When Tesla Speaks The Other EVs Listen: But is it a good thing?

2023 Tesla Model Y

Those of you who know me personally know that I'm no fan of EVs. I don't enjoy how the feel to drive. I feel the battery tech, charging, maintenance, infrastructure , mining practices and recycling statistics are far too rudimentary and damaging to make them a positive alternative to their gasoline powered counterparts. That said, if you do like EVs, by all means go out and enjoy your battery powered sedan or SUV. I'm not offended. And everyone deserves to rock what they want to rock in peace. After all, I'm sure not everyone out there appreciates my Miata and well... that's ok by me.

Now that you know where I stand and all but the heartiest of EV owners have rage quit this article, I am going to step away from my own possibly biased opinions. I'm going to move into something far more subjective. And that is... "what's up with Tesla and the EV market?". To get the full effect, you'll need to imagine me saying that in a Seinfeld voice.

I just read an article in Motortrend (and corroborated it by reading an article in Forbes) that resurfaced a question that I've asked myself a few times. That question is, do people want EVs or do they want Teslas? If they just want Teslas, do they see these cars as a momentary investment in status or morality? To be fair, luxury cars are well known for rapid depreciation while their sports focused supercar and enthusiast car counterparts fair significantly better.

According to Motortrend, since Tesla announced that it was slashing the price on its Model 3 and Model Ys, key vehicles in the EV market have seen fairly extreme depreciation in a very short amount of time. The announcement seemed to be good news for Tesla as sales are up in the US and China but some of the American car companies closest rival's models saw anywhere from an 11% to 33% drop in value. This is at a time when cars like run of the mill Toyota minivans are crushing it.

I find this incredibly odd because as far as I know in other automotive realms the value of one brand/model, doesn't impact the value of other brands and models to such an extreme. The market may go down on station wagons for example, but that's because trends change. It's seldom so isolated. To put it this way, when the Chevy C8 came out at a what could be considered a massive discount as compared to other high performance, mid engined sports cars, Ferrari and Lamborghini prices didn't seem to budge. Neither did they budge when the latest Acura NSX arrived on the scene and quickly did a sales belly flop. Not even the old Acura NSXs saw a reprieve in skyrocketing prices. Is this this because Ferrari's, Lamborghinis and other gas powered enthusiast cars have a long standing precedent of value based on heritage and crasftmanship? Or is it because the market actually sees EVs as a commodity. You know... if the price of one brand of bacon drops all of the other brands need to quickly follow suit because there's no long term value there? Let's say Tesla has the vast majority of bacon's market share in this example. If they drop, all bacon must drop.

List of bacon is below:

From Motortrend.com

8 Used Electric Cars That Saw Prices Slashed After Tesla's MSRP Drop:

• 2019-2021 Hyundai Kona Electric - 14.3-33.5 percent

• 2018-2019 Volkswagen e-Golf - 21.3-26.1 percent

• 2018-2021 Hyundai Ioniq Electric - 15.6-25.4 percent

• 2019-2021 Kia Niro EV - 25.1-25.4 percent

• 2018-2019 Kia Soul EV - 12.7-22.7 percent

• 2021 Polestar 2 - 12.2 percent

• 2020 Chevrolet Bolt EV - 11.2-12.1 percent

• 2018 Nissan Leaf - 11.1-11.4 percent