After the "free Ludicrous" announcement, looked at the possibility of replacing our 2017 S 100D or 2018 X 100D with a 2019 S/X P with the free Ludicrous mode.
And I suspect other current owners will quickly reach the same conclusion we did - it doesn't make any sense.
While new S/X vehicles are less expensive because of the price decrease several months ago, that will also likely be reflected in the trade-in value for both vehicles (losing $10K on our S and $15K on our X).
Going from a 100D to a new P/Ludicrous model reduces the increased range. Our S 100D has (had) 330 rated miles. We'd get 345 rated miles with a new P/Ludicrous, much less than the 370 miles we'd get with a Long Range version. We'd prefer getting the LR version with the longest range.
If Tesla really wanted to encourage current S/X owners to purchase new vehicles, they would likely need to make a different offer allowing us to purchase a Long Range model (instead of the Performance model), such as:
- Transfer FSD activation from the current S/X to the new purchase
- Transfer FUSC from the current S/X to the new purchase
- Transfer extended warranty and any unused portion of the pre-paid service plan to the new purchase
- Add the vehicle to the Early Access list, to provide earlier access to new software updates
- And might even need to add more to compensate for the cost of paying sales tax again and the high depreciation for trading in a recently purchased S/X (for those trading in AP 2+ vehicles)
While this iteration of the S/X is tempting, the net cost is too high (especially with the higher cost of purchasing the performance model, with the shorter range) - and we'll likely sit this out, unless Tesla can come up with a better deal.
Plus, Musk announced on Monday they plan to introduce another new battery pack for S/3/X that will have 2-3X more lifetime (guessing that will put all Tesla vehicles on the same pack design). And those S/X would likely get the full benefits on V3 supercharging. While the new motor/pack design has benefits - we'll go through this again next year with another pack/charging change.
If Tesla really, really believes they are going to have a Tesla Network in a few years, maybe they should look at what the cell phone manufacturers are doing - and have a "Tesla Forever" purchase plan, where you can upgrade to a new Tesla every 1-2 years and used the returned vehicles for CPO, service loaners or the Tesla Network...