$35,000 Tesla Model III Is Coming In 2017

[BarkingGhostar]

finally found the article.

Tesla Remotely Removes Autopilot Features From Customer's Used Tesla Without Any Notice [Updated]

One of the less-considered side effects of car features moving from hardware to software is that important features and abilities of a car can now be removed without any actual contact with a given car. Where once de-contenting involved at least a screwdriver (or, if you were in a hurry, a...

jalopnik.com

That reminds me of when Sony retroactively removed alternative operating system support from their PS3. Many, including myself, used that feature as a major reason for buying the damn PS3 and since that retro decision by Sony I have chosen to not buy another one of their products ever again. If I bought a used Tesla, I am buying it as-is and this means all features included during the sales process. If Tesla altered the vehicle to reduce said features than I say let their be a law firm pay day in the form class action lawsuit ... UNLESS there is fine print from the original purchasing process declaring this the case.

 

[jlee]

Like I said, Model 3 smashes its closest comps in retained value on a % basis.
Now you may say apples and oranges, but Toyota SUVs and pickup trucks are also known for low depreciation. Jeep Wrangler is even better statistically, but it's a true off-roader that doesn't sell in large volume.

Anyway, my real objection isn't that Tesla doesn't have great RV; but that online Web sites claiming Model 3 has single-digit % first year depreciation are making ludicrous claims. This might have been "true" 20 months ago when virtually no used Model 3s were being resold, but fanciful as more units become available. This subject is explicitly touched in the video I linked, which is ostensibly about the excellent TCO of Model 3.

He bought a Model 3 in January 2018 for $55k and sold it this summer for $37,500. Per video, mileage was 23k and the age of the vehicle was approx. 30 months.


Agreed, the economics/TCO are very favorable for anyone considering a brand new mid-sized sedan or crossover.

You specifically said "the narrative that they have the best value retention of any vehicle sold is hyperbole," so I'm confused what your argument is.

 

[manly]

You specifically said "the narrative that they have the best value retention of any vehicle sold is hyperbole," so I'm confused what your argument is.

Closest comps and "any vehicle" are two different classes of automobiles. If Jeep Wrangler and a few Toyota light trucks have better RV than Teslas, am I right or wrong?

In my follow-up post, I specifically said I don't dispute Tesla Model 3 has industry-leading depreciation. What I dispute are false claims that it's in the single digits in year 1. So sorry for the initial confusion, but I've clarified what I meant.

 

[Viper GTS]

At quick inspection the cheapest non salvage titled 3 I could find on AutoTrader right now is this one @ $34,116:

Used 2019 Tesla Model 3 for sale in HAZELWOOD, MO 63042: Sedan Details - 569401997 - Autotrader

That's this car, essentially:

$35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now | Tesla

Somebody went out of their way to get the cheapest 3 possible, and today with 34k miles it's worth well, basically the same. The closest thing you can buy to that today has 43 miles more rated range, a power trunk, Autopilot, and 34k fewer miles over that car. And it costs all of $37,990 for a (likely) 2021 VIN example. There's just no real incentive to buy a used 3 unless you're desperate.

You can play games with trade in vs retail pricing, price drops on some models, etc, but the value retention is absolutely stunning. This is particularly true if you are buying today. Early adopters got the worst deal as Tesla has markedly dropped prices. I'd be annoyed if I had bought my Performance back then. With the competition seemingly completely incapable of matching the overall value package even with the benefit of $7500 tax credits still being available I don't see prices dropping much if at all.

All of this is a gamble, of course, this could change tomorrow. But good luck finding a non wrecked 3 with anything close to industry standard depreciation.

