Tesla delays price increase – boost orders at the end of the quarter

Tesla has delayed its planned price increase by two days. The automaker claims to have been “unable to process all orders”, but what this basically amounts to is a temporary discount also conveniently occurring at the end of the quarter.

Earlier this month, Tesla announced a drastic plan to move all its sales online in order to reduce prices.

At first, it was presented as a way to enable the released of the new $35,000 base Model 3, but it also came with some massive price cuts across Tesla’s entire lineup — up to almost 50% for some of the higher-end Model S and Model X in a few markets.

Those bigger price cuts resulted in some Tesla owners literally protesting at stores in those markets.

A few days later, CEO Elon Musk announced that Tesla would partially reverse course and leave most stores open, which would result in a “slight price increase” across the entire lineup except for the base Model 3.

Musk has been saying that this price increase was coming at midnight on Monday, but it didn’t happen.

Now, Tesla announced that the deadline has been pushed to Wednesday:

Due to unusually high volume, Tesla was unable to process all orders by midnight on Monday, so the slight price rise on vehicles is postponed to midnight Wednesdayhttps://t.co/peahQBSRtd

— Tesla (@Tesla) March 19, 2019

The automaker claims that “due to unusually high volume”, they couldn’t “process all orders.”

Now, buyers have two more days to take advantage of the discounts right at the end of the quarter when Tesla is trying to deliver as many vehicles as possible.

Electrek’s Take

Really? Unable to process all orders? I wish Tesla would be more honest about this.

At the risk of stating the obvious, if you are really not finished processing all orders, just finish them for those people who placed the orders.

Instead, they are leaving it open for people to place more orders at a discount and therefore, I believe the real reason they are doing this is that they need more orders by the end of the quarter.

I think it’s fairly obvious.

After several weird moves this quarter, I believe Tesla is under a pretty severe cash crunch — likely  due in part to higher than expected costs of bringing Model 3 to Europe and China.

Now, they are trying to get as many orders as they can to deliver every car they can make at the end of the quarter. It’s also mostly in the US, where they less expensive versions of the Model 3 are available, which is going to help reduce the number of vehicles in transit at the end of the quarter.

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