Do we know when the last price adjustment was made? We would want to look at the change in exchage rates from the last adjustment to this recent adjustment. But let's go ahead and assume the Euro priced cars are 10% cheaper as of this most recent adjustment.
So if Euro priced cars represent 20% of revenue, this takes 2% from GM. If 5% of compents are euro sourced and GM is 27%, then this adds 0.66% = .73* 0.05 * 0.18 to GM. The net impact is -1.34%.
Consider also tha Dollar is up about 16% on the Yen and perhaps 33% of the cost of the car comes from Japan, specifically cells. This adds 3.32% = .73 * 0.33 *( 1 - 1/1.16 ) to GM. What fraction sales are from Japan? Could it be as high as 5%? Let's suppose so and that Tesla has not adjusted prices in Yen. So this subtracts 0.69% = 0.05*( 1 - 1/1.16 ) from GM. So the net impact from the Yen is +2.51%.
The Yuan has dropped about 2.7% on the dollar. So with about 25% revenue from China, that's a 0.68% hit to GM. Does Tesla source anything from China? Even so, it's probably not significant. 5% sourced from China would add only 0.10% to GM. So let's just say the net impact from the Yuan is -0.65%.
Combining the impact from both the Euro, the Yen and the Yuan, I get 0.52% added to GM. There may be other currencies to consider, but the Yen is where the big boost comes from. So it looks like the strong dollar might actually improve GM slightly. So it is quite possible that Tesla just backed into a Euro price increase tha that nuetralizes the strong dollar impact on GM. Obviously Tesla's finance team would be able to do a pretty precise job on that.
If I am correct that Tesla backed into a minimal price increase in Euros needed to stabilize GM, then this is suggesting a departure from their fair pricing policy. Under that approach the Euro prices should be built up from the dollar price based on exchange rates. There is no provision for how parts imported from local currency to Fremont would allow Tesla to make a less severe price adjustment. So under fairness, the Euro price should be much higher. But stabilizing the GM also makes sense too.
The way to apply both fairness and stabilize GM is to start all the way back at the cost of the Model S, which has been made smaller thanks to a strong dollar. Then build up a new US price based on a target GM. And finally adjust all foreign prices based on the new price. So the US cost has fallen by 4% thanks to a strong dollar. So under fairness pricing the US price should be adjusted down 4%! But US customers are not getting this FX windfall, rather prices in Europe and elsewhere are being kept as low as possible. Is this fair? I'm not sure what fairness really means in this kind of situation. I do think it is pragmatic to keep prices low in weaker markets. Demand is high in the US. We enjoy price stability with respect to exchange rates and shorter wait times for delivery. These are advantages that can't be extended to other continents. So I'm happy a modest price adjustment in Europe.
If Tesla wants continue a fairness pricing doctrine, they may do well to consider purchase power parity (PPP) retes in stead of exchange rates. The PPP approach would hold Teslas prices closer to local prices and reduce harsh exposure to exchange rates. It would also tend to equalize the affordability across countries. Tax and incentive differences aside, Germany has a PPP ratio of 1.0 while Norway is at 1.5. Thus, using simple exchange rates to import into both countries, ignoring, taxes, incentives and shipping cost differences, it would take 50% more purchasing power for a German to buy the car than Norwegian. I suspect this helps explain some of the differnce in uptake between these two countries. If Tesla does not get PPP right, they may find it much harder to expand into countries with low PPP ratios. Check out the list below.
Price level ratio of PPP conversion factor (GDP) to market exchange rate | Data | Table
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