equation (especially through how costly a re-purchase would be).
This is most of all a purchase planning issue. It is the relative value of what can I get if I purchase today vs. if I purchase tomorrow vs. the day after, that is the question here. And with Tesla that planning is exceptionally hard. What I feel we are voicing collectively here is our frustration that Tesla does not have an offering for those of us who like to plan and time their purchase in this manner, unlike other car manufacturers that offer signficant visibility into their roadmap as well as the annual/bi-annual change cycle to facilitate planning.
Tesla makes changes to their products every 1-2 months, while the delivery times for the products are perhaps in the 2-6 month region depending on where and when. This means even a fastest of us can not really plan for this - the chances that the product on offer has changed before even take delivery are high and the quarterly rhythm (lots of deliveries at quarter end and most changes at start of next quarter) means the next batch of changes are just around the corner all the time...
And it is not just "wait more and get a better one" either, as the math an features of a recent Model X purchase show. I got a significantly better and cheaper P100D in Q1 than would be available for order today and that seems to remain the case at least until the next big improvement, though even in that case some things will likely remain missing.
So, I come back to the point about planning.
Why does it matter, why do I care "unless you plan to sell your car after 3 months". Well, for one thing, for some customers, the likelihood of selling a car after three months goes dramatically up if those three months introduce a feature I would prefer to have. There is a price hit and a satisfaction hit right then and there, as evidenced by a several Q3/2016 AP1 cars being swapped at massive cost to AP2 on TMC alone. Combined with the EAP issues, many of these customers do not exactly seem happy.
But most importantly, why do I care "unless you plan to sell your car after 3 months"? Because obviously I would prefer to get the most features in exchange for my money and would like to plan in a way that maximizes the features that I have relative to what is available. For me and for a customer like me, that is an important part of the offering and actually encourages repeat purchases. I'm not big on iPhones, but I do generally buy the new Galaxy when they come, with the same annual logic that runs the iPhone upgrade cycle.
Why is this so hard to understand? There is a customer group who prefers clear, distinct upgrade points and certain reasonable visibility to the product roadmap that allows them some peace of mind that upgrade point won't immediately be replaced with a better upgrade point and thus relatively affecting the value they get in exchange for their purchase. That group is voicing their opinion here and they are not being best-served by Tesla at the moment.
I'm not saying another policy would be perfect or make everyone happy (obviously not), but I do argue Tesla is at an extreme other end with their current one. They are making changes (for better and for worse) to the product faster than any other product I can think of on the mass market and I'm not sure that really is necessary or preferable at all. So, I say so.
It is perfectly alright to say you are not one of these people, but understanding that group exists would go a long way into understanding what this is all about.
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BBB4000 said:
Mediocrates said:
I would say BBB4000 was making the same point, in the end. Tesla is disregarding past purchasers (or current product owners) and prioritizing new purchasers.
Mediocrates said:
That I would disagree with. A lot of businesses go a long way to sell to past customers and implement policies that encourage sales to past customers. Tesla has just not been one of them recently.
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Lost of false equivalencies there. You seem to suggest the unexpected random upgrades are somehow necessary for the rest of your post to happen and I don't think that is the case.
Had e.g. Tesla grouped last year's big changes (Q2: facelift, Q3: P100D, Q4: AP2) into one, all it actually would have meant that P100D would have launched two months later and the facelift (not really major innovation) come six months later. Now each one of those, instead, attracted some upgraders annoyed by it all.
They did this better in 2014 by grouping "D" and "AP1". I was perfectly fine with that upgrade point, even though I personally missed it and took delivery of a Classic a few weeks after that announcement. It is the thousand cuts, the constant changes to better and to worse, that are the issue. Not the fact that Tesla makes progress.
They could package that progress better and solve this issue easily. They choose not to, which obviously is perfectly within their rights. But that also means some of us find them less good in terms of being our car supplier, if planning ahead and understanding product changes is important for our personal car purchase success/process.
The chances of failing to plan/time a purchase with Tesla are significantly higher than they are with most other car manufacturers.
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The good thing is that the surprise modifications are generally positive rather than cost-cutting.
ICE manufacturers introduce improvements (such as parts with improved reliability) mid model year but anything outside what could be described in a brochure is generally held back for a new Model Year.
The difference with Tesla is that they push out some big improvements outside of this annual model year timescale so buyers (new and used) find it difficult to time their purchases.
I'll be getting a much better car than I ordered as a result, in the knowledge that in 3 months I'd probably get an even better one. But does that matter as I know that when I upgrade in a few years time it will be for a better car? Whether the improvements over those years has happened annually, quarterly or monthly doesn't really matter when you look at it that way.
