The $84,900 Prius III/7 you mean. You have slip the Toyota sales guy a Cleveland and he's show you the car. People don't buy Prius or Tesla's because they are cheap to operate but because they use less oil and generate fewer greenhouse gases. Au contraire mon ami, you buy a place in line. Which gets back to why Tesla will be able to only build and sell their high end $100K cars, the demand is there and the Tesla debt is there.
Eyup. Everything you said is nuts. Glad I didn't say any of that nutty stuff. In luxury car market the high end and low end models are made very distinguishable so everyone know if you got the low end BMW or the high end.
You make a lot of unsupported sweeping statements. Let's test your last statement about everyone knowing if someone gets a high end or low end luxury car. If I park a 85kwh pack Tesla next to a 40kwh pack, how everyone passing by, know the difference?
In that case you can "buy a place in line" for any car you want. Not sure why you're chosing to be so persistant on this issue. it's just splitting hair. You can't buy anything from them today, but you can reserve any car they've announced (including the Model X) today without regard to what packages are currently available (Signature, and even those are just trickling out at the moment).
Paying $5,000 to Tesla sounds like a sale. People are buying and Tesla is selling. Not sure why you are splitting hairs over a clear sales transaction. It's relevance to my point was that it demonstrates the high income, status, luxury car nature of Tesla sales and why Tesla can sell only high cost, high profit vehicles for the next 10,000 cars. The demand is there.
The deposits are refundable. Market research definitely tells us that many of those reservations will walk if tesla all of a sudden decided it would only sell 85kw packs. Bad customer service reports would also cause these to walk. Tesla needs to stay a better kind of car company if its going to sell 5K Tesla S a quarter. If there is more demand then its great and they can speed up production. They took a factory that is too big for production. This looks like part of quid pro quo to get a contract and investment from toyota. Anything they can do to increase volume will help them look better in the stock market. It would be foolish for them not to sell $57K cars.
"It was a trade off but seem to be a good one. "In determining the optimum ride height drop, there is a balance between aero-dynamic gains and a reduction in suspension travel and ride quality. A combination of track testing and wind tunnel results were used to define the highway mode setting and to realize a drag reduction of up to 3.8%, dependent on wheel style." Read more: http://priuschat.com/threads/model-s-deliveries-to-start-in-1-month.109643/page-4#ixzz1z74Td1dv"_________________________________________________________________________Thanks for your replies. Can't figure out how to multiquote with this new system. Betraying my lack of car knowledge, I understood the lowering for aerodynamics part, but was curious if there is any added cushioning effect when driving around town at normal height.
To me the benefit also includes better handling at high speeds because of a low center of gravity. With a single setting, a manufacturer needs to choose between comfort and handling. With an air suspension, the manufacturer can choose to have it both more comfortable at lower speeds and better handling at high speeds. At high speeds cd matters, but at low speeds it does not affect the car much. Some have settings to ride low for looks, and high for rough roads, but tesla doesn't seem to allow user selection. That is why I said it depended on the implementation, until you drive the car, you can't tell if there are advantages to the air suspension. It is a more complicated, more expensive system. In the past air suspensions had reliability problems, but these have been shaken out. To do multi quote, simply hit reply from each of the items.
As pointed out, it's a refundable deposit on ANY of the Tesla advertised vehicles. It isn't a sale. it holds you a place in line, that's all. You can't buy any of the cars, as I pointed out, all you can do is make a deposit. I can't even finalize my purchase yet. Only those who made a $40k deposit have been able to do so and no one else can do that. Bottom line, there are current reservation holders who can order any trim model of the Model S they wish once their turn in line to order comes up and no one can "order" a car until their place in line comes up, and your place in line starts at the end of the queue if you place your deposit now. There are NO cars for sale right now at any price, the $87k number you've been throwing around is nonsense.
Actually the owner does have some manual adjustments possible. Tesla has often mentioned how users can increase the height for purposes such as snow or steep driveways. Not sure yet how or if the automatic behavior can be adjusted.
Interesting but irrelevant to identifying the high income demographic of purchasers of Teslas buying luxury, status products who have $5,000 of disposable income. People with a lot of money buying status symbols will likely be easily persuaded, if not demand, the highest end product. So Teslas need to maximize income and profits match customer demographic of wanting highest priced product.
I don't normally respond to a "The other kids do it" argument, but here goes. I'm sure it happens, but the last six new cars I bought that didn't happen. I don't remember it happening before that either, but that was a long time ago. I have never experienced anything like just not making the more basic models available. I don't disapprove of their start-up tactics. but lets not try and pretend it isn't happening.
Selling up is what ALL car companies do, Toyota included. Nothing wrong with it. Just business. They do make more profit on the higher end cars. I'm sure that's true in Tesla's case plus they have 10,000 orders from rich folks making luxury, status purchases so Tesla wants to sell high end the customers are in line for high end. A perfect match, especially for Tesla's bottom line which needs an $1T infusion of 10,000 x $100,000 car sales to get above water.
