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I believe it. A lot of people don’t care in the slightest what the price of the car is. All that matters is the monthly payment. I’ve talked to people who had n

I believe it. A lot of people don’t care in the slightest what the price of the car is. All that matters is the monthly payment. I’ve talked to people who had no idea what their car cost. I had one memorable conversation with someone comparing cars. They asked what mine cost, I gave the price, and they said, no, what’s your payment? I had purchased the car outright and so we had no way to compare, besides trying to reverse engineer financing numbers.

danso 7y ago
It's hard to square your anecdotal experience with Tesla's actual marketing data and strategy. If people "don't care in the slightest what the price of the car is", then I doubt Tesla would be headlining major announcements with the price, e.g. "$35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now" [0] (there's even an exclamation mark in the first sentence). Having people unnecessarily fixate on a price like $35K seems counterproductive for Tesla, given its desire to upsell features, and natural fluctuations due to changes in tariffs and subsidies. [0] https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now
- mikeash 7y ago
  I said a lot of people, not all people. A lot of other people do care about the actual price.
- jsight 7y ago
  A big part of that announcement was be able to claim that they had delivered on their promise.
gameswithgo 7y ago
you can disprove this by induction. monthly payment is $500 raising the payment by a penny causes 0 people to change their choice. monthly payment is $500.01 raising the payment by a penny causes 0 people to change their choice. repeat thus we can conclude the monthly payment may be infinite and people will still buy the car.
- mikeash 7y ago
  Disprove what? I only made a statement that a lot of people focus entirely on the monthly payment. I said nothing about how change to that payment affect their buying decisions.
jsight 7y ago
You aren't wrong at all. Though it does matter more if it crosses a physcologically significant number (thus so many prices ending in "$.99 or $xx,x99").

danso 7y ago

It's hard to square your anecdotal experience with Tesla's actual marketing data and strategy. If people "don't care in the slightest what the price of the car is", then I doubt Tesla would be headlining major announcements with the price, e.g. "$35,000 Tesla Model 3 Available Now" [0] (there's even an exclamation mark in the first sentence). Having people unnecessarily fixate on a price like $35K seems counterproductive for Tesla, given its desire to upsell features, and natural fluctuations due to changes in tariffs and subsidies. [0] https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now https://www.tesla.com/blog/35000-tesla-model-3-available-now

mikeash 7y ago
I said a lot of people, not all people. A lot of other people do care about the actual price.
jsight 7y ago
A big part of that announcement was be able to claim that they had delivered on their promise.

gameswithgo 7y ago

you can disprove this by induction. monthly payment is $500 raising the payment by a penny causes 0 people to change their choice. monthly payment is $500.01 raising the payment by a penny causes 0 people to change their choice. repeat thus we can conclude the monthly payment may be infinite and people will still buy the car.

mikeash 7y ago
Disprove what? I only made a statement that a lot of people focus entirely on the monthly payment. I said nothing about how change to that payment affect their buying decisions.

jsight 7y ago

You aren't wrong at all. Though it does matter more if it crosses a physcologically significant number (thus so many prices ending in "$.99 or $xx,x99").