Yep, I lived though this. When I had that Bug, I lived in Idaho less than 60 miles from Canada. Cold winters. I would turn the heater on occasionally with windows cracked and endure the fumes for a couple minutes to get a bit of heat. One of the many reasons my brain is going to crap 
Yet more evidence that demand outside of a tiny population of die hards is extremely thin and they’re panicking. Going to make the existing buyers even more pissed off at how much their trucks will depreciate after this move.
$1600 doesn’t really sound like much relative to the base price. Certainly I’ve seen bigger dealership offers plenty of times for non-EVs.
Yeah I’d hardly call $1600 off of a $90k vehicle panicking
We were offered a $3K discount when we went in and tried the MY. We decided to sleep on it for the night and by the next day, it was a $4.5K discount. Seems like they need to up it for the CT.
BTW, they claim it’s all Tesla that provides the discounts and not up to the person you are working with. And they say it changes like that all the time.
This is true. It’s effectively whimsical. As I recall, there was a $2k discount that expired the day I took my test drive. There was no discount for the next few days and then the day I bought it there was a $1k discount.
The discount for ours was for one on the lot. They mentioned if they are on the lot, they typically have higher discounts. At the time, it appeared they had a bunch on the lot (Feb 2023). We were recently there again and it looked like not much available.
Temu uses a similar sales strategy on their website. They deliberately make searching kinda haphazard. If a serch turns up something relevant you need to buy it right now because you’ll probably never see it again even using the same search terms. or maybe you might, but not for days or weeks. The prices also change at random.
The goal of course is to turn casual browsing into “must buy before it gets away = bird in hand vs 2 in bush” scarcity thinking.
As to Tesla, that suggests “This discount is now, and only now. You might get lucky and find a better one later, but you might not. So get now while the getting is good (enough)!”
How many years into the Model 3 or Model Y launch was it before Tesla offered even a single dollar of discount? Because for both models, the car was supply limited for several years before production ramped up.
Musk promised that there were at least 3 years of pre-orders to get through before the first average person could buy a Cybertruck and many people filled their reservations under the assumption they could buy the car, use it for a bit and still flip it for a profit from someone impatient further down the queue.
Instead, every Cybertruck owner is competing with brand new Cybertrucks rolling off the production line that Tesla is desperate to sell.
It’s not just a $1600 discount either, there was a “stealth” $20,000 discount in November as Cybertruck shifted from selling Foundation models to regular models. That they need to discount the non-Foundation Cybertruck so soon after launch means even that drop in price wasn’t enough to juice demand.
With the Model 3 & Y, success built upon success. If you knew it was a long wait to get one, you’d pick one up when your turn in the line came up even if you didn’t need it exactly now, even further inflating the line. I wager savvy buyers are even less inclined to buy the truck after discount as they know if they wait just a few more months, even steeper discounts are coming and this will reinforce the need for Tesla to offer further discounts.
It’s not much of an incentive, either.
On the Bolt owners board where I participate some were whinging about how Herz selling off its EV fleet was driving the resale value of their Bolts down. That’s what happens when you try to view a vehicle as an investment rather than a cost.
It’s both. Or at least it can be.
As the price of fairly ordinary cars begins to rival the price of houses not that long ago or even current houses in especially cheap parts of the country you’re going to hear a lot more of that logic. be it logical or illogical.
The process of Tesla talking up their backlog is a classic bubble promotion. When they work, they’re spectacularly profitable and volume-goosing for the promotors. And when they fail, they’re spectacular in the same way a train wreck is.
Tesla succeeded on the Model 3/Y bubble. And failed on their CT bubble. Having the motto “go big or go home” means you’re always going big. It doesn’t mean you’re always going big successfully.
I haven’t been following this thread lately but want to jump in because I saw 3 CTs yesterday, when I frequently see none, or just one, on any given day. They are becoming status symbols around where I live.
I suppose around here they’ve lost their novelty value. You see one but don’t really notice it as an unusual sort of vehicle. More ho hum; just another vehicle of type X or Y or Z.
No sooner do I post the above than today I see something novel about a Cybertruck.
I saw one approaching in the distance and something was odd about it. Like it had something built on top. It got closer and I realized with a start that what I was seeing was the tonneau cover being open and two mountain bikes standing in the bed with seats and handlebars sticking awkwardly up above the top of the cab.
Which caused me to reflect that despite the countless Cybertruck sightings I’ve had, this was the very first one with the tonneau open and something oversized in the bed. You know: the signature use case for a pick-up truck.
Admittedly, one hell of a lot of non-CT pickups in suburbia are spotted with empty beds. But seeing one with something(s) in the bed is not a “What is that?” moment. This was that moment.
Funny. To me at least; perhaps you are not amused.
I don’t want to read too much into a single anecdote, but it’s worth pointing out that none of the cycling enthusiasts I know get quarter ton pickups for transporting their bikes. Subarus/other hatchbacks with bike racks are the norm, or roof racks for the die hards. Bikes don’t fit will in a short bed, which is probably why they were sticking out.
So kudos to that owner for actually putting something in there, but it’s another sign that CT owners aren’t converted pick-up buyers but are likely converted Model Y buyers.
The bikes seemed to be happy sitting on their wheels fully inside the bed with the tailgate closed and the frames lashed upright to the left sidewall.
So the bed footprint wasn’t an issue. The bikes were simply tall enough that they stuck up well above the cab’s roofline. Which sight is what spoiled the normally distinctively “clean”, albeit silly, lines of a CT.
Although I agree w your larger point that a pickup truck is a poorly chosen choice for bike transport since the invention of the bumper- or trailer hitch-mounted bike rack. Less lifting, less fumbling, and quick to secure.
So these folks are probably not avid bikers
That would have thrown me too. I’ve never seen a Cyber Truck being used as a truck. They are essentially ugly hatchbacks as far as I can determine from personal observation. I wonder if these drivers are ever asked to help someone move on a weekend.
A friend of mine used a Chevy pickup for transporting her bike with a rack attached to the back rather than carrying it in the bed. She had a succession of pickups because for many years she had a horse, and powerful pickups are what you need for pulling horse trailers and hauling various supplies.
I see a lot of mountain bikes in pickup beds. Leave the gate up, and hang the front wheel over it. The wheel gets turned 90 degrees. Seems to work pretty well.
Doubt it’s the trucks primary purpose, just one of them - Tailgate covers
Here’s another dumbass who gets no sympathy from me. Part of the reason for his big loss is that he paid an extra $50k to a broker to make sure he got one of the very first Cybertrucks.