edatoakrun
Well-known member
The WSJ deconstructs the $500 a month Tesla announcement.
http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/04/02/the-strange-maths-of-teslas-500month-model-s/?KEYWORDS=tesla" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;Great news for those who have been coveting the 2013 Car of the Year but can’t quite pony up the $60,000+ price tag: the Tesla Model S now has a lease option, announced today after some online hype from founder Elon Musk.
And what a deal it seems to be. Head to teslamotors.com and you’re greeted with this up front:
$500 a month — a pretty nice deal, if you can get it. So let’s go ahead and try. Click through and you’ll find the mid-range model coming in at a little more: $543 a month. Fair enough. But note the actual finance payment you’ll be committing to – $1,199 a month. That is slightly above the $500 a month you might have expected.
It turns out that $500/month is really based on estimating the total cost of ownership. You start with the $1,199, and then factor in a bunch of savings or discounts...
There’s a reason this kind of pricing isn’t widely used in advertising: think of a restaurant advertising $1 meals, conditional on customers valuing the time saved in not walking to another restaurant at $100 an hour.
Tesla stock is down 1.7% in after hours trading.