Arggh, another surprise price increase (red paint up another $500)

[rdlink]

I don’t know. It’s like going out to a nice dinner with your mate, ordering your drinks, reviewing the tasty things on the menu, and eyeing the special lobster in butter truffle sauce for $150. The waiter leaves while you enjoy your drink and eat cheap complimentary bread and butter.

You talk about the lobster with your mate, and they want you to enjoy the evening, so they say “Splurge.” The waiter comes back to take your order and you select the lobster, but “Oh” the waiter snaps, “The lobster is now $200. They don’t like to be boiled and the chef is finding it more difficult to prepare.”

So you tell the waiter that you have to discuss it a bit with your mate and to come back. So now the evening’s dinner conversation is turning more about the lobster and less about other fun things. Your mates eyes dull a bit, but says, “Just get it.”

The waiter, looking a bit more tired, comes back and you’re about to place your order and they tell you, “The chef just quit because the lobsters put up too big a fight, but it’s ok, we hired a new chef. They are vegan, but will compromise their ethics and prepare the lobster for $50 more, so it’s $250, but it’s still the lobster.”

You look at your mate and they at you. The evening has just become all about the lobster.

What you do next is all up to you.

One of the dumbest analogies I've ever rolled my eyes at. Much simpler analogy: You drive up to the restaurant, walk up and look at the prices on the bill of fare. You go back to your car and discuss with your mate for an hour and a half whether you want to go into the restaurant. While you're sitting in the car the price of lobster goes up. You go into the restaurant, look at the menu and complain that they screwed you over before you walked into the door.

 

[rdlink]

Clicked on my Edit link and found the red showing up as $1500. So there is some grandfathering for reserved but unfulfilled orders.

If you have actually placed your order (in other words you have an order summary that shows the options you picked, and you've paid the $2500 order fee) then your prices are the same as what they were when you ordered it, regardless of future price increases. I paid $1500 for red back in June when I ordered mine. I don't take delivery until 9/28. But I will still only pay $1500 for the color.

Now, if I had originally chosen blue, and then changed it to red today I would pay today's price for the red.

 

[MXWing]

One of the dumbest analogies I've ever rolled my eyes at. Much simpler analogy: You drive up to the restaurant, walk up and look at the prices on the bill of fare. You go back to your car and discuss with your mate for an hour and a half whether you want to go into the restaurant. While you're sitting in the car the price of lobster goes up. You go into the restaurant, look at the menu and complain that they screwed you over before you walked into the door.

Price of Lobster I've seen is "Market".

Tesla should just list "Market" for Red Color price and you'll know at pickup what the tab was.

 

[neroden]

$2,000 paint didn’t fix the mismatched Red (or White) tones on metal and plastic parts. Hopefully the $2,500 paint process fixes it. Surprised White didn’t go up by $500 since it’s the worst offender on matching color tones.

Maybe Tesla is just low on Red inventory and want to move buyers to other colors. However, wouldn’t be surprised to see White goes up to $2,500 as well.

IMHO, Tesla should drop the multi-coat paint colors to increase production volumes. Plain white is going to be a lot faster and easier than multi-coat white. Same with plain red.

 

[neroden]

What happens when you order ($2500 deposit) the car prior to these option increases, but have the ability to change your order? Is the pricing consistent at time of order or reset to the latest list price?

When you order, your pricing is locked in. If you make a later change, you get reset to new pricing. (Though salespeople can make exceptions under special circumstances.)

 

[Camera-Cruiser]

Except Tesla is not doing that, they are honoring the prices for those who already ordered. Prices are only going up every month for those who have been fence sitting.

I’ll give you that. I ordered white before it went up.

But, in my example the order was never placed. We were just having our drinks after paying our $1,000 admission fee (in some cases, like mine two years ago). While doing so, they reprinted the menu every time I looked away, or went to the bathroom.

Worse, it’s like we are all at the same fine establishment and every table is getting different prices for the same entree.

You can call it an early bird special if you want, then give people a some time like the silver and obsidian black changes (and even that was short and abrupt), but at least a 72 hour to one week notice would have been great.

If someone in marketing was on the ball, they could have done something brilliant by saying the people who believed in Tesla and put down their $1,000 deposit all get the lowest prices ever offered for any option or configuration. Just order by end of 2018. Heck, I’d even understand if that was only for those who actually stood in line and placed their reservation at the store. That would exclude me, since I reserved day 1 on my computer, but I’d show up next time.

