A few selected posts on batteries:
MR is an underpopulated LR. No reason SR can't be an underpopulated SR+.
I'm betting neither, and here's my bet. This is speculation.
1 - The new Grohmann pack machine is working.
2 - It can be programmed to put any number of "blanks" into the same pack case, thus giving packs with fewer cells in a very customizable fashion.
My guess is the 220 is a depopulated 240. Tesla can not afford to give away 2170 cells, esp. when there is no upgrade available to pay for the extra cost of cells.
If it were depopulated, wouldn't the weight be different? The MR is lighter than the LR RWD.
Granted, there's other reasons to be suspicious of the weight numbers on Tesla's website - the SR+ having 12-way power seats should make it heavier than the SR, and the LR RWD is listed as the same as the LR AWD (yeah, no) - but right now, they're claimed as identical.
On the sales model:
Musk memo to employees leaked, says 82% of customers bought without a test drive and 78% bought online.
Elon Musk just sent this memo to employees about the cheaper Model 3 and store closures
Doesn't seem worth it having stores with *those* percentages. Expanding the return period to 7 days / 1000 miles will definitely help sway some, and there will still be some galleries for people to check the cars out (probably in the biggest cities, maybe 1 each in NY, Chicago, LA).
Wrt the shops. Word of mouth clearly is the best sales tactic ever for Tesla. I do not know one person who drove the car without immediately wanting to own one. In areas with dense Tesla ownership (California, Norway, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, ...) word of mouth is enough to generate the sales leads. If you are a professional in those countries, you know someone who will be a brand advocate period. In many other countries I am not so convinced this is already the case. Just over the border of the Netherlands in Belgium I regularly meet people who fall straight into the target consumer group but who have no experience at all with Tesla and, crucially, don't know anyone who'd demonstrate the car to them. I am not convinced that in those circumstances word of mouth is enough to grow sales as rapidly as Tesla's ambitions, not because of the car, but because of lack of mouths.
So, there's always things like Tesla's existing
test drive events (which have been S/X-only so far, as far as I'm aware) for getting the cars in front of people in areas that haven't reached critical mass yet. Additionally, there's always things like auto shows (including the lower-tier local ones that are usually the domain of dealers), if you want to get butts in seats without the capital and operational expenses of a full showroom - this kind of thing could actually make auto shows relevant once more (even the big international shows are decreasingly relevant).
I do also suspect that
right now, Tesla probably doesn't need to worry as much about that - they probably have enough demand backlog for a while that they can run on sight-unseen sales and word-of-mouth sales. However, it wouldn't be a bad idea for them to make sure cars are in front of people in less Tesla-friendly markets, where word-of-mouth doesn't have critical mass, specifically to help that critical mass occur earlier and keep the order flow stabilized.
Fred...
To be honest, I can’t stand these constant price changes. It’s happening almost every month and it is getting so complicated to navigate.
Never mind that that's what conventional automakers do (adjusting prices to react to production costs, supply, and demand), they just don't tell you that they do it (or they do, but it's couched in rebate and financing deal language off of the base price), and their dealers can lie and not pass the savings on.
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