Back around Christmas time 2022, a massive cold front hit most of America and Canada. It sent temperatures tumbling down to bitter lows, with even the Southeast experiencing biting winds and single-digit temperatures as Canada the Northern Midwest were rocked by far colder temperatures.
That cold front exposed a few serious problems with electric vehicles. Their batteries refused to charge in the bitter cold and some had their doors frozen shut, with the handles on Tesla cars sometimes freezing in and not popping out for their owners and making it impossible for them to be opened.
And now Tesla owners have yet another reason to be angry, though at least this one doesn’t regard the functionality of their expensive vehicles.
Rather, it’s that the price on Teslas just dropped significantly, up to 20 percent for some models, making existing Tesla vehicles worth far less as Tesla tries to appeal to more people and sell more cars. That means that those who own Teslas right now not only have a car that is worth less, but could have saved a significant amount of money had they waited just a bit longer to get one of Elon’s vehicles.
Such is the situation that Fortune recently reported on, exposing the anger felt by many regarding the dramatic price cuts that came out of nowhere. In its words:
Marianne Simmons, a self-professed “Tesla fan girl,” bought her second electric vehicle from the company in September: a white, high-performance Model Y ringing in at more than $77,000. Then the company slashed prices on Thursday and she realized she could have bought the same car today at $13,000 less.
“I feel like I got duped. I feel like a got taken advantage of as a consumer,” said Simmons, 32, a web designer in Naples, Florida. “Right off the bat, I’m out $13,306. It’s such a large reduction that it’s going to affect a lot of people who just bought a vehicle.”
Continuing, Fortune went on to report that many Tesla owners will view the dramatic price cuts as a financial kick in the teeth because of how those cuts will affect the value of their vehicles, saying:
“For any existing owner it’s a kick to the teeth,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights for research website Edmunds.com. “Anyone who bought a Tesla recently will feel an immediate impact wish they leased it.”
Drury said the new-vehicle price cuts will hit used cars immediately and could lower values even further. New-car buyers want new-car smell, he said, so pre-owned prices could fall more.
One Tesla owner quoted by Fortune is so upset at the lack of communication from the company and decrease in value of her vehicle that she said she has gone from being a “Tesla fan girl” to someone who wouldn’t buy a Tesla again, saying “I would not buy a Tesla again. That’s saying a lot for me. I was a huge Tesla fan girl. I’d go with a competitor like Lucid or Rivian.”
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Fox Business reported that the price cuts were likely so dramatic because the price needed to be lowered to make the vehicles eligible for the tax credit, saying:
The cuts are likely to allow some buyers to qualify for a $7,500 U.S. government tax credit.
[…]Elon Musk’s car company slashed the price of its baseline Model Y crossover by almost 20% to $52,990. That puts the vehicle below a $55,000 cap, making it eligible for the tax incentive.