To give you an idea: Tesla’s Model 3 currently starts at 1,099,000 crowns in the Czech Republic. Last year, prices for the Czechia were set at 1,369,990 crowns in basic equipment. Last September, Tesla announced that the rear-wheel drive Model Y was available in Europe. Customers in the Czech Republic could order the car for a September price starting at 1,499,990 crowns with deliveries starting in December 2022. The price of this car was reduced after a few months to the current 1,159,000 crowns.
In Germany, the Model 3 will cost 43,990 euros, or roughly 1,050,000 crowns. This is even less than what the Enyaq iV from Škoda Auto costs in the Czech Republic, the price of which starts at 1,179,000 crowns.
An even more interesting comparison on the Czech market can be the Model 3 with the Škoda Octavia RS Challenge Plus hybrid car, whose price in the Czech Republic starts at 1,024,900 crowns. This is a difference of only a few tens of thousands of crowns.
Following the news about discounting of Tesla’s electric cars, the price of its shares began to fall by 3.8 percent in Frankfurt. This comes after Tesla CEO Elon Musk warned that the prospect of an economic recession and higher interest rates could mean lower vehicle prices. According to him, this is the only way the car company would be able to maintain the growth in sales volume, even at the expense of profit.
Already in the last year, Tesla’s shares have written off about seventy percent of their value, falling to around $123. But the American car company’s shares did not benefit from the fact that in the third quarter of last year it produced 22,000 more cars than it delivered to customers in all markets. Demand for cars in China fell by more than nine percent year-on-year in November, which raised further concerns, especially about the demand for electric cars in China, which is by far the largest market for these cars.
For the American buyer of the Tesla Model Y Long range (editor’s note: Long range is a type of car with a longer range), the new price of these electric cars in combination with the American subsidy, which came into force this January, represents a 31 percent discount. “A move like this should really increase sales volumes in 2023,” tweeted Tesla investor Gary Black, who isn’t too worried about the drop in Tesla shares and remains optimistic in many ways.
Still, some users on online Tesla fan forums have complained that the price cuts have put customers who recently bought their electric car at a disadvantage. This left them with goods of lower value on the used car market.
“These huge price fluctuations do not please me at all. Just such a reduction of ten thousand euros quite naturally makes you feel that you have paid too much,” wrote one user on the Tesla Drivers and Friends forum on Friday.
Tesla also cut prices in China and other Asian markets last week. Along with a previous price cut last October, the price of a Model 3 or Model Y in China has fallen between 13 and 24 percent since September, according to Reuters calculations. In addition to China, Tesla prices have also been reduced in South Korea, Japan, Australia and Singapore.
Tesla also reduced prices in France, Switzerland and Austria. Among other things, its Model 3 was the best-selling electric vehicle in Germany last month. The second best-selling electric car was the Model Y, beating Volkswagen’s all-electric ID.4. The German automaker recently raised the price of its entry-level ID.3 electric car, and it’s currently on par with Tesla’s now discounted Model 3.
Tesla announced in early January that it delivered a record 405,278 vehicles to customers in the fourth quarter. Sales, however, fell short of the expectations of analysts, who estimated it at 431,117 cars in a survey by Refinitiv. For the whole of last year, Tesla delivered 1.31 million cars, which is a year-on-year increase of 40 percent.
