Tesla owners slam Elon Musk after he cut car prices by thousands of dollars: ‘I feel cheated’

“I feel like I was scammed. I feel like I was taken advantage of as a consumer,” said Simmons, 32, a web designer in Naples, Fla. “Right off the bat, $13,306 came out. It’s such a low that it will affect a lot of people who just bought a car.”

This is the reality facing Tesla car owners after the company Lower the price of its cars by up to 20%, as part of a push by CEO Elon Musk to boost sales in the face of weaken demand. For existing customers, the resale value of the cars they own will be affected along with the lower prices of new models.

“For any current owner, this is a knock to the teeth,” said Evan Drury, director of visions for research website Edmunds.com. “Anyone who recently bought a Tesla will feel an immediate effect that they wish they had rented.”

Drury said reductions in new car prices would immediately hurt used cars and could depreciate them further. New car buyers want the smell of new cars, he said, so used car prices may drop even further.

This is an old problem in the auto industry: Consumers buy a car only to see a discount announced days later that would have saved them a few thousand dollars. It’s different this time because dealer discounts are often limited-time sales and Tesla sales are bigger than the usual discount.

In fairness, Simmons and other Tesla fans aren’t the only car buyers who will see their resale values ​​plummet. Prices for used models fell 15% in December, while prices for new models hit a record-breaking average of nearly $50,000, according to researcher Cox Automotive.

Tesla’s price cuts were the biggest among new car sellers. Its more expensive models took the biggest hit. Base prices for the Model Y were down 20% to start at $53,000, and the performance version of the car Simmons purchased was down 19%. The Plaid version of the larger Model S sedan was trimmed by 14%.

Austin Flack, a Los Angeles-based TV producer, said he listed his 2018 Model 3 with the Full Self-Driving Beta software package for about $51,000 in December, but lowered that price to $36,000 as Tesla dumps incentives near the end of the year. He said he would likely have to lower the price again to $30,000.

Jack Bradham, a cloud-services developer in Charlotte, North Carolina, said he’s upset about the drop in value of the black Model Y Long-Term Edition car he bought in December.

Bradham, 46, said in a phone interview that he ordered the car late last year and said he was told he would have to wait until January to get it. Then he got a call on December 10th from Tesla sales saying he could get a car around Christmas time. He said he was excited about the early delivery and agreed to the $69,000 purchase.

Now, he said, he should have waited because he might have gotten the discount if he had delivered in January; The same car now costs $12,000 less.

Bradham said he understands that sometimes people miss a sale, but it was the size of the price cut that bothered him, along with the lack of communication from the company.

“There is no one to call. I called and tweeted to them, and he didn’t respond.”

Andrew Checketts, of Santa Barbara, Calif., said he took delivery of a seven-seat Model Y in early December after Tesla was “stalking” him with text messages touting a $3,750 discount at the time. If he had waited a month, he could have bought the car for much less.

“I’m having a really hard time giving Tesla any of my money and I can’t even look at the car this morning,” Checketts said in an email. He said he instead drove a Prius today.

Tesla pricing Ups and downs last year. company Starch Prices fell 3% to 5% in March when semiconductor shortages caused production cuts across the auto industry and both automakers and dealers were commanding top dollar on all cars.

Then the company price reduction in December by $7,500 in the US, leading analysts to believe that demand for its electric vehicles was waning and adding to a rout in stocks that lasted most of last year. Tesla shares are down 69% throughout 2022.

Tesla also cut prices in the US and China late last year. in a voice chat on Twitter On December 22, Musk again hinted that he would cut prices further to stave off economic headwinds. He said, “Do you want to increase unit size, in which case you have to adjust prices downward.”

Cloud services developer Bradham said he hopes Tesla will give new buyers some kind of convenience, such as free shipping. Simmons said the company should offer the full self-driving feature for free.

However, Tesla car owners have few recourses.

“I will never buy a Tesla again,” Simmons said. “That says a lot to me. I was a huge Tesla girl fan. I’d go with a competitor like Lucid or Rivian.”

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