$35,000 Tesla Model III Is Coming In 2017

[rstrohkirch]

Going to agree. Car makers do that ALL the time even for big ticket items like engines and transmissions. It takes them losing in court to actually issue a recall. If you're under warranty no problem. If you're not then tough shit.

 

[Aikouka]

You're right that once the warranty is up, you're SOL. Short of a recall, the manufacturer can offer an ELW (extended limited warranty).

Yeah, that was the point that I wanted to emphasize. Since this isn't an issue with standard wear, but rather a design that fails to handle the elements, there's no telling when it may occur.

 

[ultimatebob]

I found this story interesting...

Elon Musk says Tesla was 'about a month' from bankruptcy during Model 3 ramp

Musk has often spoken about what he calls the "production and logistics hell" of taking a new electric vehicle, the Model 3, into high-volume manufacturing.

www.cnbc.com

I remember Ponyo laughing at me when I was warning that Tesla might go belly up in 2018. It seems that my fears were justified!

 

[ponyo]

I found this story interesting...

Elon Musk says Tesla was 'about a month' from bankruptcy during Model 3 ramp

Musk has often spoken about what he calls the "production and logistics hell" of taking a new electric vehicle, the Model 3, into high-volume manufacturing.

www.cnbc.com

I remember Ponyo laughing at me when I was warning that Tesla might go belly up in 2018. It seems that my fears were justified!

Tesla was in trouble in Q1 of 2019. They had to pay about billion in debt and was down to about $2 billion in operating cash. That's when Tesla did the equity raise of about $2 billion with stock and convertible bonds even though the stock price was depressed at around $240 presplit. They really needed the money or risk going bankrupt. But you can't actually go bankrupt if you can raise money from the capital market. And even though Elon said Tesla could've gone bankrupt, they really couldn't as long as Elon and Tesla could raise more money. The capital market was never closed to Tesla. Elon just didn't want to dilute his share of the company so he put it off until it was absolutely necessary. So while it's true Tesla could've gone bankrupt, the actual risk was low. It's why I went all in Tesla when it dropped below $200 presplit because I knew the actual risk was low and the upside was vast. I said over and over that Tesla was the most undervalued company on the entire stock market back then and it turned out I was pretty much correct.

EDIT: Also always read anything by Lora Kolodny with grain of salt. She's on Jim Chanos payroll and part of the TSLAQ morons. One of the sweetest part about Tesla's huge stock price rise is seeing dishonest and vile shorts like Chanos and TSLAQ get burned and lose their money. TSLAQ morons lost billions on their TSLA short, and I'm happy to have taken millions from them.

 

[zinfamous]

I was browsing used Model 3 for sale on Tesla website and every used car had Full Self Driving (FSD) and Acceleration Boost option enabled if applicable. If you're private seller, how do you compete with that? It doesn't cost Tesla anything to enable FSD and Acceleration Boost on their cars and both serve as incredible demand levers to buy used cars direct from Tesla.

I guess as a buyer, you hope it doesn't get removed by Tesla when the ownership turns over, and they see that you didn't pay for those features. You know, because it's DLC.

 

[ponyo]

@ultimatebob , the closest Tesla came to bankruptcy was on Christmas Eve, 2008. That was before Tesla became public company and at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. GM and Chrysler were going bankrupt and no one believed in electric vehicles so you can imagine how hard it was for Tesla to raise new money. But at the very last hour that day, Elon helped Tesla secure some additional funding. So Tesla avoided bankruptcy by 1 hour. Elon put all his remaining PayPal money to save Tesla from bankruptcy. He didn't have a home or money so he slept at friends houses and couches.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1323637665829396480

It's remarkable story and I first read about the story in Ashlee Vance biography of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.
https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Sp...swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1604451145&sr=8-3

That book was fascinating and gave me great insight into who Elon Musk was. After reading that book, I knew I had to invest in Tesla because of Elon Musk. So I searched Youtube and watch all the interviews with Elon Musk I could find at the time. Watching those interviews confirmed what I learned in the book and gave me confidence Elon Musk was genuine and the real deal. I never came across someone who was willing to risk everything to go after his dream like him when he already had so much. So many CEOs are all about trying to take and steal everything from their companies to enrich themselves rather than chase their dream. And because Elon had all his net worth in Tesla and SpaceX, I was comfortable putting my entire net worth into Tesla as well. I figured Elon had way more to lose than me, and I loved that he was all in too.

