Even a dedicated environmentalist might be hesitant to upgrade from a Prius to a Model 3 when there’s no federal tax credit to narrow the cost gap and when adding a few basic options pushes the price tag beyond $40,000.
I despise this thought process. I got into arguments when the Prius first came out about this. If you have a perfectly working car, even if it's got bad gas mileage, the best thing you can do for the environment is to not buy a new car. If, on the other hand, you are planning to buy a new car for other reasons, picking a Prius or Tesla becomes a better option (depending on who you talk to).
In any case, I hope this is wrong. If the Model 3 has the self driving features that are supposedly in the near future of the S, I would buy one tomorrow, even at the $50k the article talks about. I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't what keeps pushing it out: if it can be the first self-driving (or even mostly self driving) car available to the middle class, I suspect it will completely change the market.
For us that lives in the rural areas, having a car is sort of like having electricity or running water. The question for us is more like: should I have just one pickup, one pickup and a prius or one pickup and a tesla?
I despise this thought process. I got into arguments when the Prius first came out about this. If you have a perfectly working car, even if it's got bad gas mileage, the best thing you can do for the environment is to not buy a new car. If, on the other hand, you are planning to buy a new car for other reasons, picking a Prius or Tesla becomes a better option (depending on who you talk to).
In any case, I hope this is wrong. If the Model 3 has the self driving features that are supposedly in the near future of the S, I would buy one tomorrow, even at the $50k the article talks about. I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't what keeps pushing it out: if it can be the first self-driving (or even mostly self driving) car available to the middle class, I suspect it will completely change the market.
For us that lives in the rural areas, having a car is sort of like having electricity or running water. The question for us is more like: should I have just one pickup, one pickup and a prius or one pickup and a tesla?