Viper GTS

 

[ponyo]

Tesla 2020 4th quarter vehicle production and delivery report came out today and they produced 179,757 vehicles and delivered 180,570 in the 4th quarter. For the year, Tesla produced 509,737 vehicles and delivered 499,550 vehicles. So they missed their own 500,000 vehicles delivered target by 450 vehicles. But regardless, Tesla delivered 36% more vehicles in 2020 than last year despite global pandemic and factory shutdowns in both Fremont and Shanghai. What a remarkable year for Tesla!

https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-q4-2020-vehicle-production-deliveries

Congrats to everyone at Tesla for job well done! You guys accomplished what you set out to do 7 years ago in 2013. You said you would produce and deliver 500,000 in 2020. Here's Tesla's plan in 2013.

https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/gigafactory.pdf

This is investor forward looking statement page Tesla made in 2013 before they even built their first Gigafactory in Nevada or even selected Nevada as the final site for their first Gigafactory. This tells you everything you need to know about the vision of Tesla and their wild ambitions. These guys are not simple dreamers and hacks. They know what they want and they have a plan.

I remember people laughing and saying Tesla delivering 500k vehicles in 2020 was pipe dream and lunatic crazy. People were downright hostile and angry and called me crazy for believing such number was possible. Oh, the hate, name calling, and the pushback I got for even mentioning the possibility of 500k units in 2020 and believing Tesla could do it. Where are all the fucking skeptics who said this was utterly impossible? Well, they all jumped ship and moved the goal post once again. Now they're all laughing and saying it's utterly impossible Tesla will deliver 20 million vehicles in 2030. Well maybe that's true and Tesla will fail. But you want to see companies have stretched and seemingly impossible longterm goal like this. So many people are short sighted and lack any longterm thinking and vision. Tesla has already started laying down the groundwork to tackle their new goal. We'll see in 10 years how close they get. But I would never bet against Elon Musk and Tesla not achieving and reaching their goal.

 

[heymrdj]

They did fantastic given then odds. Some of the groups are complaining about needing repairs by mobile service scheduled after the delivery of these final units, but eh that’s bound to happen when you’re pushing that fast and it’s on the end buyer to reject the unit if the build is bad enough.

They are profitable several quarters in a row now, got the factories under construction. They are also 4 years late with a 35,000$ or less unit and did not hit their delivery goals this year. It’ll be interesting to see if they can hit the goals this new year, especially the 35K model as that will be a 5 year failed promise there if they keep pushing it out. They have until September 2023 to make a 25K Tesla so I would expect that they don’t wait another year to make a 35K model.

 

[manly]

Well done, Tesla.

How about some truth in reporting? Elon actually projected 500k sales in 2018, and 1M in 2020. But I suppose a business plan from 2013 fits a certain narrative better.

Tesla puts pedal to the metal, 500,000 cars planned in 2018

Tesla Motors Inc <TSLA.O> said it was stepping up production plans for its upcoming Model 3 mass-market sedan and would build a total of 500,000 all-electric vehicles in 2018, two years ahead of schedule, but warned that spending will ramp up in tandem.

www.reuters.com

Elon Musk Asks Employees To Go All Out To Hit 500,000 Deliveries In 2020

After predicting 500,000 cars for 2018 and 1 million for 2020 in 2016, Elon Musk asks employees to go all out to reach 500,000 units in 2020.

insideevs.com

 

[ponyo]

Well done, Tesla.

How about some truth in reporting? Elon actually projected 500k sales in 2018, and 1M in 2020. But I suppose a business plan from 2013 fits a certain narrative better.

Tesla puts pedal to the metal, 500,000 cars planned in 2018

Tesla Motors Inc <TSLA.O> said it was stepping up production plans for its upcoming Model 3 mass-market sedan and would build a total of 500,000 all-electric vehicles in 2018, two years ahead of schedule, but warned that spending will ramp up in tandem.

www.reuters.com

Elon Musk Asks Employees To Go All Out To Hit 500,000 Deliveries In 2020

After predicting 500,000 cars for 2018 and 1 million for 2020 in 2016, Elon Musk asks employees to go all out to reach 500,000 units in 2020.

insideevs.com

Elon did say 500k in 2018 and 1M in 2020 during earnings conference call I think in 2016. Elon got way overly excited because of the huge Model 3 preorders that were coming in and thought his vision of alien dreadnought factory would work to help achieve that. It turned out the robot machines were terrible and Tesla ran into all kind of trouble getting it work right at the factory before finally admitting failure and scrapping the idea of full automation. That mess episode caused Elon to sleep on the factory floor leading to all his stress and crazy tweeting and outbursts. So they went back to their original 500k by 2020 goal. So I don't look at 1M as the true goal of 2020. 500k was the goal before they even built the Nevada Gigafactory.

