Some straight talking common sense thoughts on the price discussion, I can't say I disagree with anything he said. The most interesting TLDR is that EVM predicted his SR+ would be worth about £28k after 3 years, that's exactly what its now worth on a private sale after 3 years.
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[UK] Price cuts
- Thread starter APTY
- Start date
Decided I'm going to hold off on my new order of a MYP performance until the HW4/new radar stuff is clarified in the next few weeks. Hopefully don't miss the price drop but plan to keep this car for 10 years or so and so not keen on missing out on anything major like this for FSD in the future.
Feel like I've just delayed Christmas Day for a month which sucks!
Feel like I've just delayed Christmas Day for a month which sucks!
Drew57
Active ember
The big unknown is whether FSD for the UK will receive dedicated attention or be of value given our historically complex road network compared to the USA etc.
You may also find that owning the Performance version of any Tesla is so enjoyable that you won't actually want to be driven in a way that successfully replicates a nervous & cautious learner driver.
It's a great point, I love driving and have had a number of higher powered BMW's and maybe losing sight of that. It's a shame I could only test drive the RWD as a LR or P drive would have probably sealed the deal there and then.
This is the first time I've looked at Teslas and its hard to not get caught up in the whole latest and greatest game...I imagine you could go through life never actually buying one whilst waiting for one more release....
Or place the order but say you can't take a delivery until later in the year.
Lots of people seems to be holding off for the new batteries too on the Y but from reports I've seen, they're not living up to the promises yet. It could be another year or 2 before that happens I think.
Slightly off topic, but I do love driving the M3 - it really is a fun car to drive with a great driving position, handling and visibility... and I came from a M2 (BMW)...
So, stop worrying about the price (this car is not an investment, get an old Porsche if you need that) and enjoy the ownership.
So, stop worrying about the price (this car is not an investment, get an old Porsche if you need that) and enjoy the ownership.
Why would people not worry about the price? I have a 19 transit van and a 21 Toyota both of which have lost less than 10% since I've owned them. If you're not worried about money I'd happy take some of yours
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LiamPope
Member
I agree, in so far as Elon's antics were not a factor at all in me buying my M3 and I don't give a *sugar* what others might think of me owning one, but just playing devil's advocate - isn't that sorta missing the point that the CEO of MG isn't a highly controversial highly public figure? So it's not really comparable, at least in the eyes of some. Nobody knows anything about the CEO of MG so of course it wont factor into their buying decisions, or brand image in general, but not so with Elon and Tesla. To many the brand image is closely coupled with the persona and behavior of Musk.
So while you and me might not give a monkeys what he does or says, many people will, and many will see Tesla ownership as some sort of support of or agreement with Musk himself. I can understand why that could easily be a would buy to won't buy for some. Think he should have kept his opinion to himself though, and would have told him so myself!
Haha, that's good. I don't worry about depreciation of a vehicle, it will happen.Why would people not worry about the price? I have a 19 transit van and a 21 Toyota both of which have lost less than 10% since I've owned them. If you're not worried about money I'd happy take some of yours
You won't get my money
I’m pretty sure SAIC Motor Corporation Limited is 100% Chinese state owned.
I’m also not defending Musk, not a fan but there is a certain irony of an MG owner shunning Tesla because of Musk when they literally drive a car from a manufacturer owned by the Chinese state.
You can only get so much more controversial for a CEO than the CCP.
It’s a shame because the MG is actually a good car (as is the Tesla…).
I’m also not defending Musk, not a fan but there is a certain irony of an MG owner shunning Tesla because of Musk when they literally drive a car from a manufacturer owned by the Chinese state.
You can only get so much more controversial for a CEO than the CCP.
It’s a shame because the MG is actually a good car (as is the Tesla…).
A key difference is that very few CEOs shoot their mouth off in the way Musk does. The guy has verbal diarrhoea, and much of what he says is complete crap. Just look at his ridiculously inaccurate predictions about FSD and robo taxis over the years. He needs to learn to zip it up.
It’ll be interesting to see the result of the current trial in San Francisco where Musk is accused of falsely claiming he had secured funding to take Tesla private.
And yes, the MG is an excellent car. Quieter and more refined than my M3 at motorway speed.
Tesla obviously have a demand problem. The price cuts will generate short term sales and sort that problem. A large part of those sales will be people bringing forward purchases to take advantage of the new prices. That will generate an even bigger demand problem when those sales dry up. So, expect more price cuts.
