Tesla themselves may be able to find cost savings further into production which could bring down the wholesale cost of the vehicle making somewhat up for the loss of the tax credit. Or if not maybe the "version 2.0" will.

I will say I'm not sure what price segment Tesla's endgame for the Model 3 is. I assume somewhere in the 25-35K mark, but there's a lot of variance in that range and without seeing the Model 3's trims and features it will be hard to judge where it should fall compared to the competition.

Tesla's site has impressively little basic information about the Model 3. Heck, I don't even know if it has electric windows (obviously it does, but my point is that Tesla's site lacks a 101 level spec sheet right now). Kind of ballsy to ask for a $1K downpayment for a vehicle they aren't telling you a darn thing about.