Model 3 pre order and tax credit ?

[Tanquen]

Oops again. That sounds better. I have seen a few complaining about the CA $2500 rebate income cap and it seems a little unreal.

Also, I thought it was based on cost but:

For vehicles acquired after December 31, 2009, the credit is equal to $2,500 plus, for a vehicle which draws propulsion energy from a battery with at least 5 kilowatt hours of capacity, $417, plus an additional $417 for each kilowatt hour of battery capacity in excess of 5 kilowatt hours. The total amount of the credit allowed for a vehicle is limited to $7,500.

I wish I could edit that post.

 

[dhanson865]

I think your estimates of future production numbers are massively overstated. I bet way fewer Model 3's will actually get the credit once the trigger is met. Maybe I will be happily wrong, but telling people that up to 500k Model 3's will get some portion of the tax credit seems fanciful based on Tesla's track record.

Looking back at this I think I included one too many quarters after the trigger, that would make it off by 100,000 at the 25% level and some tens of thousands at the 100% and 50% levels. Might be a good sanity check if someone could confirm the number of quarters I included post phaseout should be 6 inclusive, not 6 excluding the trigger quarter.

The quote below is corrected to use inclusive and reduces the numbers quite a bit.

I've cleaned up the post and updated for the Feb numbers. It appears I had one too many quarters of credits in my math.

The current totals at end of 2015 + partial 2016 would be

US running total Tesla Sales vs 200,000 for federal credit phase out trigger
2011 end 1,900
2012 end 4,550 (2,650 for 2012 + prior year)
2013 end 22,200 (14,650 for 2013 + prior years)
2014 end 39,500 (17,300 for 2014 + prior years)
2015 end 65,414 (25,914 for 2015 + prior years, Model S and Model X)
2016 Feb 68,584 (3,170 for Jan/Feb 2016 + prior years)

Do the math if Tesla is doing less than 26,000 a year US in 2015 how many years will it take to hit 200,000 US sales? They'll ramp up S and X production but there will still be plenty of discounts on Model 3.

Lets say 50,000 US for 2016 and 75,000 US for 2017, 25,000 in the first quarter of 2018 finally triggering the phaseout.

Tax Credit Phase-Out Schedule Quarter Credit

Q4 2017 possible deferred shipping to EU/ROW to avoid crossing 200,000 in US
Q1 2018 (200,000 mark crossed, some trickling of Model 3 in this quarter, maybe 500 a week for 7,500 with full credit?)
Q2 2018 Model 3 with Full credit (no signature series per Elon, maybe 1,000 to 2,000 a week for 25,000 with full credit?)
Q3 2018 50% of full amount (will they be making 3,000+ a week by then? Maybe 12 weeks worth is 40,000 Model 3s with half credit?
Q4 2018 50% of full amount (maybe 60,000 model 3s with half credit in this quarter?)
Q1 2019 25% of full amount (maybe 75,000 Model 3s with quarter credit)
Q2 2019 25% of full amount (maybe 100,000 Model 3s with quarter credit, with extra production going outside the US)
Q3 2019 no credit


all in all they might get out 35,000 with full credit, 100,000 with half credit, and another 175,000 with quarter credit?

Shift the trigger earlier by one quarter and 25,000 less cars get a full credit, shift that trigger later by one quarter and 40,000 more get a full credit. Just depends when they can start cranking out Model 3 en masse and when the trigger is.

So unless my trigger to expiration math was right before my old post was off by quite a few cars on the credits. The new numbers have a lot less credit flowing around for Model 3.