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%.

Non-paywall link

  • @[email protected]
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    82 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      42 months ago

      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?

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        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.

  • @[email protected]
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    112 months ago

    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. 🤬

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        In the highly saturated market of the South Bay in California, word of mouth was that it was better to buy a 1-year-old Tesla because then someone else spent the time and money to sort out the most obvious production defects. I don’t know if people are still buying them at all, though.

    • @[email protected]
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      102 months ago

      Yes it is. Low interest rates are literally a discount on high interest. Lower interest reduces the overall cost of the loan by a shitload.

      • @[email protected]
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        42 months ago

        Interest is an increase in price*. Lower interest isn’t a discount, it’s a smaller increase. Calling it a discount is like punching you instead of stabbing you and calling it nonviolence.

        *In exchange for better payment conditions, but that’s not relevant to the point.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        I’m really not sure you understand how discounts work. Or interest rates.

        Tesla’s do not come with interest. Interest that you get by taking out a loan to purchase one is a price increase. You’re paying more. A lower interest rate doesn’t mean you’re getting a discount, it just means that you’re only paying a smaller amount increase. The car itself is still the same price it was before - what is changing is how much extra interest you’re repaying on top of the cars price. The interest isn’t on the car’s price, it’s on the amount of money you borrowed.

        • @[email protected]
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          52 months ago

          You’re just playing semantics. Lots of customers finance cars. Before the “discount” they had to pay $X/month, now they pay $(X-discount)/month. They literally pay less each month because of the discounted, subsidized rates. It’s a discount for folks that finance through Tesla. I’m not sure why you think you’re the only person that understands the simple concept of interest here. You’ve just decided that the definition of discount only applies to MSRP arbitrarily. Is a point of sale tax credit not a discount either?

          • @[email protected]
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            2 months ago

            You’re just playing semantics.

            I’m playing semantics? I’m not the one saying that a lower interest rate is a discount. An interest rate is by itself a price increase, not a discount. The interest rate is on the LOAN, not on the car. The car is the same price as it was. The LOAN is always more than the price of the car.

            This is like saying that you get a “discount” if you pay the RRP in cash. You don’t, you’re just not paying interest on a loan. It’s not a discount.

            I’m not sure why you think you’re the only person that understands the simple concept of interest here.

            Because you guys calling this a “discount on the price of the new model Y” clearly don’t lol. It is a simple concept, yet you guys are showing again and again that you don’t get it. When interest rates on mortgage decrease you don’t say “house prices have just been discounted!”, do you?

  • Jo Miran
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    2 months ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      122 months ago

      He also forced some dumb features in the electric car…like the stupid door handles, and lack of buttons.

      • @[email protected]
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        32 months ago

        remember he cancelled the lidar/Radar in his older models and disable dit for people who owned it, and went for cheaper camera system.

      • Billiam
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        82 months ago

        Full “self” driving that only uses cameras and nothing else such as radar/lidar.

    • bean
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      162 months ago

      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?

    • @[email protected]
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      92 months ago

      Except Tesla never made good cars. It was always clear that real car manufacturers will learn to make good EVs before Tesla learns to make good cars. For some time Tesla was supported by fans who could ignore major design flaws and investors looking for short term profits. Long term best case scenario for Tesla was always to just become another, normal car maker.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        i remember at the time he bought XITTER, some idiot on reddit i believe went ahead and purchased a 140k version of tesla, eventhough many people said it was such poor quality and warned him from buying it, and he later posted a video of how cheap the insides were, you could easily rip the cheap plastic linings of the inside of car.

      • @[email protected]
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        52 months ago

        That’s simply not true, the last couple of years quality is up massively. The highland Model 3 is fine really, sure there are some things Tesla could’ve done better, but that goes for most manufacturers. I drive one and I haven’t had any big issues, I do have some annoyances though, but there are also things the car does way better than its competition. People also seem to forget that Tesla was pushing out over the air feature updates while VW was manually updating their ID3 range on the parking lot in the docks.

        The Model 3 and Y in its current state, at its prices before these wild discounts and 0% financing, is objectively a very competitive car and would probably made the top 3 list in every country in 2025 and possibly 2026. Let me put it differently, if Ford sold the Model 3 and Y, it would outsell any other vehicle on the planet. The only reason the Model Y will not be the best selling car this year is Musk and by extension the direction the US took with the elections. At least here in Europe, people don’t really want to buy a Nazi symbol of a car. And frankly, if I could get rid of mine today, I would, not because the car is bad, but because of the Nazi in charge.

      • @[email protected]
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        102 months ago

        For a brief window Tesla was the only company making a “good” EV in that all their competition was making cars with sub 150 mile range (sometimes significantly so). Teslas have always been bad cars, but they were the best EV. Then all the other manufacturers finally got the memo that they couldn’t keep ignoring the EV market and grudgingly made decent EVs which almost by default made Tesla the worst EV on the market.

        • @[email protected]
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          32 months ago

          i lot of people like the ioniq 5, im guesisng people are waiting for rivian to come out. anyone outside of the us, is probably going for BYDs.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Except Tesla never made good cars.

        The Roadster was pretty damned good. Of course it was the model that Musk had no influence over.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • Pup Biru
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        2 months ago

        australia has the opposite in many ways… we have a thing called tall poppy syndrome where we internally believe everyone should be equal so much that we sometimes tend to tear people down for doing better than others

        a middle ground would be nice

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 months ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          42 months ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 months ago

            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.

  • @[email protected]
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    92 months ago

    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.”

  • @[email protected]
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    412 months ago

    Yeah bruh, I am in the market for an EV to replace my old Camry. Zero chance I’d ever look at Tesla. Zero.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 months ago

        people liked the ioniq 5, my parent is driving a leased ioniq 5. the only thing is the flimsy looking door handles, why cant they just make a normal handle.

    • @[email protected]
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      162 months ago

      I’m trying to buy a car, Tesla hasn’t been on the list for good reasons. A Kei truck is very tempting.

        • @[email protected]
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          22 months ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            42 months ago

            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.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 months ago

      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

  • Novamdomum
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    132 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 months ago

      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.”

      • @[email protected]
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        22 months ago

        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.

  • TomMasz
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    102 months ago

    He thought he could be Henry Ford, but Ford was a bit less overt in his Nazism. And, it should be remembered, Ford almost destroyed the company before being forced out by his own family. There are downsides to one man being the image the public has of a company.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 months ago

      family guy did made cutscenes of FORD, and his obsession with using his vehicle against jews.

  • @[email protected]
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    42 months ago

    I put the reason for this in song…“Nazi, nazi, bo-botsy-ko-banna-fanna-fo-fawtsy-fe-fi-moe-motsy…nazi!”.

  • @[email protected]
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    212 months ago

    I wouldn’t buy a Tesla if it cost $1. That company can shove Elon’s big Nazi dildo up their ass

    • @[email protected]
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      22 months ago

      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 not

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        Tesla 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?

  • @[email protected]
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    32 months ago

    No thanks Leon Hitler, you can shove your vehicles where the sun does not shine. I will stick with my Leaf and it will not burn down my garage.