Everything has so far worked out well for Elon and me. I see great things for Tesla this decade and next. Tesla is going to rule the world and become the world's most valuable company in the next 20 years IMO.

 

[manly]

I found this story interesting...

Elon Musk says Tesla was 'about a month' from bankruptcy during Model 3 ramp

Musk has often spoken about what he calls the "production and logistics hell" of taking a new electric vehicle, the Model 3, into high-volume manufacturing.

www.cnbc.com

I remember Ponyo laughing at me when I was warning that Tesla might go belly up in 2018. It seems that my fears were justified!

This is not news, he's been saying that for well over a year. It's probably true (remember, this was during production hell as his robots were failing, and dude was literally sleeping inside the factory) or it could be typical Elon reality-distortion-field, who knows.

 

[Aikouka]

So, in tune with taking way too long to look into Tesla charging/USB products, I looked into the Jeda and TAPTES wireless charging pads for the Model 3.

In the Box

TAPTES:

• Wireless Charging Pad
• 2x Short USB A to USB Micro
• 2x USB A to USB A Y-Connector.

Jeda:

• Wireless Charging Pad
• 2x Short USB a to USB Micro
• Cable Spacer (This was provided for free by Jeda, but it's technically separate product.)

Installation

Both products pretty much work the same way. They replace the rubber-like pad where your phone would normally lie when connected via a direct charging cable (i.e. the cables that came with the car). Both pads have a raised area on the back that have two USB micro connectors, which are used with the two short cables that come with each. One thing to be careful about is how you route the cables through the hole to go down into the cubby. It's very easy for the cables to get wrapped around and go through the hole on the opposite side, which will cause the wireless pad to not install; this applies to both units.

When I was testing this out, I tested it with the TAPTES USB hub installed to see how it worked in a combined environment. To be clear, I did not test either with the Jeda USB hub due to the issues that I saw during testing (i.e. most of the USB ports didn't work). As an aside, this illuminated two issues with the TAPTES USB hub that I didn't see before.

1. The plastic piece that has the pins in the external USB ports are not very sturdy, and are prone to bending a bit. I kept wondering why I had a hard time pushing in my cables, and it turns out that the plastic piece was physically bent downward. Once I repositioned these, I was able to plug the cables in just fine.
2. When I would plug in both USB cables, I noticed that my Samsung portable SSD seemed to lose power for a couple seconds. I'm not sure if this is due to some weird power draw when plugged in or not. I may try this again with separate USB drives to see what happens. This is especially important given that I'm thinking of switching to using a separate USB thumb drive for music and just using the Samsung drive for camera footage. (I've also considered giving TeslaUSB a shot again.)

Usage

Both units contain three charging coils, which are positioned on the left, right, and bottom center. My biggest qualm with both units concerns the last one, which I was really hoping would be positioned well enough to serve as a charging point for my AirPods 2. Unfortunately, neither unit will charge the AirPods 2 when resting against the bottom. I might see if I can devise a 3D printed offset that is able to avoid butting up against a phone in the left or right position, but provides just enough height to hit the charging coil and also enough curvature to keep the case from moving during normal driving.

In regard to phones, I think the TAPTES came out as a clear winner. The biggest problem with the Jeda pad is that the right charging coil had a very difficult time working with my fairly thin Spigen case on my iPhone 11 Pro Max. To ensure that it was a case problem, I removed the phone from the case, and I had no issue using any of the charging coils on the Jeda pad. I also held the AirPods 2 case over the little lightning symbols to check, and it worked with all charging coils.

Now, the TAPTES unit does have one limitation in that it has a lip on the bottom where the Jeda unit does not. The Cable Spacer that I mentioned above is designed to allow you to still provide plug support even when using the wireless charging pad. Although, I have not had a chance to try it out just yet, but this might be an important feature if there are other devices that you want to charge (e.g. AirPods).

 

[darkswordsman17]

I guess as a buyer, you hope it doesn't get removed by Tesla when the ownership turns over, and they see that you didn't pay for those features. You know, because it's DLC.

Didn't they do that to people when they'd sold it privately? Meaning that's actually another reason to buy direct.

 

[darkswordsman17]

So, in tune with taking way too long to look into Tesla charging/USB products, I looked into the Jeda and TAPTES wireless charging pads for the Model 3.

In the Box

TAPTES:

• Wireless Charging Pad
• 2x Short USB A to USB Micro
• 2x USB A to USB A Y-Connector.

Jeda:

• Wireless Charging Pad
• 2x Short USB a to USB Micro
• Cable Spacer (This was provided for free by Jeda, but it's technically separate product.)

