Is now a reasonable or silly time to buy a new Model S?
My thoughts:
It now has some competition from the likes of Jag and Audi. And surely a few more competitors will hit the market in the next year or so. Surely considerable downward pressure on price at some point soon (even if the Jag/Audi models aren't enough to really put the pressure on).
The model 3 seems closer to the S than the price differential suggests.
I would've thought production cost of X over S to be a lot higher than the price differential given the various areas in which it's more complex.
Battery cost is steadily and continually reducing. And the model has been in production 7 years.
Given the above points, although Tesla as a whole is barely profitable I assume a lot of that is about investment and growth, so I'd be surprised if it didn't make a sizeable marginal profit on the last model S it sold.
Rumoured new battery, motor type and interior refresh are coming, so surely the last current ones would see some value hit, although I find it hard to believe these changes will come in just a couple of months as I read they're rumoured to be.
On the flip side, Tesla may not stand to suffer from reduced S numbers if the resources used in S production can be easily redeployed in so many more units of the 3 as to be at least as profitable per unit of input. And there are other counter-arguments I'm sure.
I have my own reasons that the above points don't really take me away from the S (range, hatchback, some other less critical preferences) but I'm more interested in views of the market here. I'm essentially ready to push the button, and have decided I'm happy to take this unusual and financially out of character step (I don't buy new or expensive cars normally) for largely environmental reasons but it would be silly not to wait a month or 3 if there's £10k value in doing so. It's a balance. It feels to me that these factors puts net downward pressure on the S price in the fairly near future if not already, yet price changes to date have been both ways, unpredictable, around the edges except for performance variants (which aren't relevant for me, or I guess for most buyers), Musk's latest comment was about raising the price of FSD, and competitors are showing concept cars in their TV ads, which smacks of desperation.
So do you owners and watchers of the market think reductions are coming in the near ish future or do you think they're a long way off or even not coming at all?
My thoughts:
It now has some competition from the likes of Jag and Audi. And surely a few more competitors will hit the market in the next year or so. Surely considerable downward pressure on price at some point soon (even if the Jag/Audi models aren't enough to really put the pressure on).
The model 3 seems closer to the S than the price differential suggests.
I would've thought production cost of X over S to be a lot higher than the price differential given the various areas in which it's more complex.
Battery cost is steadily and continually reducing. And the model has been in production 7 years.
Given the above points, although Tesla as a whole is barely profitable I assume a lot of that is about investment and growth, so I'd be surprised if it didn't make a sizeable marginal profit on the last model S it sold.
Rumoured new battery, motor type and interior refresh are coming, so surely the last current ones would see some value hit, although I find it hard to believe these changes will come in just a couple of months as I read they're rumoured to be.
On the flip side, Tesla may not stand to suffer from reduced S numbers if the resources used in S production can be easily redeployed in so many more units of the 3 as to be at least as profitable per unit of input. And there are other counter-arguments I'm sure.
I have my own reasons that the above points don't really take me away from the S (range, hatchback, some other less critical preferences) but I'm more interested in views of the market here. I'm essentially ready to push the button, and have decided I'm happy to take this unusual and financially out of character step (I don't buy new or expensive cars normally) for largely environmental reasons but it would be silly not to wait a month or 3 if there's £10k value in doing so. It's a balance. It feels to me that these factors puts net downward pressure on the S price in the fairly near future if not already, yet price changes to date have been both ways, unpredictable, around the edges except for performance variants (which aren't relevant for me, or I guess for most buyers), Musk's latest comment was about raising the price of FSD, and competitors are showing concept cars in their TV ads, which smacks of desperation.
So do you owners and watchers of the market think reductions are coming in the near ish future or do you think they're a long way off or even not coming at all?