What about people like me that would only consider EVs. No real luxury competition present and few immediate plans. Tesla was my only option. I could afford any of those other cars but never even considered them or test drove them. Icky.
This is one of the few places out there where the Model S is compared with its price peers, most articles and such think that Model S buyers are cross shopping with other EVs like the Fiat 500e, Nissan Leaf, and especially the Chevy Bolt. For Eco buyers, there probably is some of that, but Tesla's ultimate success depends on the public seeing Teslas as a better car, not a better EV.
The problem is the Model S doesn't compare well to any car on the market today. I never gave a moment's thought to another EV. Because of my long legs, a small car is out. I also needed something capable of getting from the Portland area to California without huge hassles. That rules out every EV except the Model S and X (though the Model 3 will probably be OK). I was looking at other large cars like the Taurus and LaCrosse. I also gave some serious thought to the Subaru Outback. I never gave any consideration to any other car on the luxury sedan list.
The midsized sedan market is much bigger than the large sedan market. With my long legs my situation is unusual. I have been predicting all along that the Model 3 will likely be listed as a luxury midsized and compared to the BMW 3 Series and other similar cars, but I think it will really be competing with the Ford Fusion, Chevy Malibu, Honda Accord, and Toyota Camry. It will be a matter of education. I have friends who has a leased Accord right now, but after experiencing my Model S, they are seriously considering a Model 3. As people get a chance to drive their neighbor's or co-worker's Model 3, they will count their pennies and see if they can stretch their budget from their current midsized sedan to a Model 3 with their next purchase or lease. And a lot will.
The Model S took away a sale of a large sedan or an Outback from an ICE maker in my case. But those losses are small with the Model S's volume. Subaru makes around 300,000 Outbacks a year. Loss of a couple of sales to Tesla are down in the noise. When people are cross shopping the best selling sedans in the US market with the Model 3, which will be available in volumes similar to other mass produced cars, the ICE makers will suddenly be worried. A 10% decline in Camry sales as people move over to the Model 3 is something that will make Toyota nervous.
The German car makers are taking Tesla more seriously than anyone else because they have already seen what the Model S can to to their sales. The market segment has grown since the Model S entered it, but their sales have mostly declined. Those companies can survive taking a bit of a hit on sales of their top end models, those cars are the "gravy" profits, but they can't afford to have the Model 3 destroy their midsized car sales too.
lklundin, I'll have to see if I can do that. I have tried before and wasn't able to find a way to do that with the image being embedded like you see when I create a direct link to the picture. And I have a CS degree too
Photobucket isn't really working very well with Firefox these days. I can't get your images to display. You can do a link to just an image here by clicking on the icon in the editor that looks like an image, just to the right of the smiley face, and insert the URL to an image.