The thing with Elon is that he may be little too ambitious with his timelines and deliver little late, but he pretty much always delivers. That's the biggest takeaway and why I don't understand people who try to bet against him. Over the past year or so, I've notice a change in Elon and he's become slightly more conservative with his public goals and target. I think the private internal company goals are still super high but the public ones are notch down. So that's helping Tesla underpromise and overdeliver to some extent. So Elon is learning to play the Wall St expectations game little better.

 

[Kaido]

Elon did say 500k in 2018 and 1M in 2020 during earnings conference call I think in 2016. Elon got way overly excited because of the huge Model 3 preorders that were coming in and thought his vision of alien dreadnought factory would work to help achieve that. It turned out the robot machines were terrible and Tesla ran into all kind of trouble getting it work right at the factory before finally admitting failure and scrapping the idea of full automation. That mess episode caused Elon to sleep on the factory floor leading to all his stress and crazy tweeting and outbursts. So they went back to their original 500k by 2020 goal. So I don't look at 1M as the true goal of 2020. 500k was the goal before they even built the Nevada Gigafactory.

The thing with Elon is that he may be little too ambitious with his timelines and deliver little late, but he pretty much always delivers. That's the biggest takeaway and why I don't understand people who try to bet against him. Over the past year or so, I've notice a change in Elon and he's become slightly more conservative with his public goals and target. I think the private internal company goals are still super high but the public ones are notch down. So that's helping Tesla underpromise and overdeliver to some extent. So Elon is learning to play the Wall St expectations game little better.

You may enjoy listening to Scott Adam's audiobooks, especially "Win Bigly". Politics aside, he latched onto Trump as having master persuader talents, and explains the mechanics of how people like that operate. One of the topics he talks about is living in the 2D world (facts & logic) vs. the 3D world (persuasion that utilizes human psychology to "win" in terms of changing people's minds & make progress). In the 3D world, a lot of master persuaders use something called "directional truth", with details that are subject to change over time, particularly on complex outcomes like border security or shipping hi-tech cars, while still arriving where they wanted to be or get the resulted they intended to get. Musk is in that group - he sets big directional targets & adjusts the details along the way. The net result is that he shipped half a million self-driving electric cars in 2020 & is the second-richest man in the world, clicking in at a solid $161 billion-dollar net worth.

The downside is that it makes those types of master persuader people look like lairs & as overly-optimistic, despite arriving to an eventual successful place, if not quite on the predicted target, which tends to bring out the Internet traders, trolls, stock shorters, etc. The key takeaway from a financial standpoint is that those people are usually pretty good to invest in, whether it was when Steve Jobs made his comeback at Apple or Elon Musk as he's built up his car & spaceship company. Anyway, really great audiobooks to listen to. You have a pretty open mind, so I think you'd really enjoy hearing what Scott Adams has to say, especially if you can put any related heated political views on the backburner. I consider his work to be just brilliant, up there with GTD by David Allen, Atomic Habits, Grit, etc. I'd suggest listening to them in this order:

1. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
2. Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America
3. Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter Paperback (this one actually came out before Loserthink, but I tell people to get the foundation of the How to fail & Loserthink in first)

All three of those, especially the "filters" analogy in Win Bigly, has really changed my view about how human beings work & why we're so subject to persuasion vs. facts & logic, which explains why certain people with big personalities can do things like jump into politics with no political background or shake up the entire entrenched auto industry or change the nature of smartphones & tablets across the world!