ICE manufacturers introduce improvements (such as parts with improved reliability) mid model year but anything outside what could be described in a brochure is generally held back for a new Model Year.
The difference with Tesla is that they push out some big improvements outside of this annual model year timescale so buyers (new and used) find it difficult to time their purchases.
I'll be getting a much better car than I ordered as a result, in the knowledge that in 3 months I'd probably get an even better one. But does that matter as I know that when I upgrade in a few years time it will be for a better car? Whether the improvements over those years has happened annually, quarterly or monthly doesn't really matter when you look at it that way.
whitex
Well-Known Member
I don't think people have a hard time believing that you feel like this and feel frustrated by this. I think what some are trying to say is that such feelings not rational (as a lot of feelings are) and maybe realizing that would help you not feel that way. If you got the car you wanted, what someone else got for what price doesn't affect your situation at all, unless you define how happy you are with your product based on what others have or can get that. The only rational argument is that a new feature may lower your resale value, but that is only true if you're planning on selling shortly after you bought a new car to begin with, and also equally valid whether changes roll out yearly or quarterly - after 3 years or longer, when you are ready to sell, there will be newer, better cars; who cares whether they got better 3 months after you got yours of 12 months after. Maybe the most rational solution for you is once you buy something, don't go back to see what is new or how much it costs until you are in fact ready to buy something new?
PS> How do you handle investment in stocks or funds, the value roller coaster there is much higher. Most people just don't check daily what their retirement is worth, probably to avoid feeling like you do - "what? the guy who bought shares in the same company/fund as I did 3 months ago got 10% more shares for the same money as I paid?!?!? Not fair! Now I can't sleep. :-("
I think you are still kind of missing the point here. What others get is mostly irrelevant, at least it is of me. It is the question of maximizing the relative value of my purchase for me. Say, I'm buying an new car around 2017-2018. What time and place would maximize that success for me.
Buying - and therefore the success of buying - is always relative to what is available on the market. While one can say, buy something when it fits your needs, that is only one part of the equation. My needs are not carved in stone. They are relative to what is available on the market and at any given time (or future time), what is available might actually fit my needs better (or worse).
To me, the time of having some latest and greatest (or otherwise fitting) features adds value to the purchase and, similarly, lack of / lessening of such time takes away from the value of that purchase, because buying at some different point of time would have provided me with more time with said features. Missing out on something may mean I will miss out on it for several years, given a purchase like a car. It is not an emotional reaction to say buying a day later would have gotten me a quicker car, if such a thing happens. It is not an emotional thing to state I missed out on AP1 and drove without it for 2.5 years. It is stating facts - from which many reactions, including emotional, can certainly follow... (In that case no emotional things followed, I am happy with the Model S purchase because the aim was to transition to the Model X, but pragmatically it was not the best time to buy - by waiting a bit I would have gotten more car.)
The wish for a customer to optimize their purchase is as understandable as is the wish of the company for them to avoid doing that and instead buying now. But I am a customer in this particular equation and I have my priorities. I understand optimizing this is not always realistic, and never perfect, but in most cases the chances of doing that through information gathering far exceed those with Tesla.
Buy almost any tech product on average and through good due diligence you can optimize a reasonable time that products remains the top dog at least within that brand (or, say, within a price bracket if not talking a top line model), if this is what matters to you. Also you often have some rough idea on how long to wait for the next major iteration to see if such a thing would be around the corner. But with Tesla this is exceptionally difficult - and thus my opinion.
Once you've done your due diligence, and there is a reasonable chance for it with the product, and you still fail or worry about some small niggle - well, then I would say that is an emotional reaction and possibly an unreasonable one. But with Tesla the pace of changes are approaching the point that for me I can not say when that reasonable chance exists.
And it not just the small things as might be with an off-year model-year change traditionally, with Tesla there can be massive change overnight at any given time. Thus I can not really make the due diligence I think would need to make for a pragmatically sound decision that would take into account this... and that's really too bad.
This is certainly good psychological advice that I have given in the past myself as well. It certainly can be helpful to stop following a product right after you lock yourself in a purchase. It is not a solution to the practical side of the problem, but ignorance being a bliss can certainly help with the emotional part.
That said, I would prefer not to have to do that with a product I like to follow intently. Part of the fun is sharing the experience through information exchange and that naturally includes sharing of information of future things. So, personally, for me the best compromise is a product where there is reasonable chance of planning and timing a purchase right, in pragmatic terms, and in a way that allows me also to enjoy the emotional benefits (including communality).
