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Are the 21" Wheels stopping your Performance upgrade?

Are the 21" Wheels stopping your Prefomance upgrade?

  • I am already ordering the Performance version and keeping the 21s.

    Votes: 72 48.3%
  • I am already ordering the Performance version and I would take the credit for the downgrade.

    Votes: 18 12.1%
  • I would order the Performance version only if I get credit for the downgrade to 19s.

    Votes: 37 24.8%
  • I am already ordering the Standard version and keeping my order unchanged.

    Votes: 22 14.8%

  • Total voters
    149
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Wow, that is interesting, and blows my theory out of the water...unless they priced them that way to ensure you cannot get a cheaper 21" wheel upgrade by purchasing a spare set. Where did you see the official pricing on the spare sets?

And just to reaffirm, I do very much appreciate that we have the option to downgrade to the 19" wheel, or buy a spare set of 19" factory wheels. As you point out, both options are fairly unheard of with other auto manufacturers, and this speaks volumes for Tesla's customer experience. I know with my BMW for winter wheels I was sent straight to TireRack.com; I don't think a spare set of factory rims was even possible, or at least wasn't offered.
 
While I fully believe that it would benefit Tesla if they change their current policy with regards to this, can I play devils advocate for a second? There are other manufacturers out there, that when you purchase the performance package version from them you only get a version with performance tires and that's that. Tesla has added the option for us to swap to other, sometimes more useful, wheels/tires. (And it's in fact this option that now yields the heartburn) Perhaps Tesla would in some ways be better off not offering the option to swap sizes down to 19" All Seasons?
I hear you. Here's the other side of that from my view.

1) Tesla is always touted as having a different sales model (preorder, no haggling, etc), so falling back on "this is how other vendors do it" rings hollow to me. That's trying to have your cake and eat it too, so to speak.

2) The tire thing is exactly the kind of bargaining the old dealer model could support. Yea, maybe the company (Toyota, Ford, whatever) doesn't support the 19" on their Perf model, but you can needle the dealer with "winter weather sucks here, drop the price by $X and give me 19s and we've got a deal". I'm not advocating the old dealer model because it sucks in so many ways we've all discussed, but it does have certain dealer discretion flexibility that Tesla doesn't provide.

I think what really niggles at me actually is just the oddity of it.

The base model is completely ala carte pricing and even with the Perf is mostly ala carte: paint, paint armor, HPC, pano roof, sound system, tech package, parcel shelf, etc. The Perf tires really stand out as a break from the ala carte model (well, and the leather, not sure why that's forced either given some folks aversion to it). The air suspension, as a mechanical internal part, I can understand being required for the Perf.

Tesla has this great, consistent, fairly priced, ala carte pricing model (for non-Sigs) then sort of bizarrely tosses it aside for the Perf tires, something so trivial to change, literally a 5 minute bolt-on.
 
Yea, same hesitation here. I know it's been discussed endlessly, but having gotten my config email the 19" tire credit is the only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger on the Perf.

Same here. Want the Perf, but somehow cannot justify paying for something I will not get. Oh well, Tesla will lose out on an extra $20-30k from me.
 
Tesla is always touted as having a different sales model (preorder, no haggling, etc), so falling back on "this is how other vendors do it" rings hollow to me.
That only goes so far.

"All other car providers make me pay for them. Tesla doing the same rings hollow to me. They should just give me the car for free."

Tesla's blazing a lot of new trails. If you expect them to blaze new trail for everything then you might as well just start with being upset rather than trying to build an argument why you're upset.
 
I think CKessel fairly articulately stated that he is quite happy with every aspect of the a la carte options in the design studio, but that this one feature of 21 vs 19" wheels with its unidirectional price disparity (it can only add cost if added, never reduce cost if taken away), seems to be arbitrarily inconsistent with the rest of the pricing. His only other concern is that performance leather, which includes the piping that some do not like (I can do without the red piping but love the other two, personally), is required with a Perf. Those hardly constitute "being upset". I think these concerns are very accurately described, and would agree with Ckessel when he says that the incongruity of this one option with the rest of the Tesla ultimate-flexibility "a la carte" model is what really makes it stick out and be noticed...and not in a good way.
 
I think it's clear that "full a la carte" is a better model from a customer standpoint.

...What Tesla is discovering is that it is a problematic model from an assembly-line standpoint. Which is why most car manufacturers don't do it.

I think it strikes us as particularly odd, and even "shady", with the *wheels* because making them a la carte is *not* problematic from an assembly-line standpoint.
 
  • I am already ordering the Performance version and keeping the 21s.
  • I am already ordering the Performance version and I would take the credit for the downgrade.
  • I would order the Performance version only if I get credit for the downgrade to 19s.
  • I am already ordering the Standard version and keeping my order unchanged.

Another choice: I am already ordering the Performance version and keeping the 21s and buying a set of 19s for the winter.
 
With the problems with Traction Control on the Roadster with off-stock tire brands, are there any issues with changing wheel sizes?

If the tire revolutions per mile are within the tolerances that Tesla has programmed into the traction control, the wheel size shouldn't make a difference. The problem here is finding out what the tolerances are.