Letter from George - 12/17/2011

[AnOutsider]

Maybe they were just adding the ground work for the changes and/or making minor textual changes

 

[W.Petefish]

I think they were improving the code for the site. It loads faster now.

 

[Trnsl8r]

False alarm It's back up with no apparent changes (not even Muir Red)...

There's a change all right. The missing options have been relabeled from "This winter" to say "Coming soon". Nice.

 

[Mycroft]

Guess they figured it would look silly if it said coming this Winter, when it was already Winter.

 

[AnOutsider]

I think we may see those buttons change soonish. Not sure a grammatical change of that nature is enough to warrant taking the site down. Maybe they did other things behind the scenes as well

 

[clea]

they have always said coming soon on the buttons and the individual menus for the empty sections (interior, packages, options) all say (and still do) coming this winter. when one of the menus (like the exterior color) is expanded, all you see is "coming soon"; but this has been like that since the beginning IIRC ...

 

[Trnsl8r]

Cat is out of the bag (prices and options at least): Model S Options and Specs | Tesla Motors

 

[Norbert]

Panoramic roof = $1,500 = sold

 

[NigelM]

Feeling very happy so far....and prices about where I expected. :biggrin:

 

[WhiteKnight]

I am less sanguine about the base price remaining "as advertised" because all they have to do in order to raise the effective price is make more and more features that you thought would be standard into expensive options. So let's say the backup camera, which we all think should be standard, becomes a $1,000 option, well then that's a $1,000 price increase in my book.

Now that we see the prices I would say that they did exactly what I feared. They took many things we thought were standard and made them options. Backup camera is part of Tech Package which is $3,750. Paint is $750. Leather is $1,500.

From my perspective it looks like the $7,500 from the government is now gobbled up by the "options" you need to sign up for in order to get your car back to where you thought it was initially.

Someone could do a head-to-head comparison now of the Model S against the 5-series to see where it stacks up (still probably pretty favorably).

MyCroft is going to be excited because fully-loaded it looks like you can still come in at like $99K or less (after $7,500 Federal rebate).

Ooops! Correction! Didn't see that there was a Signature Sport.

One final thought, it is interesting how performance and warranty changes based on the battery pack.

 

[NigelM]

I work out fully loaded without the jump seats at $94,350 (after the tax rebate). Which is pretty much where I imagined it to come out.

 

[Norbert]

Steering column: power tilt and telescopic. There are a few unexpected goodies in there.

 

[Mycroft]

MyCroft is going to be excited because fully-loaded it looks like you can still come in at like $99K or less (after $7,500 Federal rebate).

Yep, it's not the price I was hoping for, but it's pretty much the price I was expecting after adding in all the options I was expecting. I think I thumbnailed it out to $105k pre-rebate with a top end of $110k.

 

[AnOutsider]

Steering column: power tilt and telescopic. There are a few unexpected goodies in there.

I think these are also tied into the user key memory system (seat/steering position)