I am perfectly OK with things improving and others getting better products after me. I do not always have the latest and the greatest of everything, not even of things I find important. But when making that "investment", be it many times a year, annually, or once in several years, most of the time I would prefer to do it at a time that maximizes the feeling that I did it at the Right Time, whatever that means in individual cases.
With Tesla it is terribly hard to predict that Right Time. Obviously my Model X P100D came at a Right Time given all that is better with it and the speed at which Tesla's change (it has many things since discontinued and it cost much less). That will never change even if something new comes soon, so I will be fine with my Model X as a purchase from this perspective. It was IMO a successful buy and, turns out, I bought at the Right Time in the end.
But that's part luck (and part willingness to walk away from one delivery). That luck could have easily been fouled by an interior revision in Q1 or something. I can not honestly say I planned it like this or even could plan it. It is mostly luck, especially given the process started with a 2014 reservation and Q2/2016 order... E.g. had Tesla been faster with my Model X delivery, I would have missed out on P100D (now suspect if upgrades are really available after all for pre-delivery reservations) and AP2...
What I finally received in Q1/2017 was quite a bit different I imagined over the years my Model X would be, yet in reality I still had and still today have no idea when something new will come after it. And that bothers me when thinking about a future purchase. The sheer randomness and possiblity of massive change at random times...
I would prefer there be a reasonable chance of timing a purchase right - relative to both my requirements and what is availabile on the market around the timeframe - and with Tesla it just seems terribly risky. I can not select a rough timeframe when to buy a Tesla, and then through information gathering pinpoint a specific timing with reasonable chance of success. Last year alone is testament to that when one major change after another followed quarter to quarter...
I'm perfectly fine with stocks. Stock market is like poker. Always a gamble, but you can get better at it. But risks should be relative to rewards. Stocks and poker provide the possibility of massive gains. I even like slot machines, the cost to play is small enough (and wins potentially massive), even though there is no skill involved - call it entertainment.
I would prefer not to gamble on a car purchase. The cost to play is too much and there is no upside to the gamble. And before someone says well there is an upside with a Tesla, I would counter by saying what I've said many times: There is especially no upside after you've bought the first one that takes care of the main benefit (or when large-battery alternatives appear).
In the past, buying a great car from a brand has usually encouraged me to get another. With Tesla it is more like, I got this right, better not risk it again...
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whitex
Well-Known Member
I appreciate your detailed response. I still think it's mostly emotional. I have to say, I've always looked at things purely pragmatically and never second guess my decisions if I can honestly say "if I knew today only what I knew then, I would make the very same decision". Hindsight it always 20/20! Sometimes I do feel the emotional response coming but I usually manage to rationalize myself out of those . I still have my P85D, doesn't bother me that newer, faster cars are out (it does however still bother me that Tesla lied about the hp and battery capacity when they were selling it). I also have a 75D which if I was buying today I would have saved $750, but it doesn't cause me to lose sleep. Heck, I was happy when they dropped the 75's to 60 pricing because it made the 60->75 upgrade price worth considering. The only thing Tesla still owes me on the 75D is auto-wipers, working auto-headlights and functional blind-spot warning (no, I didn't purchase EAP and don't plan on it, as it wasn't ready when I was buying and I no longer trust Tesla on any future deliverables, plus I agree with Google that Level 3 autonomy is unsolvable safely, so unless FSD works safely without a driver in the car I won't be buying EAP by itself, but that is a whole different thread).
I personally think it's great that the new 75's are faster and have the high powered charger. To me it means that I may be able to upgrade the 75D power, and possibly the high powered charger upgrade will go down in price to a level where I would be willing to pay for it. If neither happens however, I didn't lose anything. I am not planning on selling the 75D before 3 years, and by then the better acceleration or high powered charger will make a negligible price difference (seriously, I looked at AP and non-AP CPO cars and AP1 doesn't seem to add any significant premium over non-AP. 21" wheels add more than AP1). So, as much as I have some bones to pick with Tesla, them changing prices and making cars better all the time is not one of them.
Cars are emotional buys, no doubt. If I were purely pragmatic, I would not really need a Tesla, let alone a P100D.
But I would argue your response of talking yourself out of an emotional response is sort of emotional, too. We all need to control our emotions at times in life, no doubt. It is a useful skill. Controlling emotions is still an emotional response, though.
IMO there is a lot of pragmaticism in due diligence and concern when sufficient due diligence is not possible. The intent is to reasonably avoid an unknown future event affecting the outcome of the current action. As we can see, I am discussing this removed from any current emotion, I am assessing a future buy that has not happened yet or is not immedialtey impening (I do have a Model 3 reservation I doubt I will exercise). My current emotion regarding my Model X timing is one of success - and I won't expect it to change even when the HUD/interior refresh comes, which I expect they will. Enough times has passed, it was a good time for that particular buy I wanted - turns out.