 

[manly]

They did fantastic given then odds. Some of the groups are complaining about needing repairs by mobile service scheduled after the delivery of these final units, but eh that’s bound to happen when you’re pushing that fast and it’s on the end buyer to reject the unit if the build is bad enough.

They are profitable several quarters in a row now, got the factories under construction. They are also 4 years late with a 35,000$ or less unit and did not hit their delivery goals this year. It’ll be interesting to see if they can hit the goals this new year, especially the 35K model as that will be a 5 year failed promise there if they keep pushing it out. They have until September 2023 to make a 25K Tesla so I would expect that they don’t wait another year to make a 35K model.

See the previous page in this thread. The $35k Tesla DID exist, but they shit-canned it two months back.

If and when Tesla decides to release a compact model for cheaper than Model 3, I'd bet money it'll cost... $29,500 stripped down.

 

[heymrdj]

See the previous page in this thread. The $35k Tesla DID exist, but they shit-canned it two months back.

If and when Tesla decides to release a compact model for cheaper than Model 3, I'd bet money it'll cost... $29,500 stripped down.

Technically it was available off the menu in a way, but you couldn’t just order it off the website. Given Tesla’s desire to be a direct order business, I’d say the special stripper model not being offered outright on the configuration webpage as the first Model 3 people see, I’d say they didn’t want it well known that it was available. And, well like you said they shit-canned it which means they could never really afford it to begin with. Rather than continue to drive prices down, Tesla only raised the cost of entry this year.

 

[rstrohkirch]

I'd also agree that using the 35K reference number for deciding what a compact from them would cost isn't a good idea. They want 38K for a base Model 3. A compact in their line up would probably come in at 31-32k assuming marginal differences in interior quality. But what they would probably do is follow the trend that other automakers prefer in that lower end models have very aggressive MSRP. But they rip out more standard features from them and put them into options which drives up the actual cost of the car compared to higher tier models.

So I definitely feel they could pull the same gimmick and offer something like a 29.999 Model 2 or whatever. It would be missing more standard features and have lower interior quality but you'd get into a Tesla if that's what you wanted. Though Tesla tends to announce their vehicles a couple years before production and they haven't said anything about a cheap car yet. Which means you won't see anything like that from them until at least 2024+.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

We're getting closer, but still a ways off. If I remember right, the current Model 3 is like $80 per KwH for the big battery. So we're around $6,000 in cost of materials for the battery (not including assembly, testing, installation, etc.

In 2018, it was determined that it costs around $18,000 in base materials and $10,000 in labor to build a Model 3: https://electrek.co/2018/05/31/tesla-model-3-teardow-material-production-cost/

Cheaper batteries are key. Right now, at $28,000 cost per car, there's just not enough profit to make a $30,000 Tesla. Likewise, when people are thinking about a "Model 2" for instance, it may be going up against a Ford Focus, Subaru Impreza, Honda Civic, etc. A fully appointed Impreza for instance is 30K. Given the average new car price is $37,000, if Tesla could come out with a "Model 2" sized car with good range (I'd say at least 250 miles to account for winter whither), and Full Autopilot for 35K, there could be takers. But you might need to give it a 2 inch lift with a bubble body and call it the Model Yx or something to capture American interest.

 

[JEDI]

NIO Vs. Tesla: Which Is The Better Investment Today (NYSE:NIO)

Since my late November article titled Chinese EVs Are Making Tesla Look Cheap, Tesla has appreciated 50.0 percent while NIO rose 14.2 percent.

seekingalpha.com

One of NIO's key selling points is its Battery as a Service (BaaS) concept, where customers own the car but not the batteries, which are paid via subscription basis. This allows the company to market the electric vehicles at a lower upfront cost and thereby improving the affordability.