Installation

Both products pretty much work the same way. They replace the rubber-like pad where your phone would normally lie when connected via a direct charging cable (i.e. the cables that came with the car). Both pads have a raised area on the back that have two USB micro connectors, which are used with the two short cables that come with each. One thing to be careful about is how you route the cables through the hole to go down into the cubby. It's very easy for the cables to get wrapped around and go through the hole on the opposite side, which will cause the wireless pad to not install; this applies to both units.

When I was testing this out, I tested it with the TAPTES USB hub installed to see how it worked in a combined environment. To be clear, I did not test either with the Jeda USB hub due to the issues that I saw during testing (i.e. most of the USB ports didn't work). As an aside, this illuminated two issues with the TAPTES USB hub that I didn't see before.

1. The plastic piece that has the pins in the external USB ports are not very sturdy, and are prone to bending a bit. I kept wondering why I had a hard time pushing in my cables, and it turns out that the plastic piece was physically bent downward. Once I repositioned these, I was able to plug the cables in just fine.
2. When I would plug in both USB cables, I noticed that my Samsung portable SSD seemed to lose power for a couple seconds. I'm not sure if this is due to some weird power draw when plugged in or not. I may try this again with separate USB drives to see what happens. This is especially important given that I'm thinking of switching to using a separate USB thumb drive for music and just using the Samsung drive for camera footage. (I've also considered giving TeslaUSB a shot again.)

Usage

Both units contain three charging coils, which are positioned on the left, right, and bottom center. My biggest qualm with both units concerns the last one, which I was really hoping would be positioned well enough to serve as a charging point for my AirPods 2. Unfortunately, neither unit will charge the AirPods 2 when resting against the bottom. I might see if I can devise a 3D printed offset that is able to avoid butting up against a phone in the left or right position, but provides just enough height to hit the charging coil and also enough curvature to keep the case from moving during normal driving.

In regard to phones, I think the TAPTES came out as a clear winner. The biggest problem with the Jeda pad is that the right charging coil had a very difficult time working with my fairly thin Spigen case on my iPhone 11 Pro Max. To ensure that it was a case problem, I removed the phone from the case, and I had no issue using any of the charging coils on the Jeda pad. I also held the AirPods 2 case over the little lightning symbols to check, and it worked with all charging coils.

Now, the TAPTES unit does have one limitation in that it has a lip on the bottom where the Jeda unit does not. The Cable Spacer that I mentioned above is designed to allow you to still provide plug support even when using the wireless charging pad. Although, I have not had a chance to try it out just yet, but this might be an important feature if there are other devices that you want to charge (e.g. AirPods).

At first I was like...are people really trying to charge via USB? And then I was like "hmm, wireless charging? how does that work?" then I realized you were talking about charging phones and not the car.

 

[jlee]

Didn't they do that to people when they'd sold it privately? Meaning that's actually another reason to buy direct.

All the car blogs want you to think so, but when it all came out the answer is basically no. From what I recall it happened once, where FSD was enabled on a car but was never purchased - it was sold, then it was disabled and the buyer was pissed because the car was sold by the (non-Tesla) dealer equipped with FSD, then Tesla eventually put it back.

My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think that's about it.

 

[herm0016]

All the car blogs want you to think so, but when it all came out the answer is basically no. From what I recall it happened once, where FSD was enabled on a car but was never purchased - it was sold, then it was disabled and the buyer was pissed because the car was sold by the (non-Tesla) dealer equipped with FSD, then Tesla eventually put it back.

My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think that's about it.

it was on the original window sticker, and the car was bought at auction by the dealer. it really does not matter who paid for it, or who did not. the dealer resold and the feature was removed after the new owner took delivery. it was eventually and after a lot of social media publicity, put back on the car.

argument was that if its on the original window sticker / build sheet which all cars must come with by law, that it should be permanent to the car. Tesla was arguing that its an upgrade and every owner should have to buy it separately.


it would be like buying a used hellcat at a used car dealer, and having the HP derated to the V6 car after you take delivery because you did not pay for the upgrade. who ever bought it originally for whatever price does not matter. you bought the car according to the original window sticker options, valued the car with those options and should not have them taken away, esp. after delivery.

 

[ponyo]

Options follow the car on private sales. But if the car is sold back to Tesla, then Tesla might add or delete options. But since Tesla is using software enabled options as demand lever, the odds are good that most used cars sold direct by Tesla will have all the options enabled.