I would say this is fairly pragmatic approach. Let me put it this way. If I set for myself this very simple task: I want to buy the best Tesla Model S there is, for the next six months. I can not do that, not without sheer luck, especially not with international delivery. The likelihood of being able to do that in basically any other car brand, though, is significantly higher, especially if I can control the time of year and take into consideration the fairly public facelift/renewal roadmaps.
So that is a consideration when buying a Tesla. It changes all the time (many times each quarter to better and to worse) and you can not reliably plan for those changes. (You do not always even get the product you ordered as facelifts, AP2s etc. may be imposed on you, though often a good thing.)
I would personally be perfectly happy with a P85D bought on 2014 launch. Aside from the HP issue (which is real and the start of a downhill ethical sprial for Tesla), it was one of those moments in Tesla history where really the package and upgrade point came together. The fact that next year and the next saw better models would be of no consequence to me. It is the extremeness and randomness of Tesla's change frequency, not the fact that there is a change frequency...
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Dynastar
Member
A Tesla Koan
The Student asked the forum, "When is the best time to buy a Tesla?"
Master A replied, "Now is always the best time to buy a Tesla."
Master B said, "It is never the best time to buy a Tesla."
The Student was enlightened.
The Student asked the forum, "When is the best time to buy a Tesla?"
Master A replied, "Now is always the best time to buy a Tesla."
Master B said, "It is never the best time to buy a Tesla."
The Student was enlightened.
No customer purchased the FSD feature, as it does not exist and has never existed. Customers purchased access to the FSD feature when it becomes available. Those are different products, akin to purchasing tickets to a concert.
read between the lines my friend... no one cares how smart you are
TONS of businesses shape their practices in ways that keep previous customers happy.
Yes, I believe we both included that as part of our arguments. My position is this is a necessary part of business, as a business can only sell to those who are purchasing. A business cannot conduct a purchase in one temporal context with a product in another temporal context.
I've read what you said elsewhere, and I understand your position of wanting to be as informed as possible when planning a future purchase for a future product. My position is that a purchase can only exist in the present (fixed point in time) for a product in the present. This is unavoidable, and is not unique to Tesla.
I get your theoretical point, but as a repeat customer is a major element in any business I can not agree in practice. I think it is wise in many business models to consider what past customers feel, how the company can affect that and direct their feelings and actions towards a future purchase as well. A company with one-time customers only will eventually hurt for it.
Tesla of course knows this as well, otherwise they would not have a referral system. I just don't agree with the way they employ demand levers with such total disregard towards this group of potential buyers. It does not feel wise.
I feel a bit annoyed by Tesla. Car is 6 months old and they already discontinued my model 60, made many options standard (automated trunk) and now they increased speed.
I understand all your arguments about how Tesla constantly updates. But at the end of the day: Am I happy with these changes they keep making? Will I ever be comfortable buying another one? 6 month old car and I shouldn't be feeling buyers remorse.
I bet an interior refresh is coming in the next few months. Talk about salt on the wounds.
I hope we get a mild bump in speed via firmware update. Im sure this car can put out a faster 0-60 (which I DO feel like it needs)
I understand all your arguments about how Tesla constantly updates. But at the end of the day: Am I happy with these changes they keep making? Will I ever be comfortable buying another one? 6 month old car and I shouldn't be feeling buyers remorse.
I bet an interior refresh is coming in the next few months. Talk about salt on the wounds.
I hope we get a mild bump in speed via firmware update. Im sure this car can put out a faster 0-60 (which I DO feel like it needs)
Dan60D
Member
No matter when you buy the car, you might feel buyers remorse in six months if you're so inclined. In 2013 I could have had parking sensors and auto folding mirrors if I had waited a few months. The list goes on. Do you like your car that you ordered? That's all that matters. Tesla improves too rapidly to have the latest and greatest for very long. If that's what matters to you, then maybe Tesla isn't for you.
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I agree, Tesla is a risky purchase for people who want to plan for an optimal moment to buy, features-wise. Tesla giveth and taketh away features at such a pace that it is impossible to plan. The reality is, these changes affect some people on how much thye like the car they ordered or how successful and therefore satisfactory they find the purchase.
For this group of people it is actually sound advice to never buy a Tesla, especially after the first one that gets you into a BEV. Then you can wait for that Jag or Audi with comfortably plannable roadmaps and revision intervals.
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