That's quite possibly how it played out. Elon beware, Aunty says, "Bust a deal, face the wheel!".
I think this was a big mistake on Tesla’s part. If Tesla just wanted to increase CT sales for a short period of time then they succeeded. If they were trying to restart CT sales over the long run then price increases should have been much smaller, incremental, and started after a longer period of time. I am going to make a guess that sales of this trim will, at this higher price, drop precipitously, and won’t help Tesla determine what price the buying public is able to spend. Because such a large increase goes against the idea that the earlier price was not only a good value, but also a fair value, buyers might consider this increase more negatively than they would an incremental increase and choose to wait until Tesla’s next Hail Mary. I/We want the CT/Tesla to succeed so this kind of behavior seems neurotic and not well thought out. All this said, I’ve been wrong so many times maybe I am wrong this time also and all will be fine. It just doesn’t make sense to me.Price increased by 10k on the new trim. The other trims remained the same.
Side note: They removed the ability to lease the new trim, at least for now. From experience, it doesn’t matter what you saw when you ordered or what it said. At the end, you paid $250 to secure the price of the vehicle, not any terms. Those will be “official” once you submit your credit app and lock in whatever terms they have at the time for lease and financing.
Do you know the cost of making this truck? Does anyone really think Tesla isn’t making money on CTs? They should have priced the ‘introductory price’ much closer to the ‘actual’ price. The goal should be to keep the Cybertruck manufacturing lines going at full tilt and not with fits and starts.
I was referring to give the people what they want statement which was quoted. We all want things for low prices. Yet that is not how we operate here. I never said they didn't make any money. It was more making that point.
You say people don’t understand but I think they don’t even try. They see the price and look at what they can afford and that is that. I don’t meet a lot of people that use their ability to reason on anything anymore. They go to social media or ChatGPT for everything and if a decision requires more than 15-30 seconds of thought that is just too taxing for them.
The "inventory clearance" theory could also explain why Tesla is so far out on delivery dates. Tesla probably ordered thousands of cloth seats and coil springs from its suppliers last year for the RWD. But the RWD flopped hard, selling hundreds rather than thousands. I'll bet that Tesla cancelled all of the orders for RWD parts, but not before the warehouses filled up.
Interesting. When the number of CT orders dropped they cut manufacturing and moved the workers to other lines or cut them altogether. I think that Elon once said that it costs a billion a year to run Giga Austin. Why not get that revenue from Cybertruck manufacturing? It would be a win-win for Tesla and the community. Well, if Tesla doesn’t care about keeping their manufacturers lines working at capacity why did they build a huge factory? You are right that I do not know.
"I don't do focus groups" -- Elon Musk
Yep. Many of us are willing to pay more or less type of focus groups. That can be as simple as polling sales associates with questions. I think his reference was to design in that case.
Seems like they should be able to get some of them done by June. Mine was ordered the 19th also a couple hours after you. I think when Elon made the 10 day announcement that's when the orders really picked up.
I had driven my RWD for about 7k miles. in terms of comfort, the AWD air suspension is more plush. The coil is in my opinion 90% of the air, especially since you also get the 18 inch wheels, so more tire wall.
I took delivery of the AWD "premium" two weeks before the "dual motor" AWD dropped. I felt double screwed after my disappointment with discontinued RWD tonneau and took some loss to move to AWD.