The above story about that used car dealer was probably some kind of input error. Tesla haters and bears tried to make it into some big story and scandal but it was really no big deal and just free publicity and advertising for Tesla.

 

[zinfamous]

it was on the original window sticker, and the car was bought at auction by the dealer. it really does not matter who paid for it, or who did not. the dealer resold and the feature was removed after the new owner took delivery. it was eventually and after a lot of social media publicity, put back on the car.

argument was that if its on the original window sticker / build sheet which all cars must come with by law, that it should be permanent to the car. Tesla was arguing that its an upgrade and every owner should have to buy it separately.


it would be like buying a used hellcat at a used car dealer, and having the HP derated to the V6 car after you take delivery because you did not pay for the upgrade. who ever bought it originally for whatever price does not matter. you bought the car according to the original window sticker options, valued the car with those options and should not have them taken away, esp. after delivery.

yeah, pretty much this. It was an isolated event (I think I recall it being a car bought from auction: either auction > dealer > owner, or straight to owner, then the new owner discovered that it was removed after they purchased, and registered the car to their name?).

Anyway, Tesla, as you said, seems to consider these options as DLC, tied to individual owners, that they can use to keep bleeding value out of each individual vehicle, wherever it ends up on the market throughout its life--it's actually a lot like those zero credit used car scam companies that exist through charging exorbitant rates in order to force repossessions, and end up "re-selling" the same shitbox car to several dozen people over its life.

In that case, they acquiesced to standard market practices for something like this, and I hope they maintain it, but I'm more inclined to think that their updated contracts for ownership will try to lawyer themselves into making this constant re-selling of packages a standard "feature" of Tesla ownership.

 

[Viper GTS]

Until they put FSD as an account level option they probably won't get a purchase out of me. Maybe on my CT pre-order as I have locked the $7k price point but IMO the value would be turning it into an account level option. I use autopilot so much that the $7k price point is potentially worth it even at the current feature set.

But - Let me buy it once and attach it to my account. Let any of my cars check out the feature and use it. Check back in and use it on a different car should be seamless in the app. If I end up with three cars and two drivers I should never have to drive a car without it.

And most importantly - If I total a car I don't lose the value/have to repurchase at a higher price point.

Viper GTS

 

[herm0016]

Options follow the car on private sales. But if the car is sold back to Tesla, then Tesla might add or delete options. But since Tesla is using software enabled options as demand lever, the odds are good that most used cars sold direct by Tesla will have all the options enabled.

The above story about that used car dealer was probably some kind of input error. Tesla haters and bears tried to make it into some big story and scandal but it was really no big deal and just free publicity and advertising for Tesla.

always the haters trying to pull tesla down. they can never do anything bad!

i believe it was tesla who sold it at auction, with the original window sticker displayed on the car. if it was a mistake, they would have fixed it right away and it would never had made it to the internet with all back and forth.

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

 

[Aikouka]

So, time for another round of what weird Tesla bugs have I found now....

I noticed this one last night while in stop-and-go traffic with cruise control turned on. I was on a divided highway that had turn points in it, and I think that might have been the key. I was positioned a bit further back from one, and I noticed that every time a car would come up in the lane beside me and start braking, the system would say "Stopping in 200 feet for a traffic signal". That would repeatedly flash on the screen and disappear as the cars moved up further and reached their stopping point. Essentially, when the other car would reach a certain point with its brake lights illuminated, the Tesla traffic light detection system assumed that it was a traffic light.

These two aren't really bugs, but more or less just limitations of the system. However, I figured they'd be interesting enough to mention. Currently, it appears that the traffic light detection system cannot discern between combo lights (i.e. a standard light with a yellow and green arrow for a turn lane). To be fair, I am basing this off of what is displayed on the screen, so it might just be a visualization limitation rather than the entire system. The other is that the system doesn't seem to have any way of handling speed limit signs with multiple values. For example, I passed by a speed limit sign yesterday with "60" and below that, "When Wet 50". It looked like the visualization displayed three speed limit signs, and ended up taking the 60 MPH value. It wasn't wet, so it chose the right value, but it's interesting to see that it appears to be designed around standard, single-value speed limit signs.

I can't recall if I've mentioned this bug yet, but I've been trying to figure out all the weirdness around it. I've found that if the car goes to sleep while the multimedia is in USB playback, and you open the driver's side door, it will never resume playback. However, there is a guaranteed way to make it work, and I'd know because I literally do it every morning... open the passenger's side door until the screen turns on. I think this also works if you open other things like the trunk.

