Roller-coaster: Tesla hikes up prices days after the last cut

Predicting Tesla prices is becoming as challenging as weather forecasting. It feels like no day passes by without the prices going down or up and the internet is getting busy coming up with Tesla price-related memes. Tesla’s earnings call happened just a couple of days ago and Elon Musk strongly supported further price cuts - only to put them up.

While the recent price cuts affected every Tesla in the range, today’s raise only applies to Model X and Model S. Starting with the Plaid versions, both vehicles are now priced at $107,490. That’s a bump of $2,500 from the previous $104,990.

The non-Plaid version of Model S now starts from $87,490 and the non-Plaid Model X is now priced at $97,490. That’s only weeks after the company cut their prices by $5,000 due to a lack of interest from customers.

We are starting to get the overwhelming feeling that there is no way to plan your Tesla purchase. You may be planning to buy it next week but then the price may fall - so you decide to wait and see. Only for the price to go back up the morning you were going to buy your dream car.

What is even more annoying, is the fact that other manufacturers are taking this idea seriously and thinking of following Tesla’s lead. Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, already called Tesla the “pioneers of dynamic pricing” and suggested other automakers will have to follow.

The truth is, if the prices keep swinging wildly from one week to another, customers will simply give up. It’s better to sit back and wait it out rather than commit to a $50,000 gamble that can be worth $40,000 next week or $55,000 the week after. Wild pricing like this destroys the value of used vehicles as well and as a result, it puts customers off even more.

Tesla is having some wild times on its hands, lower profit margins are pulling the share prices down, and the legal challenges are mounting up. Just to spice things up, the company keeps us guessing tomorrow’s prices for its cars and that’s one way to keep the company in the news for sure. On the other hand - Tesla cars were never this cheap and we say - keep those price cuts coming Elon.

Via