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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

I don't doubt you're correct in summarising why many current Tesla owners buy Tesla cars. But if they want to be hugely, mass market successful they need to expand their client base beyond customers who "need" luxury options in a car. It's Tesla that would need to match GM's market proposition, not vice versa.

> I want a nice car, not just an electric one, and Tesla's got that in spades.

And I suspect many Bolt owners want an economical car, not a luxury one, and the Bolt's got that in spades.

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Tesla has a lamentable number of luxury options. It has even fewer than Porsche has in its 911, and that is a car known more for its speed and handling than anything.

People looking for luxury would be better suited buying Mercedes, or BMW for that same price range.

Tesla is a luxury car, but not of the 'lovely interior' type. It's more like Porsche---luxury in terms of an extreme in high technology related to driving.

> And I suspect many Bolt owners want an economical car, not a luxury one, and the Bolt's got that in spades.

See my other reply in this subthread - Bolt/Model 3 will be equivalent in terms of price, so I don't see how the Bolt is more "economical".

Certainly possible, but the Model 3 isn't available yet and (according to link in the article) is predicted by some to not be available until 2018. So it's difficult to compare the buying choices for customers when one car can be bought and the other cannot.

The federal tax rebate is likely to phase out over the course of the Model 3 introduction: it isn't a given that the effective pricing will be be similar. It's also premature to compare pricing without the Model 3 specifications.

I can buy a Bolt nowish.

The Model 3 is still vaporware.

Bolt/Model 3 will be equivalent in terms of price

It's an old, yellowed page out of the Microsoft book: "what we have in the pipeline is better than what you can buy today!"

We know nothing of the as-yet-unshipped Model 3. Let's hold off on those side-by-side comparisons. Because if you want to compare, we should weight the "can buy today" column quite heavily.

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