Speaking of USB playback, I was a bit disappointed that the latest Tesla software update focused very heavily on multimedia and multimedia search, yet USB playback searching still isn't supported. I do like that they finally made it so you can hide services that you don't use. Although, it looks like you can only hide up to three?

 

[ultimatebob]

The $35,000 Tesla Model 3 base model finally got canceled for the 2021 model year. Not that it was ever really an option before... it was a special order that you couldn't order from the website.

As a former Tesla hater, I can tell you "I told you so!". As a TSLA shareholder, I approve. Pay up you cheap bastards, daddy needs a bigger boat for retirement

 

[jlee]

The $35,000 Tesla Model 3 base model finally got canceled for the 2021 model year. Not that it was ever really an option before... it was a special order that you couldn't order from the website.

As a former Tesla hater, I can tell you "I told you so!". As a TSLA shareholder, I approve. Pay up you cheap bastards, daddy needs a bigger boat for retirement

Welcome to inflation, I guess

 

[rstrohkirch]

Here is the history of the Model 3 and it's 35,000 price point as far as I can recall:

April 2016 - Just unveiled the car and announces starting price point of 35k
July 2017 - First deliveries
March 2019 - Announce you can finally buy the 35k model
April 2019 - Immediately take 35k model off of their website, makes it phone order only and no longer talks about this model anywhere
Nov 2020 - Stops selling 35K model

 

[Viper GTS]

They're selling everything they can make, and they have the best value retention of any vehicle sold in the US. The simple reality is this - If I total mine tomorrow there is nothing else I would consider. I know I'm not alone in this, and this is contributing to value retention being what it is. They don't need to sell a car at $35k when they are capacity constrained.

There will be cheaper EVs in the future, no doubt. Like with most things the future cheaper versions will be better in some ways but worse in others than the overbuilt early adopter products. The people that can't or won't spend more than $35k today will get their chance eventually, but until demand is satiated it's in nearly everyone's best interest for them to keep doing exactly what they are doing.

Viper GTS

 

[manly]

They're selling everything they can make, and they have the best value retention of any vehicle sold in the US. The simple reality is this - If I total mine tomorrow there is nothing else I would consider. I know I'm not alone in this, and this is contributing to value retention being what it is. They don't need to sell a car at $35k when they are capacity constrained.

There will be cheaper EVs in the future, no doubt. Like with most things the future cheaper versions will be better in some ways but worse in others than the overbuilt early adopter products. The people that can't or won't spend more than $35k today will get their chance eventually, but until demand is satiated it's in nearly everyone's best interest for them to keep doing exactly what they are doing.

Viper GTS

A Tesla fan broke down his TCO 2 months ago. In short, TCO is very good but the narrative that they have the best value retention of any vehicle sold is hyperbole. (They do blow away most of their closest comps.)
I don't follow the channel, so I don't know why he sold a car he really loved after eating nearly $20k in depreciation+sales tax.

If someone wants a cheap BEV, they can try to get a Kandi.

 

[jlee]

A Tesla fan broke down his TCO 2 months ago. In short, TCO is very good but the narrative that they have the best value retention of any vehicle sold is hyperbole. (They do blow away most of their closest comps.)
I don't follow the channel, so I don't know why he sold a car he really loved after eating nearly $20k in depreciation+sales tax.

If someone wants a cheap BEV, they can try to get a Kandi.

What new vehicles sold today retain more value?

 

[rstrohkirch]

I glanced and I'm seeing around 80% residual on a 2 year old long range Model 3 with 10-25K miles. That's really good, better than anything I've seen. A normal car is going to be 65-70% while something like a 911 would be low to mid 70s at best.

They're selling everything they can make, and they have the best value retention of any vehicle sold in the US. The simple reality is this - If I total mine tomorrow there is nothing else I would consider. I know I'm not alone in this, and this is contributing to value retention being what it is. They don't need to sell a car at $35k when they are capacity constrained.

They never had to sell it for 35 nor did he have to hype that price point for nearly 3 years. But he did and when they finally introduced it they purposely hid it from customers. So I'd imagine it's not so much the price as it is his actions that draw people to the topic. If Ford or Chevy did the same thing people would have given them shit for it too. It's not a big deal though.

 

[manly]

What new vehicles sold today retain more value?

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.

I glanced and I'm seeing around 80% residual on a 2 year old long range Model 3 with 10-25K miles. That's really good, better than anything I've seen. A normal car is going to be 65-70% while something like a 911 would be low to mid 70s at best.

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