That would generate massive good will to those who are still wondering why they gave Tesla a $1,000 loan when others who didn’t are getting their cars first. Also sending out a huge message to the Y and truck crowd that there are really rewards to placing a reservation. It’s not just a few pieces of paper with the car renderings.

 

[sperkin]

Wait 3 months and the price will go up about $3500 with the downgrade with the fed tax credit

IMHO, Tesla should drop the multi-coat paint colors to increase production volumes. Plain white is going to be a lot faster and easier than multi-coat white. Same with plain red.

Both are very popular colors. White is the top color for Asians so they have to keep it. Red is very pretty but I’m not that bold.

 

[Goatdan]

Supply and demand rules teach us that the higher the price the less the demand. THAT is not in Tesla's interest at the moment. Talk a look at the recent order count on Troy's spreadsheet. Reported new orders are off a cliff as it is. Higher prices will not help.

I just wanted to point this out as I don't think that Troy's spreadsheet has much of anything to do with real world supply and demand.

Troy's spreadsheet (and the others) were / are a great tool for those of us who have waited for a year or two or more to get the car. Those people who ordered in the first few days are the people who should be the most excited about it, and so they go online to discuss the car in that time, and track spreadsheets to try to figure out exactly where they are in the queue.

Someone who walks into a Tesla dealership today, test drives a car, orders it and gets a delivery window of a few weeks to a couple months doesn't need to sit and stare at spreadsheets trying to figure out when the car will show up. They are just going to get the car when it shows up and be happy about it.

I would bet that less than 1% of people who order today are putting their information into any sheets. It should look like it fell off a cliff as it goes from niche car to mass market.

 

[outie]

Price of Lobster I've seen is "Market".

Tesla should just list "Market" for Red Color price and you'll know at pickup what the tab was.

The entire Model 3 is Market Price:
#20

2 increases within 7 days.

 

[KenC]

I don’t know. It’s like going out to a nice dinner with your mate, ordering your drinks, reviewing the tasty things on the menu, and eyeing the special lobster in butter truffle sauce for $150. The waiter leaves while you enjoy your drink and eat cheap complimentary bread and butter.

You talk about the lobster with your mate, and they want you to enjoy the evening, so they say “Splurge.” The waiter comes back to take your order and you select the lobster, but “Oh” the waiter snaps, “The lobster is now $200. They don’t like to be boiled and the chef is finding it more difficult to prepare.”

So you tell the waiter that you have to discuss it a bit with your mate and to come back. So now the evening’s dinner conversation is turning more about the lobster and less about other fun things. Your mates eyes dull a bit, but says, “Just get it.”

The waiter, looking a bit more tired, comes back and you’re about to place your order and they tell you, “The chef just quit because the lobsters put up too big a fight, but it’s ok, we hired a new chef. They are vegan, but will compromise their ethics and prepare the lobster for $50 more, so it’s $250, but it’s still the lobster.”

You look at your mate and they at you. The evening has just become all about the lobster.

What you do next is all up to you.

Screw the fancy lobster. Hop into the Tesla-Uber Hyperloop car idling outside, and tell the driver "we're going to Maine", cause you know that lobster in Maine is only $6 a pound. For $20, you can steam three tasty lobsters in 12 min, yourself. Of course don't forget your fancy black truffle butter sauce, that'll set you back another $20. There, you showed them, and saved yourself some money.

 

[KenC]

That’s not entirely true (“the higher the price the less the demand”). There is something called price elasticity, and Tesla is trying to discover how elastic the demand is for these colors. For example, let’s say milk is $3 a gallon and you normally buy one gallon per week for your family. Suddenly milk goes to $4 a gallon, a 33% increase! Will you suddenly reduce the amount of milk you buy and consume? Likely not. The price goes up, the demand will stay more of less the same, because people want their milk. Now there is a limit to the elasticity for everything. If milk goes up to say, $50 a gallon, then a lot of people will likely cut back on their milk consumption, and many will try less expensive alternatives like soy milk or almond milk etc. So what Tesla is doing is trying to find how elastic the demand is for these colors (and other options like AWD, EAP, FSD).

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with Tesla doing this. They are not gouging as some people have suggested. No one is being forced to buy a Model 3 at all, much less in the color red. And, even though they don’t have to, Tesla always AFAIK honors the previous price for those who have already placed an order. So this is not greed, this is not gouging, this is simply a business trying to maximize profits which is EXACTLY WHAT ANY BUSINESS IS SUPPOSED TO DO. Just my opinion. Ronald Ulysses Swanson out!

