Tesla Motors Inc. will not lower monthly lease payments to drive consumer demand because the automaker does not want to have “unrealistic” residual values, Chief Executive Elon Musk said during Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call yesterday.
But Tesla cars have what cars in the past have not had, Musk said, as a reason for not offering lower monthly lease payment. In a way, he is rejecting the age-old understanding that a car depreciates significantly the moment it is driven off the lot.
“What no other car has is that the software keeps getting better,” he said. “So functionality — we keep adding more and more functionality to the car even though the hardware has stayed the same. If you bought the Model S four years ago, it’s way better than when you bought it, and that really makes a difference for residuals,” he said, referring to a Tesla vehicles’ abilities to be technologically upgraded over time through Autopilot.
Separately, Model 3 production is on time, and Tesla is confident of meeting its goal of having one million Tesla vehicles on the road by 2020 — especially with the Model Y vehicle appearing in 2020 or late 2019, Musk said.
