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Model 3 Highland Performance/Plaid Speculation [Car announced 04.23.2024]
- Thread starter Daniel L
- Start date
So many fun things to challenge in this post. Tesla doesn't raise prices to slow demand. It raises prices because there is demand. And Tesla is testing the demand curve in real time. This is hardly shocking and doesn't equate to trying to "tamp" demand. We have no clue what the current production capacity on the Highland is - it was just released. So wait times are meaningless right now. Whether you like it or not, the market now perceives Tesla has cheap economy vehicles. So you can't necessarily extrapolate from sales of 40k cars and expect it to carry over to 55k plus cars. Once you get over 50k, the landscape of available vehicles changes dramatically and this is where the perception of Tesla being a "cheap" car for the masses may start to affect them. I have no idea how this will go. If Tesla actually delivers a 660HP, 10 second M3P (pure speculation on your part), we will see. I would personally be interested in it but 9/10 of my "car guy" friends would have zero interest. They view Tesla as cheap crap (not an opinion I share). And Tesla has only reinforced that perception with its race to the bottom pricing strategy. A 55k or 60k M3P will have challenges in the market place. Even if you don't like my i4 comparison, you can get M240, M2, RS3's in that ballpark in the used market. The car market is DOWN big time right now. Take a look sometime. It's pretty amazing what 55k to 60k will buy you.
The mental gymnastics you do are astounding.
This sentence alone makes no sense at all. "Tesla doesn't raise prices to slow demand. It raises prices because there is demand."
You think Tesla raises prices to intentionally lower demand? I don't. Talk about mental gymnastics.
I wonder what the current 3P hardware would do with 110s/462v like the S Plaid. Keeping everything else the same might be good on the production line and then P cars just get a different battery and software.
Rear motor is the same as the S/X LR so it should be able to make more power and hold onto it longer (by my logs, the rear motor in an X LR at a 77% SoC peaks at 282 kW and stays above 250 from 47 to 75mph, which with model 3 tires would be more like 40 to 67 mph). And still stays above 200kW upto 100mph (and beyond, I couldn’t get past 100 for that session). Interestingly, the peak current draw I saw on that car was just about 1400A, which is not too far off from what the MYP does with the same battery as the M3P.
So effectively using two of the current rear motors and uncorking them might do the trick.
Datalog on my Plaid shows an even flatter power curve (basically a straight line from 60 mph onward), but the peak is less -- I suspect due to there being 3 motors rather than the motors themselves not being capable of more.
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I think Tesla raised the Model 3 LR prices to make the Model 3 RWD look like more of a bargain. They wanted people to say "The Model 3 LR is going to take too long and the price is higher. Let's just get a Model 3 RWD or even a Model Y LR instead".
I think they raised prices because 1. They can and 2. They want more money. Pretty sure it’s that simple. I seriously doubt they did it to drive people to lower priced models. That maybe the result or byproduct for some buyers, but it wasn’t the intention.
Any sensible business would raise prices in response to high demand. If you're pumping out 10,000 widgets, get as much $$$ for each one as you can. They are certainly not raising prices to lower demand because "oh my God, the wait time is 4 months and we can't do that to our customers". Furthermore, I would not be surprised at all if the same exact battery and motors were kept, as the same hardware in the YP already makes 40 more horsepower than the 3P, and you know it can be turned up more. If they did put a single Plaid motor in the rear, cool. The front motor isn't going to change, as it's already shared with the Plaid.
Where on earth are you getting that idea?
Prob from the same people that said NVDA is going down today.
Oops permanent-magnet synchronous motor in the front of the plaid. Induction motor in front of all performance model 3s.
What you are missing is that they aren't raising prices to lower demand. They are instead raising prices to redirect demand. They have too much demand for the Highland Model 3 LR so they want to redirect that demand towards the Model 3 RWD or even the Model Y. You can tell what vehicle Tesla wants to push demand towards by what they display first on their homepage. It was the Highland Model 3 until recently when they switched it out for the Model Y. It was the CyberTruck before that.
You can also look at whether they present the "order" link on the homepage or not to judge demand. They have removed the order link for the Model Y from the homepage and replaced it with a "Shop Available" link. They have tons of Model Ys in inventory and they want to sell those first. That is why they are increasing prices on high demand cars like the Highland Model 3 LR so that they can redirect people into buying one of the many Model Ys they already have in inventory.
n2mb_racing
Active Member
That's slightly problematic that they now have a huge inventory of Model Ys, when it was the best selling car in the world last year.