An additional benefit of such an arrangement is that NIO could eventually earn more from a customer over the lifespan of the car sold as the full subscription fees collected exceeds what the company would have collected if it sold the battery upfront.


like cable internet companies RENTING their routers at $15/month. ($10/month + $5 month insurance/come to house free if any technical problems)
thats an additional $360 for a 2yr contract.

my mom had that.
buying the router outright was only $200!
so after the 2yr contract was up, i had her buy the router.

5yrs later, still the same router.
if i didnt push her to buy it, she'd still be paying to rent it.
ugg...

so i bet NIO's subscription will makes LOTS of profit on non-tech savy customers that FAR exceeds the cost of selling the battery outright.

 

[KentState]

The vast majority of people buying a car will take out a loan and make payments for 3-6 years. How does lowering the upfront cost help when you are paying both a loan and a subscription fee at the same time?

 

[rstrohkirch]

The vast majority of people buying a car will take out a loan and make payments for 3-6 years. How does lowering the upfront cost help when you are paying both a loan and a subscription fee at the same time?

Their current advertised rates are 6 to 7 years to break even on the MSRP difference. Which means the combined payment will still be lower for nearly everyone at which point then it flips and goes the other direction if you retain the vehicle.

But at the same time they are designing these to be modular and allow upgrades. So even if you're on a service or you bought it outright you can upgrade your battery. It's also implied that you can upgrade it in the future as well to get more range as tech improves.

 

[repoman0]

Tesla's "Full Self Driving" Beta Is Just Laughably Bad and Potentially Dangerous

If you think we're anywhere near fully autonomous cars, this video might convince you otherwise.

www.roadandtrack.com

How totally surprising, said no one ever (except the fanboys)

 

[K1052]

welp

 

[ultimatebob]

Tesla's "Full Self Driving" Beta Is Just Laughably Bad and Potentially Dangerous

If you think we're anywhere near fully autonomous cars, this video might convince you otherwise.

www.roadandtrack.com

How totally surprising, said no one ever (except the fanboys)

Yeah, here's a direct link to the video:

At least it looks like it's programmed not to kill any pedestrians

 

[Kaido]

Yeah, here's a direct link to the video:

At least it looks like it's programmed not to kill any pedestrians

Anxiety-Inducing Drone Footage Of Tesla FSD Beta Unprotected Lefts

This is perhaps the best example we've seen revealing the inconsistencies of Tesla's FSD Beta. It does a nice job at times, but you must be on your A-game.

insideevs.com

 

[ondma]

Anxiety-Inducing Drone Footage Of Tesla FSD Beta Unprotected Lefts

This is perhaps the best example we've seen revealing the inconsistencies of Tesla's FSD Beta. It does a nice job at times, but you must be on your A-game.

insideevs.com

And that looks like daytime in nice weather. I can only imagine what it would be like in a snowstorm or heavy rain when the lane markers are obscured. Could be wrong of course, but I think we are a long, long ways away from full self driving, except maybe in a few limited areas.

 

[Commodus]

And that looks like daytime in nice weather. I can only imagine what it would be like in a snowstorm or heavy rain when the lane markers are obscured. Could be wrong of course, but I think we are a long, long ways away from full self driving, except maybe in a few limited areas.

More specifically, Tesla's system is a long way away. Not that Waymo is about to solve everything, but its tech is decidedly more sophisticated.

I honestly wonder why Tesla thinks it can do fully autonomous driving with cameras alone. How would it handle snow when it might not even see the lanes, let alone the half-buried car on the shoulder. I could see Tesla having to issue credits if and when it turns out that existing FSD packages aren't enough for true autonomy.

 

[zinfamous]

Yeah, here's a direct link to the video:

At least it looks like it's programmed not to kill any pedestrians

apparently it's called a "go pedal" when you're in a Tesla?

 

[ultimatebob]

apparently it's called a "go pedal" when you're in a Tesla?

Well... accelerator takes too long to say and "gas pedal" is passe now

 

[ponyo]

People are so short sighted and dumb. That video was great! It showed how close we are to having real FSD. Where you see failures, I see clear path to solutions and success. We're on the brink and so close. I can taste it.