Tesla increases price of Red Multi-Coat paint for all cars as it streamlines options

Tesla has been changing up its paint options lately after the paint shop emerged as a bottleneck for production.

Now the automaker is increasing the price of Red Multi-Coat paint for all cars.

It comes after Tesla started removing “Metallic Silver” and “Obsidian Black” from the Model 3 options last week. 

Those colors were less popular and therefore, Tesla was able to remove them to streamline options, but Red Multi-Coat is a very popular one that Tesla couldn’t remove.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently confirmed that it is a difficult color to do:

“We tried every possible way to make red look 3D without floating a special red tint in primary gloss layer, but no way. We have to stop whole paint shop for red & it looks like an episode of Dexter.”

Here’s a picture of the paint shop when it is painting red cars:

Now instead of removing the color option, Tesla significantly increased the price by 25% in the online design studio last night.

It is now becoming a $2,500 option for all vehicles:

Over the year since Model 3 has been in production, the price of Red Multi-Coat went $1000 to $1500 to $2000 and now to $2500.

It’s one of several ways Tesla has been increasing the price of the vehicle.

More recently, the automaker increased the price of Model 3 Dual Motor AWD again – it’s now $6,000.

Electrek’s Take

While it’s yet another price increase on Model 3 options (and S/X in this case), I think this one makes more sense than the dual motor one.

Musk has been talking for weeks about issues with ramping up production at the paint shop and about how Red Multi-Coat was hard to produce.

Increasing the price will discourage some people from buying it, which should reduce the number of red batches they need to make, and the increased price will better reflect the difficulties of making the color versus other colors.

From a consumer standpoint, these option pricing increases are starting to add up, but from a business standpoint, Tesla is still trying to become profitable and it is adjusting options, especially when it comes to Model 3, in order to make the car profitable.

If consumers want the Model 3, Tesla needs to be able to make it at a profit in the long-term.

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.