Tesla is already offering low 1.99% financing on six-year loans for customers looking to buy the $48,990 long-range, all-wheel-drive Model Y, the series production version of the newer car that debuted in early April. Gone are the days when Tesla had to keep hiking prices to avoid being hopelessly swamped by demand. Now CEO Elon Musk has to fight for every new customer.
Just weeks after the launch of the Model Y refresh, a slightly newer version of the five-year-old crossover, Tesla informed buyers on Sunday they can already have the car at a discounted financing rate. Interested buyers can qualify for a six-year loan at 1.99% if they put down $3,999 for the purchase of a long-range all-wheel-drive version. By contrast, financing rates for some of Tesla’s upscale models top 6%.
It’s actually kind of tragic. Tesla would have been, no, should have been a key domestic EV maker. They should have been our global offering in a strategically important industry. But instead, they’re rapidly becoming a pariah. And it’s all because of one man. One terrible, terrible man.
This is a very, very important lesson that America MUST learn: just because someone is rich, that does not mean they are smart, or good, or trustworthy. Personality matters, a lot. I am certain that if Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning could go back, they would tell Mr. Musk “no thank you, we’re not interested in your investment,” even though they really needed the money. It wasn’t worth it, it came with strings attached. Within just a few years of taking Musk’s money, both men were forced out of the company, and Musk was well on his way to convincing millions of Americans that we was a super genius who singlehandedly invented the electric car.
In this country, we have not only tolerated megalomaniacal narcissists like Musk, we’ve celebrated them. That has to stop. Look at where it has gotten us. One of them is president now! If we don’t learn from this, and start to see men like Trump and Musk as the disease that they are, we are doomed. If we don’t get these men under control, they will control us.
I think the education needs to go further. Being billionaire rich is in itself a huge red flag; and people having this much money should immediately cause people to distrust them on every level because nobody gets that rich from honest work, from paying their employees fairly, from caring about the environment and general wellbeing of mankind.
Being a billionaire should disqualify people from owning and/or having shares in any economical sector deemed essential to societal wellbeing, not to mention from holding any kind of public office or even from exercising any kind of political agenda at all. They’re rich, they don’t need representation. They actually can take care of themselves.
You have to KEEP TEACHING the lesson. Because when you’re 25 years older, and kids are just coming into the world, they don’t ‘get’ how bad it is. They just hear it. I heard all about how WWII went, who was bad who was good blah blah.
Look now, we have Gaza. Look now, we have Trump. AfD in Germany.
Where do you think we failed (globally)? Like, how have we (seemingly) made a 180 in just under 100 years?
Capitalism
just because someone is rich, that does not mean they are smart, or good, or trustworthy
The richer someone is seems to correlate with the absence of one or more of those traits.
Don’t need to be smart to be born into money, which is where basically all the richest have come from.
Don’t need to learn to treat people with compassion if you can afford to entirely opt out of public society
Don’t need to be trustworthy if you have enough to pay people to be around you.
Past a certain bank balance, a person loses their humanity.
maybe if one is truely from rag to riches they will understand, and not to pretend “im poor and made lots of money” people, that come from well off family but not super rich.
Literally no one goes from rags to billionaire.
That’s just a lie they try to sell so enough people think they could be in the group that benefits one day.
yea, until thone appears, which it will never.
its almost always the 2nd point in my original comment, pretending to be poor to look relatable. this was taylor swift shtick for a while when her parents move to Tennessee before her music career was jumpstarted, they think by moving to a “poorer” state will make her look more relatable.
He also forced some dumb features in the electric car…like the stupid door handles, and lack of buttons.
Full “self” driving that only uses cameras and nothing else such as radar/lidar.
“delete!”
remember he cancelled the lidar/Radar in his older models and disable dit for people who owned it, and went for cheaper camera system.
teslas have always been defective, its only because Elon was able to market it better.
I wouldnt drive a Tesla if they paid me to drive it.
they are death traps, even thier regular models are lacking QC in many places. there is a reason you never hear people buying a used one. i only heard of a Clout chaser doing this once.
“car company discounts car” is not a news story. “Fucking Nazi car company discounts car” sort of is.
But they didn’t discount the car, just the finance rate, so yeah, not a news story.
If they use in-house financing (which most car companies do) they’re still losing money overall. And it is indicative that they’re feeling the squeeze so that’s nice to know.
