There’s one thing car manufacturers do when they want to get rid of new cars to make way for even newer cars, and it’s that they offer discounts and incentives for customers to buy the old product, so they can sell new products for more money, because that’s the circle of life. Often, this is to make way for a new model year, or even a new generation of a car; that’s what automakers usually mean when they say “all new,” it means that this is a new generation of the model, not just a regular new model year, but Tesla has always tried to pretend that they do things in a other way
However, Tesla is not model years old they like to play with prices. That’s not to stoke demand, though, because Tesla doesn’t have a demand problem, it has a supply problem, or at least that’s what CEO Elon Musk likes to insist. Tesla cars are also updated over the air, which is why Tesla doesn’t have to worry about model years, as you’ll always have the latest version.
This is all nonsense: Tesla could credibly claim that it was different in its infancy, but it has been more or less a normal car company for years, although that has never stopped Tesla. Still, every week or even every day now, we’re reminded of just how ordinary a car company Tesla is. One of the last examples is a Wednesday story in Reuters this says that Tesla is doing something strange: it plans to release a new version of one of its models and, as a result, offer money on the current version of that model.
Tesla Inc has doubled discounts on some Model 3 electric cars it already makes and offered discounts on the Model Y and others in its U.S. inventory to lure buyers amid economic uncertainty, increased competition and the upcoming redesign of its flagship model.
In California, an in-stock Model 3 variant was priced at $42,060, a $2,680 discount off the price of new-order cars, according to its website. That’s double the $1,300 discount on Model 3 cars offered less than two weeks ago.
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Facing economic headwinds, growing competition and ramping up production, Tesla has aggressively cut vehicle prices in many countries this year and is turning to the automakers’ traditional tactic of offering incentives to clean up inventory, analysts said.
History points out that a new model 3 is launching this year, and that the Model Y is also getting a bit of a makeover, with some new or similar hardware, though if you wait a month or so, you might get a chance to buy a different Model 3 or Model Y, the whose price will probably change several times during the period. Whether it’s a “deal” or not seems to mostly depend on how you feel about Tesla, though even thinking about buying a car that way takes the fun out of it. Now it shouldn’t be long until Tesla has an annual sales event just in time for the holiday season.