And when Germany starts to produce at its planned rate, the gap between supply and demand widens further.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
To me a demand problem is "Always been selling X and now got < X customers", whereas Tesla increased production by 40% last year, and will do similar this year. Need to create a market for that additional production i.e. a supply problem.
Meantime to cool demand every time the wait time started to grow Tesla had raised prices to the point where they had margins their competitors were very envious of. So I don't think its even a problem, just pushing prices back to where they were to keep the wait at the desired limit. I don't think its a short term solution (bringing sales forward without any further sales) as the old maxim "Halve the price, sell to 20x as many customers" applies ...
If we don’t like “demand problem” we could call it an “over supply problem”. It amounts to the same thing, they’re making more than they are selling, even if both those numbers are larger than last year.
I think the order book is the interesting trend, people have been fixated on deliveries (but calling them sales) which has pretty much matched production while there’s been a backlog, and that’s no surprise really. Q4 started to see the end of that. Various people have tried to calculate the backlog which appears to have reduced quite a lot, just look at lead times today compared to a year ago, and therefore taking into account deliveries, the orders, and they’re much lower than the 2022 “sales” figures. Couple that with they made more than they delivered in 2022. You basically get net new orders < deliveries < production last year. That needs to be dealt with, luckily they have a big gross margin to help, and that needs to switch more people out of ICE and/or away from competitive EVs than the trend, which is already pretty steep
I think the order book is the interesting trend, people have been fixated on deliveries (but calling them sales) which has pretty much matched production while there’s been a backlog, and that’s no surprise really. Q4 started to see the end of that. Various people have tried to calculate the backlog which appears to have reduced quite a lot, just look at lead times today compared to a year ago, and therefore taking into account deliveries, the orders, and they’re much lower than the 2022 “sales” figures. Couple that with they made more than they delivered in 2022. You basically get net new orders < deliveries < production last year. That needs to be dealt with, luckily they have a big gross margin to help, and that needs to switch more people out of ICE and/or away from competitive EVs than the trend, which is already pretty steep
Jason71
Well-Known Member
Most manufactures would love to have the demand problem Tesla have. What I mean is the imbalance that Tesla have is not caused by a drop off in demand for their product. Its because they have been too successful in increasing supply volume in a market where everyone else is struggling.
Surely this was always their plan? ramp up volume. Cut costs on an economy of scale basis. Keep doing that and you are always going to have to cut prices sooner or later. And doing so was also Musks stated goal.
So it seems to me this is entirely on plan the problem is they took the opportunity to raise prices and profiteer last year when supply was constraint so now the inevitable price cuts look enormous and are a huge PR own goal. This is what happens when the entirety of your PR dept. is Elon Musks Twitter account.
I remember playing a charity golf day and I was paired up with a chap who was sales manager for a local bakery company. Not fresh bakery but more those long life buns/cakes you see in petrol stations. I said to him 'yeah, I've bought your products before'. I asked him about a competitor product that sat alongside them and said they were always doing 50% extra free packs, or 2 for the price of 1 deals which made them better value.
He said two things to me. He said 1st thing, our product is better quality, but the second point was an interesting one. He said they do far too many promotions.
Expanding on that further, he said that the competitor has trained their customer base to expect promotions in such a way that it has now become impossible for them to sell the product without a promotion. He said that the frequency of the promotions has increased so much in the space of a year that the products became almost permanently on promotion. He also mentioned that he expected the business to go bust as a result. True enough, you don't see those cakes for sale anymore, the company has went bust. They accidently trained the customer base to only buy the product when it was on promotion, as the frequency of the promotions was simply too much.
Now I'm not saying the applies to Tesla but there is some learnings to be had from a story like this. If Tesla do more promotions at end of quarter, eg, cheaper deals from inventory or maybe free supercharger miles, or even both. Its amazing how quickly customers will respond to that. 2 quarters in a row of doing that would be the start of a pattern, and that would be a very unhealthy pattern to get into.
I'm not saying it would put Tesla out of business like the cake company, as Tesla has plenty of margin. But if you excuse the pun here, if you bake in a pattern of price cuts/promotions at end of quarter, then customers will respond to that new pattern very very quickly.
Ever insightful thinking.
With Tesla, though, they do "end of quarter sales" - but now reduce prices even further just a few weeks later. So they are beginning to train potential customers to ignore the end of quarter incentives, which in turn means they miss the sales target for the quarter, making the price reduction in the next quarter even steeper to claw back lost volume.
DFS being the best example I could think of to illustrate how some companies / industries get stuck in the hole of offering permanent incentives so you never truly know the true value of a product.
