Customers looking to purchase a Tesla Inc TSLA vehicle can now buy a Model 3 rear-wheel drive (RWD) for about $28,000.
What Happened: Tesla currently offers discounts on inventory Model 3 vehicles. A midnight silver painted Model 3 RWD with 18-inch aero wheels is available for $35,090.
With a $7,500 federal tax incentive, the vehicle’s price goes down to $27,590 until the end of the year. Starting next year, the incentive would be cut down to $3,750 for Model 3 RWD and Long Range as per the Biden administration’s latest guidance aimed at reducing Chinese content in batteries eligible for EV credits.
As per the updated guidance issued last week and required under an August 2022 law, an electric vehicle may not contain any battery components that are manufactured or assembled by a ‘foreign entity of concern' (FEOC) starting in 2024 if they are to be eligible for full tax credit. FEOC is an entity that is owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction and direction of China, Russia, North Korea, or Iran.
The near $28,000 price tag on Model 3 RWD does not include state-wide EV incentives. In Colorado or Vermont, for instance, one can get the vehicle for as low as $22,590, which is about the price of a Toyota Corolla. However, these state-wise incentives come with income restrictions.
Hard To Access These Incentives?: During the company’s third-quarter earnings call in October, company CEO Elon Musk noted that many of the incentives in place for EVs do not make Tesla vehicles immediately cheaper as these are very difficult for the average person to access.
A lot of people live paycheck-to-paycheck with a lot of debt and can't wait for a tax credit of $7,500, Musk said, noting that this makes Tesla ultimately more expensive than an RAV4.
"I mean, to be totally frank, if our car costs the same as an RAV4, nobody would buy an RAV4 or at least they’re very unlikely to," the CEO said. The RAV4 starts at about $28,000.
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