People that finance literally will pay less each month for the car. I don’t understand the semantics game here to avoid calling this a “discount”. If you pay less each month it’s ok to call it a discount. I’d argue neither scenario justifies a news story, but the Tesla demand cliff is trendy (justifiably so of course, fuck Nazis) so here we are.
“But the low sales numbers were just potential buyers delaying their purchase, because the new Model Y will release soon.”
Safe to say that we finally have evidence that people weren’t delaying. It’s also not the car either, the car is fine and very competitive. I drive a Model 3 and I drove a couple competitor cars, therefore I know Tesla is up there with the competition. That is Volkswagen, Toyota and the large volume brands, I don’t view Tesla as a luxury brand like BMW and Mercedes though.
So what else is there? I’d wager having a Nazi as CEO doesn’t help sales at all. I’m in a mid class bubble in The Netherlands where many in my bubble can afford or even actively looked at purchasing a Tesla, all of them say the same thing: I do not support Nazi’s and by extension try to buy as little US made products as I can. This is the same customer base that 5 years ago would definitely have bought a Tesla in a heartbeat. Tesla will continue to lose with Musk at the helm.
The fact he dismantled all the agencies overlooking tesla safety weighs in to his overtime fascism.
Even if replaced as CEO and fully diverted from Tesla, I don’t think I could trust their safety going forward.
Yeah bruh, I am in the market for an EV to replace my old Camry. Zero chance I’d ever look at Tesla. Zero.
I’m trying to buy a car, Tesla hasn’t been on the list for good reasons. A Kei truck is very tempting.
I dislike Slate based solely on the fact that their video has appeared at the top of my YouTube home page several times, even though I generally don’t interact with videos about cars.
Point taken but it reminds me of an old proverb: hate not the player, as the game is that which should be despised.
I appreciate that it’s the first different take on an EV or cars in general since, well, Tesla? The customizability options, low starting price, and they’ve done some fun marketing stunts so far. There may be plenty of reasons to be skeptical about it and perhaps it’ll even flop or be ghostware, but (the option for) a non-fastback crossover SUV with physical buttons has me, again, hopeful.
Not a new Tesla. But a used Tesla, if the car is good, why not. The nutsack won’t be getting anything out of it
We just got a good deal on a used Kia Niro EV. Pretty happy with it so far.
50k is way too expensive for a car in 2025.
BYD sells theirs for 12k.
Bring them to the US or compete you fucking nepobaby fascists.
Prices in China:
BYD Atto 3: 16k USD.
BYD Seal: 25k USD.
Tesla 3: 32k USD.Prices in Germany:
BYD Atto 3: 33k USD.
BYD Seal: 45k USD.
Tesla 3: 46k USD.Comparing prices like you do just looks like bad faith. And I’m not saying this to support Tesla but to highlight that there is some serious BYD shilling going on here.
You want Tesla to compete? I guess the US already has prison slave labour and reduced safety measures for Teslas, it’s just missing some billions of US tax money flowing in and you got what you wished for.
Not a good idea? But China doing exactly that is OK, because US bad equals China good?
Maybe putting tariffs on chinese imported EVs (like the EU does) is the reasonable thing to do to protect your own industry and jobs.
I mean… if you want a 12k car you can have a 12k car, but don’t expect it to be as good as a 50k car, even if the 50k car is only as good as a 40k car.
Edit: But also the new Y RWD is going for like 38k after rebates, so it’s not even a 50k car.
28k value at best. It’s a damn Tesla not some spaceship with the ability to be your housewife.
You think a Tesla is only as good as top trim Corolla sedan?
Edit: To be clear, I’m not knocking the Corolla, it’s a great car.
Well the Corolla will be built better, for sure.
A Tesla probably has more issues out of the factory than my 2001 RWD Toyota Tacoma which is rust bitten because it was owned by a water company on the coast. That is to say a Tesla is barely worth its weight in scrap.
I’d say it really depends on the factory here. I’ve heard some very bad things about the US-based ones though
Most of its issues are design and engineering related. Over use of computer systems and a fucky if functional body being the most obvious issues, then there’s the fact that I’m pretty sure they allow way to much power into the battery. Those three things alone are enough for me to question its worth since if one fails the others won’t help, let alone shit like the doors.
What can a Tesla do that a BYD can’t?
