Tesla ended 2022 with record production (1.37 million) and sales (1.31 million), but this was also predicted by market analysts and investors. What’s more: the record production (439,000) and sales (405,000) figures for the fourth quarter fell short of expectations. This, Elon Musk’s Twitter adventure and recession fears also contributed to the brand’s market capitalization losing hundreds of billions of dollars, and today the brand started with a 6% loss on the American stock exchange. There is a prosaic reason for this: after previously in Asia and the Oceania region, Tesla has now drastically cut the starting price of its most popular models in North America, Europe and probably elsewhere – the whole story, of course, includes the fact that it has raised it in several stages over the past year and a half. At the time, Elon Must explained this by the increase in the prices of raw materials and components, but now he mentions their decrease and the upcoming recession.
The latest domestic prices of the Model 3 [+]
Either way: in addition to economic fears and stronger competition, it may be much easier to maintain the exponential growth of Tesla’s sales if the prices are lower, accepting the much lower profit margin. Thus, the same Model 3 Standard Range+ sedan, which cost HUF 21.7 million in Hungary the other day, can now be ordered for HUF 19 million, although it was also available for HUF 15 million a year and a half ago, villanyautosok.hu summarizes. The Long Range variant now costs 22.5 million instead of 25.3 and the Performance variant costs 25 million instead of 27.3. None of the editions of the Model Y have been so cheap: the Long Range opened for 24.9 million HUF last year, which became 28.6 million HUF by the end of last year, and that fell to HUF 23 million. In the meantime, the shorter-range edition appeared for 24.5 million, and this has also dropped significantly to 20 million, and finally the price of the Model Y Performance, which was still 29.9 million recently, was reduced to 26.5 million.
New domestic prices for the Model Y [+]
The largest price drop was received by American buyers, and not only because the price of the Model Y Long Range fell from $66,000 to $53,000 there, but also because this opened the way for the local buyer to receive an additional $7,500 tax credit, so its the purchase price of the packaging alone was 20.5 thousand dollars, i.e. 7.5 million forints, under the cover of the night. Of course, investors take this as a bad name for the consumer, and in China it is precisely the owners who buy more expensively that are dissatisfied because of the also lower new purchase prices. Finally, although the math is clear in favor of the cheaper operation of electric cars, the above prices are not too low even for the cheapest Tesla models. Meanwhile, it is not the traditional brands, but the newer Chinese brands that are doing the best, having drastically increased their sales in the past year, and now the Western customer is also floating in front of their eyes.
