Reality: it's a price increase. "Model 3 Standard Plus used to cost $37,500, plus $3,000 for the Autopilot option. It now costs $39,500, with Autopilot included." No $35,000 Tesla.
$37,500 + $3,000 = $40,500. Isn't that a price decrease if the price is now $39,500?
Keep in mind that Tesla just started selling lower priced models in the US. Buyers of the base models are much more cost concious, so I assume that a lot of them would forego the AP option.
I know that companies get a lot of flak for saying hedged things. But Tesla could really benefit from some hedging. This pronouncement in absolute terms that there will be no lease-end buyout is ridiculous. It depends entirely on future factors unknown today (to us or Tesla), whether they will give customers the option of buying out when the lease and actually arrives, and they know it.
So why not just say so? How about: “Tesla leases do not guarantee the right to buy-out at lease end, because we hope to use some of the after-lease cars for a future ride hailing network.”
Sure, it's a few more words to parse. But it would be one less thing for people to complain about. And it would be true and forthright. It is very good to be seen as true and forthright when asking customers to spend tens of thousands of dollars on something.
How can you be so sure?
Go and try to rent a 10 year old car... Can't find any? Turns out while individuals are perfectly happy to drive a 10 year old car, companies prefer no more than 1-2 year old fleets. As well as being more reliable, the service users don't want to find a cassette player in the car, nor years of grime on every surface.
Do you also worry about these saboteurs surreptitiously removing stop signs so that you drive into traffic?
They could retrofit hardware at the end of the lease when they reclaim the vehicles.
OTOH, I'm skeptical about Tesla having an autonomous ride sharing network to use them in when they come off lease.