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Tesla Selling New Cars on Cars.com
@CarDealershipGuy on X.com is one account you should pay attention to. He has a tremendous pulse on new and used car sales and follows Tesla very closely. He posted something today that immediately caught my eye.
Wow -- this is unprecedented.
Tesla has quietly started listing *new* vehicles on @carsdotcom.
Tesla has never sold new cars outside of its main website.
(I'm an investor in Cars dot com) pic.twitter.com/EvLGgmbR7u
— CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) November 10, 2023
This is VERY interesting to me, and the reason for this being interesting is that it never occurred to me that Tesla should try selling its cars through other platforms besides its main website.
This is super smart though because it broadens Tesla's reach. Consumers looking for new cars aren't going to go to Tesla's website only and nowhere else. Tesla is looking for more demand levers and this one is one that I think is going to work.
A demand lever is simply a metaphor to represent Tesla doing more to increase the demand. Think of it like a machine with many levers, and pulling a lever gets the machine to do more work.
In this case, there are two models being shown here from @CarDealershipGuy - a 2023 Tesla Model Y long range and a 2023 Tesla Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive.
This is a great move by Tesla, as Cars.com has an estimated 15.5 million unique site visitors each month. 31% of U.S. car and motorcycle online shop users say they like cars.com.
As I said recently, the Cybertruck is a mobile billboard for Tesla and cars.com is a website location that has millions of humans looking at and shopping for cars. What a brilliant move by Tesla.
You May Also Be Interested In: A Surprising Reason Tesla is Using Truck Transport in Sweden.
A Genius and Sneaky Move by Tesla
Whoever thought of this at Tesla deserves a raise and more stick. Of course, this person could have been Elon Musk, but it could be someone else. Millions more eyeballs are going to be on a website that has Tesla vehicles on it. And they will see the Model 3 RWD for around $40,000. This is a very good deal, especially with a U.S. tax credit.
An X.com use said the cars.com price for the 2023 Tesla Model 3 Performance is about $1,000 more than what is listed on Tesla's website. I checked and found this not to be true.
* Cars.com Perf. Model 3: $50,990
* Tesla.com Perf. Model 3: $50,990
Tesla could advertise the cars for more on cars.com and then redirect to Tesla using a higher price, but Tesla does not appear to be doing this and in my opinion, this is the correct thing to do and is honest and straightforward without trying to "game" or "gimmick" the price.
Supposedly, cars.com has these fees:
* Listing fee: $4.99 for a one-time listing that lasts 30 days
* Carfax report: $35 for an additional report
* Vehicle history report: $15
* Spotlight Ad status: $15
* Include 10 photos of the car
* This information came from Google AI
If Tesla sells vehicles on cars.com, and they sell out, Tesla could make more money selling them there than on Tesla.com. I also went to cars.com to see the purchase for a Model 3 RWD and to see how much the loan was for.
When I did this, I was redirected to the Tesla.com order page for the Model 3 RWD. The price shown on Cars.com is what the Tesla order page had, once again affirming that there are no price differences. Tesla appears to be using cars.com to advertise their cars, but the orders are still handled through Tesla.
Lastly, and this is a very recent update, is that Elon Musk responded to this X.com post and said this is the first he's heard about. Now THAT is very interesting. Where are these new Tesla vehicle entries coming from then?
First I’ve heard of this. Seems odd.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 10, 2023
In Other Tesla News: Tesla Cybertruck - A Mobile Billboard for Tesla Advertising.
What do you think about Tesla selling new cars on Cars.com - is this a smart move by Tesla?
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Jeremy Johnson is a Tesla investor and supporter. He first invested in Tesla in 2017 after years of following Elon Musk and admiring his work ethic and intelligence. Since then, he's become a Tesla bull, covering anything about Tesla he can find, while also dabbling in other electric vehicle companies. Jeremy covers Tesla developments at Torque News. You can follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn to stay in touch and follow his Tesla news coverage on Torque News. Image Credit, Cars.com, Screenshot
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