True, but typically these sorts of economics problems aren't tested on the population at large.

As far as maximizing profits, that's the idea, but given the constraints of reality. The car market isn't used to having prices changed on options from week to week. You don't maximize profits by annoying your customers, even if their prices haven't changed.

 

[voip-ninja]

If you have actually placed your order (in other words you have an order summary that shows the options you picked, and you've paid the $2500 order fee) then your prices are the same as what they were when you ordered it, regardless of future price increases. I paid $1500 for red back in June when I ordered mine. I don't take delivery until 9/28. But I will still only pay $1500 for the color.

Now, if I had originally chosen blue, and then changed it to red today I would pay today's price for the red.

Actually there's a decent chance they would still honor the older price.

I changed my DBM/black/aero/EAP AWD order to DBM/white/aero/EAP AWD on September 7th. Not only did they keep my original price for dual motor (had gone up $1000) and blue paint (had gone up $500), but even though they showed delivery fee of $1200 my final paperwork shows they adjusted it to $1000 as originally "promised".

I used the backdoor edit link to make the change, literally at the last possible moment, as they matched me to a car less than 24 hours after I changed the interior color.

 

[rluciano]

Actually there's a decent chance they would still honor the older price.

I changed my DBM/black/aero/EAP AWD order to DBM/white/aero/EAP AWD on September 7th. Not only did they keep my original price for dual motor (had gone up $1000) and blue paint (had gone up $500), but even though they showed delivery fee of $1200 my final paperwork shows they adjusted it to $1000 as originally "promised".

I used the backdoor edit link to make the change, literally at the last possible moment, as they matched me to a car less than 24 hours after I changed the interior color.

Yeah, I ordered on 6/26/18. DBM P- white interior FSD. I used the backdoor to edit on 9/6/18 Going to MCRed, P+, White interior, FSD. They gave me all of the prices as of my 6/26 order.

 

[EnrgyNDpndnce]

You don't maximize profits by annoying your customers, even if their prices haven't changed.

I understand you and some others may be annoyed by this, but who’s to say this annoys very many Tesla customers? Maybe it’s a majority, maybe it’s a minority. Time will tell I suppose, and isn’t this the beauty of the free market? If Tesla does annoy too many customers it will suffer the consequences. I personally am not annoyed at all by this.

As for people not being used to this behavior in the car market, my observation is that Tesla has done A LOT of things people are not used to in the car market. Their behavior so far has earned them close to 500k paid reservations, so pretty good feedback from the market that they are doing more right than wrong. Time will tell.

Now, if anyone from Tesla is reading this, PLEASE SCHEDULE MY DELIVERY PRONTO!

 

[cab]

Sadly, the latest round of new EV introductions from the Europeans almost seems to be solidifying Tesla's position in the market. They all seem to be struggling with efficiency and the fast charging networks for them are abysmal compared to supercharging - both key in these still early days of EVs. Sad as the new Audi and Jag look decent enough (the Merc and BMW iThing miss the mark for me).

Folks waiting to see what other manufacturers had to offer might, almost begrudgingly in some cases, be back in a Tesla as the "only game in town" (or "out of town" in this case, when it comes to driving beyond city limits). All of that means Tesla has a virtual monopoly on long range EVs with out of town charging capabilities for, what, the next 2, 3 or even as much as 5 years??? In short...expect more price hikes I suppose.

 

[EnrgyNDpndnce]

Sadly, the latest round of new EV introductions from the Europeans almost seems to be solidifying Tesla's position in the market. They all seem to be struggling with efficiency and the fast charging networks for them are abysmal compared to supercharging - both key in these still early days of EVs. Sad as the new Audi and Jag look decent enough (the Merc and BMW iThing miss the mark for me).

Folks waiting to see what other manufacturers had to offer might, almost begrudgingly in some cases, be back in a Tesla as the "only game in town" (or "out of town" in this case, when it comes to driving beyond city limits). All of that means Tesla has a virtual monopoly on long range EVs with out of town charging capabilities for, what, the next 2, 3 or even as much as 5 years??? In short...expect more price hikes I suppose.

I agree with most of your sentiment on the German offerings. I don’t anticipate many significant price increases from Tesla, but if that does happen it actually benefits those of us who have already ordered / taken delivery at lower prices. Be gone with you depreciation!