OP was talking about a 12k BYD vehicle.
If you want to get a similarly priced BYD you can get similar features, but in terms of that 12k car OP wants
A model 3/Y has
bigger battery (more range)
better sound system
more HP/Torque
more storage capacity
more airbags
multi zone climate control
bigger touch screen
I’m sure the list goes on and on. You get what you pay for.
Edit: I think the BYD Seal is the model 3 competitor in price/features.
The 12k BYDs are better build quality than Teslas
I’m not sure why anyone expected a new facelift would improve sales. It’s clear the overall decline is associated with Musk going full mask-off fascist, given this, driving around in a car that looks unlike any previous Model Y just makes it completely obvious that you knew this and decided to buy one anyway. If they want to bolster sales, maybe they should have kept producing the pre-facelifted versions for a while.
Full disclosure, I used to own a Model 3. I had it for 5 years and was generally very happy with it - it was a great daily driver, cost very little to run and maintain, and (aside from a few issues later in my ownership, which was one of the reasons I decided to sell it) in general it was very easy to live with.
There are clearly some very skilled engineers at Tesla who know how to build a great product. It is a shame their efforts are being undermined by a fascist lunatic with a narcissist complex.
aside from a few issues later in my ownership, which was one of the reasons I decided to sell it
I’m curious, what kind of issues did you face?
The main issue was a catastrophic failure of the VC_FRONT module which is one of the critical onboard computers that manages things like the 12v battery and low voltage power distribution (basically a “smart” fuse box). Without it the car is bricked and cannot be driven.
That took several weeks and some back and forth around the extended warranty to resolve, and then even after that module was replaced, on my first drive after the repair it went straight into limp mode and then spent another week at the service centre having that diagnosed.
During this time I decided it might be time to start looking for a new car, ended up selling it a few months later and took delivery of a new Polestar 2.
I’m constantly floored that institutional investors are keeping the TSLA stock price from cratering. They dont think of the pressures on the brand like we do. I think they are pricing in future patronage by trump.
i suspect PUTIN/msb/qataris are sitll keeping the stocks afloat too.
I wouldn’t buy a Tesla if it cost $1. That company can shove Elon’s big Nazi dildo up their ass
I would because the company would loose the money they needed to make the car
What i would do with it afterwards?
i dont know, maybe send a strong message, maybe notTesla should pay you to take the inventory and dispose of it - straight to the car crusher and the junkyard. And they’d better pay you a lot - I bet there are lots of complications and expenses that go with disposing of all those batteries, though maybe they can be re-sold for use in non-NAZI vehicles/devices?
A swastikar will park in front of my house when I get groceries on Sunday and I HATE IT. I don’t want anyone thinking that’s our dumpster or going to vandalize it and accidentally hit my sweet cute lil car. 🤬
The only reason I’d be caught driving a tesla is if it had a completely true bumper sticker that said “I bought it after he blew his brains out.”
Wow… it’s crazy. I was just thinking about it and honestly I don’t think I’d drive a Tesla if it was given to me with a bow on the roof. That’s some serious brand implosion right there.
Also, I know of at least one company in my area (where a friend of mine works) who used to have a Tesla fleet for their employees and who have all been switched to Polestars now.
I might take it apart and put the innards in my 85 Bluebird for fun. But it’s probably DRM’d so who knows when it’ll kill itself. It’d be like driving an HP printer - get in one day and the bastard will say PC LOAD LETTER, or more contemporary, “Problem with the ink system.”
It’d be like driving an HP printer
I vaguely remember the Nazi fuck running the company literally pulling the Disney app from the car via software update because Disney stopped buying Twitter ads. Even HP doesn’t have that kind of turn around on fuckery.
one thing you dont do is MESS with the MOUSE.
haha, they know better than to drive around tesslars, that could get vandalized.
The Tesla brand is dead to me. In 2018 I wanted a Tesla EV but when in came time to buy a new car (2024), I got a BMW instead. In 2018 I wanted a Tesla Powerwall but I just bought a Jackery system instead. Between the two, that’s well over $100k lost to Tesla from that purchase. Countless more given that I will never buy anything Tesla ever. I won’t even ride an Uber/Lyft if the driver is on a Tesla.
i think it was dead since fall of 22-23.
$3k, $5k, $20k. What’s democracy mean to you?
I say let’s make him the next Juliani.
