German Regulators Tell Tesla to Stop Advertising Cars with Gas Savings in Price

Good. No one else plays this deceptive game, cherry-picking individual costs of ownership. You can advertise (but not promise!) expected savings, but pretending this reduces the price of the car is deceptive.

We europeans don't like it when the final, listed price isn't the price you have to pay when you buy something. It's the same for airline tickets: no hidden fees in the final listed price allowed.

it is the one shameful act I have to encourage people to ignore when using the Tesla site. the truth is they don&#x27;t need to do this to sell their cars, it just looks tacky.<p>to be honest it is stunts like this where regulation does come in handy. like how we have truth in lending laws for home loans and even cars.

The headline is wrong. It&#x27;s not a regulator telling anything. A regulator would be a federal or state body making a decision (which then might be challenged in court). It&#x27;s an organization which maybe could be called a self-regulation body threatening with a lawsuit. And Tesla agreeing &quot;voluntarily&quot; to stop the practice. Well, voluntarily, because they obviously admit that their previous practice would be deemed illegal in court.

This makes sense to me: On any purchasing&#x2F;configuring&#x2F;ordering page, the local-currency number displayed should be the number that is actually being charged, and that number should have the highest weight (the largest size, the most-emphasized, etc.).

I think most consumers take &quot;savings&quot; to mean &quot;reduction in purchase price.&quot; Obviously, (or not so obviously) Tesla&#x27;s sales-page means something different. But even if you dig into the asterisk next to the &quot;after savings price&quot; you find some aggressive assumptions. And $4300 gas savings over 6 years is not worth $4300 today to any rational person on this Earth. They need an asterisk explanation within their asterisk explanation stating they assume a 0% discount rate.

It&#x27;s disappointing that Tesla needs to be told to stop this deceptive practice

They already did this change in Norway. Before the main price you saw was included the savings, now the main price you see is the actual price.<p>You can click on a &quot;details&quot; button where it will expand and list all the details, and only there, after the purchase price it&#x27;ll say how much you can save by not having to buy gas.

The problem with Tesla’s pricing shenanigans is that it makes me not trust them at face value on the issue of pricing. The other day Tesla plainly tweeted Model 3 pricing and explicitly noted that the pricing was “before incentives” but I still had to wonder, “But is that the actual price or not?” because of their history of and reputation for bizarre communication when it comes to what the actual price of their cars are.

Isn’t this including negative opportunity cost in the price? I agree with one of the comments that the price should reflect what you have to pay at time of sale. The problem with this approach is that they are assuming too many things. The biggest assumption is 1) that buyers are comparing a Tesla to another car. Why not a motorcycle with better fuel efficiency. This also assumes a fixed differential between gas and energy costs which may or may not hold and 3) that a comparable time period is 6 years and 4) a present value discount rate of 0%. Sure, anyone can calculate all sorts of returns on investment on meechandise. But why don’t we just agree to quote the investment and not the return. At the end of the day, that’s all we know today.

finally - it was an utter nonsense of a claim.

Is the electricity that goes into a Tesla actually a cost savings over the cost of gasoline that goes into a gas powered car?

They better advertise the higher residual price of a car after N years ownership. That&#x27;s where the savings are! Or better yet, not advertise, but partner with banks to launch the lease program taking in account these savings. 3-yr lease of a $35K model 3 will be comparable to a typical $25-$28K car.

On one hand, these numbers are kinda bogus. On the other... ICE car prices should really be advertised with a reasonable fuel cost included, particularly in Germany where fuel is so expensive.

It was about time!

People might not be aware how much they can save on gas prices by switching to full electric. I don’t see any downside in advertising an estimate. It’s not like they are presenting that as the price with a footnote that says it includes gas savings.