Tesla doesn't like Canada :(

[mknox]

And it has nothing to do with 6.1% import nonsense. It has to do purely with supply vs. demand and pricing a product in a market that is attractive to said market.

I will too have to disagree on this point. I was in line for a Sig Model S having put my deposit down about a year before production began. As time went on, we started to learn what US pricing would be and it was easy to calculate what *approximately* that would be in Canadian dollars. Even some of the Canadian Tesla folks were informally throwing around these "best guesses". Then it was announced that the car would not be NAFTA eligible due to the Japanese cells in the battery pack and the Canadian price took a jump. I was already on the wrong side of the line for what I thought I should be paying for the car, and had to back out of line and wait for an early Production model to save that additional cost.

Here's another interesting tidbit: I attended a Tesla presentation where staff touted the fact that the new Gigafactory was going to keep the Model 3 pricing down by lower the cost of battery production and (specifically mentioned) eliminating the import duty issue. I asked if the same factors would lower the cost of Model S (once batteries start coming from Nevada) and after much humming and hawing was told no, it wouldn't. Sounds like Tesla is going to pocket the 6.1% windfall.

So sure, supply and demand economics may mean they *can* get away with this...but it may be only until Model 3 is widely available. I think a lot of folks went way over their normal budgets to get into a Model S mainly because it was about the only option for a decent long-range EV at the time. Model 3 may eat into quite a bit of Model S sales and this will certainly reduce the "demand" side of the equation. Tesla will either have to moderate S pricing or significantly upgrade the car (particularly the interior) to more closely match its price competitors.

 

[phigment]

Here's another interesting tidbit: I attended a Tesla presentation where staff touted the fact that the new Gigafactory was going to keep the Model 3 pricing down by lower the cost of battery production and (specifically mentioned) eliminating the import duty issue. I asked if the same factors would lower the cost of Model S (once batteries start coming from Nevada) and after much humming and hawing was told no, it wouldn't. Sounds like Tesla is going to pocket the 6.1% windfall.

You forget that the Model S is still using 18650. I'm guessing that these are still produced on the Japanese production lines. Thus they still aren't eligible for NAFTA. Tesla won't be pocketing this 6.1%.

 

[mknox]

You forget that the Model S is still using 18650. I'm guessing that these are still produced on the Japanese production lines. Thus they still aren't eligible for NAFTA. Tesla won't be pocketing this 6.1%.

I was told by someone from Tesla (who admittedly may not have known what he was talking about) that the Gigafactory was eventually going to be producing packs for the S and X. Whether this meant 18650-format cells or re-designing the packs for the new cells he wasn't sure. But I would have to think that the whole point of Tesla building the Gigafactory at all is to eliminate that one big outsourcing issue.

 

[sandpiper]

Looks like they made a currency adjustment. The effective exchange rate on cars is now about 30%. Which makes sense considering the dollar and the 6% duty.