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PALO ALTO, Calif.-- Tesla Motors announced today that it is raising the Model S resale value guarantee to be the highest of any premium sedan brand made in volume (excludes rare, low volume or limited edition vehicles). Buying a Model S through the Tesla financing offering now comes with a guarantee that the resale value will be higher than that of BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Lexus or Jaguar.
To protect people that have already purchased a Model S via this program, the guarantee will extend retroactively to anyone that made use of Tesla financing, created in partnership with US Bank and Wells Fargo, from when it was first announced on April 2, 2013. As with the prior resale guarantee, this higher number is also backed personally by Tesla CEO Elon Musk to give owners complete peace of mind about the long term value of the product.
“We appreciate the feedback from a number of journalists and customers that the first version of our financing product wasn’t quite right,” said Tesla Co-founder & CEO Elon Musk. “They were right, so we are fixing it and, moreover, upping the ante by providing the best resale value guarantee in the automotive industry. The Model S is rated by Motor Trend, Automobile Magazine and many others as the best car of 2013, so it should naturally therefore have the highest resale value.”
In addition, our financing partners have agreed to provide longer term loans that reduce the monthly payment considerably. Those who buy the Model S electric car for personal use will now pay a monthly rate of $580 taking only gasoline savings into account. When purchased via a business, assuming 70% of miles are for business use, the depreciation benefit further reduces the effective monthly cost of owning a Model S down to $315.
For those in careers that have a significant cost of time, such as doctors, lawyers, consultants and executives, the Tesla financial calculator makes it easy to factor in the value of time saved by being able to use the carpool lane or avoid trips to the gas station. However, this is now selected off by default and the above numbers do not include any consideration of time saved.
While this is "just a math" announcement, it's a pretty clear "we listened, and we're updating to address concerns" with a very quick turnaround in response to criticisms. Lots of TMC chatter on the calculator being "too aggressive", for example, and they've attempted to deal with that swiftly.
Whether it's exciting or not, credit is due for being responsive and fast in doing so.
I agree. I'm not sure if Elon has just gotten back in the driver's seat or if the company is finally catching their breath, but they've been knocking the ball out of the park lately.
Well to go to 72 months the down payment goes to 15% from what I can tell from their website. Still not really all that impressive if you ask me. Tesla would do better if it could financially afford it's own in house financing arm.
Jeff
I'd rather have them keep their focus where it currently is.