No, I don’t make well into six figures. I bought a $60k car because I believed in Tesla and I also believed that they would protect my investment. So unless you make less than $100k, bought a model 3, and the price is now at least $5k less, your opinion is not relevant to my points.
So you paid at minimum 60% of your annual income on a car? M'kay. As long as you believe in "The Mission", I guess.
I am not being elitist. I am saying Tesla needs to make a PROFIT, a term lost on so many people. Instead of barely going bankrupt every quarter and overestimating everything and selling everything at cost, here’s a novel idea, make a PROFIT.
Dude, saying "if you have $35K then you probably have $45K and thus $55K" is incredibly elitist. It's a statement made without any connection to the reality that a great many people live in whatsoever. That you can just dismiss it as "whatever" is a bit crass, to be honest.
I'll agree with you on one point, Tesla would have been massively better served by ensuring they were
funded well enough to support this effort, and the most egregious error Elon has ever made was saying, "Here's our newest Tesla, you can buy it for $35K",
without having any idea whether that would even be possible, at any date in the future. Lots of Tesla supporters are getting hung up on this price point (see below) as some sort of nebulous promise that Tesla
sort of fulfilled, even though they don't think it's smart to, nor do they think Tesla has an obligation to. While completely ignoring the fact that it was hubris at best to announce they sell the car at $35K, or an outright lie at worst, designed to bring lots of press and deposits to a company that desperately needed it.
Tesla rushed the Model 3 to market as it was (see the complete lack of production validation that was done basically on the fly the first year) because the walls were closing in, both in terms of finances and competition. They had to strike when the iron was hot, and that's why they've been constantly on the verge of bankruptcy.
35K in 2016 money is a shade over 37K today.
Tesla can legitimately sell a 37K Model and claim it was the 35K car advertised. Is it late yes, but still here regardless.
The optics, people's ignorance at economics, the press, etc make this a non starter but the argument is is 100% valid.
This is a weak argument, and I think you know it. The car was promised at $35K in 2017, not "well basically an equivalent $37K in 2019."
The car is here, but not really. And Tesla truly wishes it wasn't. I've already said this in a couple places elsewhere but I'll spell it out for you here. There's proof that Tesla had no intention of building the SR, and that lies in the fact they never bothered to certify it. The SR+ presently has a certification, so it begs the question, if you were going to sell both, wouldn't you certify both at the same time? Especially for a variant of an already approved EV? Wouldn't that be like the easiest certification ever to apply for and receive?
No, they announced the SR and SR+ at the same time, certified only the SR+ and gave it a month or so in the hopes they could upsell any SR buyers to SR+ in the meantime. Any SR people who held out are now being given an SR+ with a few things turned off, and once they fill any existing orders it will be discontinued. And Tesla and people here will be able to say years later that they did sell a $35K, but "no one wanted it".
The $35K Model 3 does not exist, it's a $39K Model 3
being sold at a loss to satisfy a very small number of folks, including Elon himself, and possibly to avoid a class action lawsuit.
Elon's biggest blunder was announcing he would sell the Model 3 for $35K, which we can all agree now that he cannot profitably do.
