Re: It will retail for just $35,000
"Still sounds expensive to me, but then again, my 1999 Civic is probably worth less than a thousand."
Recently we spent a week with our car's parking space next to one occupied by a Cayenne. Ours is a little Toyota estate, none too new. Out of curiosity I looked things up in the guide and discovered that the wonders of depreciation made ours worth about £1000 more than the Cayenne.
I mention this because there are two important factors to consider with the Model 3: Insurance - so far electric cars have tended to be very high indeed presumably because of potential specialised repair costs - and depreciation. As electric cars are likely to improve very fast, I suspect that too will be very high. Musk is trying to offset this by claiming that all the equipment is on board to allow regular improvements to autonomy, but you don't know what is going to be available in 2020 - including electronics that are two generations of Moore's Law further on.
The value of a 1999 Civic may be close to zero but, like a boat, an electric car at the moment looks like something that runs on large infusions of money.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
