@Foxtrotter this point was discussed in some detail a while back, and most feel that although these vehicles are
priced like a luxury vehicle, they really aren't. You're paying the premium for the mature EV tech and the Supercharger network.
There must be a significant difference of opinion on what is considered luxury (e.g. Model S/X is, Model 3/Y, is not)
To be honest I think there is a LOT of opportunity to downgrade these vehicles to "less luxury" if they really aren't considered luxury. I think its the sum of all these tiny insignificant things that are added in that are really designed to put it in "luxury" category. While I agree, you are paying for the charging infrastructure and technical maturity, when compared against a Nissan Leaf or a Chevrolet Bolt, it seems there is still a lot of luxury.
Things I would name in particular that tend to add relatively significant luxury, cost, and also some weight (which means cost for electric):
- Laminated Front Door Windows
- Leather Seats
- Power/Automatic everything
- Folding mirrors (I regular adjustment seems standard these days)
- Heated mirrors
- Auto dimming mirrors
- Heated Seats (front and rear)
- Heated Steering Wheel
- Steering Wheel adjustments
- Fore/Aft, height, seat back angle, lumbar support for Driver
- Fore/Aft, height, seat back angle, lumbar support for Passenger
- Automatic down AND UP on all windows
- Automatic/electric climate control in every aspect (temperature, location, speed, etc)
- Power lift gate
- Power 60/40 seat release
- Power doors (from inside, anyways)
- Automatic lights (pretty standard now, I guess)
- Premium entertainment system and nav
- Mobile device monitoring and control (typically a subscription service for ICE?)
- Panoramic Moonroof
- Fog lights
- Parking sensors everywhere with auto park capability
- Unnecessarily high HP drivetrain
- All the Autopilot functionality (TACC, emergency X, Y, Z detection)
Historically I have sacrificed nearly all of those things for the sake of money - the car I sold was a 5-speed manual base Subaru. I would expect the proposed Model 2 would remove many if not all of these items to hit the cost and weight target.
Maybe a good practice would be to benchmark with similar class vehicles -- maybe the X5? Then benchmark against the class below (CRV, RAV4?), and the class above (AMG G-wagon, Range Rover?)
Then again, if I look at all these things and the MSRP of a Chevrolet Bolt or Nissan Leaf at ~40K... Minus the typical dealer haggling... We might be getting a lot more bang for our buck than we think...
Generally, I think some things are "creating a problem for the solution", like power seats. Usage statistics for the rest of the power adjustments would be significantly higher since they built in their own function to make ingress egress easier... I would have expected the power passenger to go away except the fact that that's another variation of components to manage rather than just deleting altogether. Not a hill worth dying on but lumbar adjustment (manual or power) seems much more beneficial to the user vs power passenger in my opinion.