As you mentioned, Tesla is famous for end of quarter pushes to meet metrics, and the pressure for end-of-year must be even higher. So, as they were up against poor end of year numbers because of people postponing delivery to 2023 for the tax credity, they just decided to offer the same amount as the tax credit. Good for us buyers either way, unless you took delivery just before the offer.
Now, I read lots of gloom and doom for Tesla order numbers, if I recall, in Bloomberg. So, your analyst looks at something like 23 new comparable EV models coming next year, and says, OK, well, Tesla's numbers *must* go way down; maybe not to 1/24th of what they were, but certainly way less. Here's my prediction: Tesla numbers will go down a bit next year, but NOT huge amounts. And Tesla's numbers won't even begin to significantly drop until public chargers are at least as reliable and fast as Tesla's. I'm betting only small drops in resale value too (the current situation that 3+ year old cars with average miles on them cost as much as new is simply not sustainable).
Why won't 23 new EVs coming out this next year kill Tesla?
- MY and M3 will remain roughly $60k cars compared to quite a few $80-$100k cars in that list; those will simply *never* get significant sales.
-Most of these "coming next year" models are not even in production yet (e.g. Fiskar), and note every single EV I have ever followed came out *way* behind their "estimated" range when they actually started deliveries. As in, way behind M3/Y.
And then there are the two killers:
-Software. VW has failed to fix the ID4 software in what, 1.5 years and counting! Someone here recently wrote that polestar software sucks, and someone else says EV6 software is marginal. This is just a way bigger deal than car companies think. And Tesla continues to be the best; you can argue how good it is in an absolute sense, but there seems to be a consensus that it gets you where you are going without too much agony.
- And then there's charging. Youtube is chock full of "I had the worst experience..." for public chargers. Tesla people all say "it's fine". Someone on this site said, "[public chargers] will be fixed. [They HAVE] to be." Let's say that it will be. OK, when? No one is in charge of meeting a target availability, and no one takes responsibility for them being down. And even if one network did fix these problems, no one network could possibly cover all of big countries like the US. There's no way this will be fixed in a year; maybe 2 or 3 years, maybe. But what is to say it wouldn't take 10 years? Or More?
Conclusion: Splashy upcoming new models will hurt Tesla's order numbers (and therefore your resale value), but only slightly for a while; then, as the new ones inevitably disappoint, numbers and prices will come back up, and they won't come down significantly until public charging vastly improves...and the new model cars prove themselves. You heard it here first. And I bet the price of my soon-to-arrive MY on that predication. (On the other hand, I never saw Elon's recent antics coming, which have turned off plenty of people, so, caveat emptor.)
