Elon Musk Announces Further Reduction in Tesla Model S Prices, Now Starts at $69,420

Elon Musk has announced further price cut of the base Tesla Model S, which will now retail for $69,420. CEO Elon Musk too on to Twitter to announce the new pricing saying that the “gauntlet has been thrown down" in response to Lucid’s announcement that its 406-mile Air sedan would be priced to compete with Tesla’s larger sedan.

If you look closely, the pricing reveals Elon Musk’s sense of humor as seen in his previous tweets. A tweet in July mentioned “S3XY" (a play on the word sexy, made up of Tesla’s model names S, 3, X and Y models) written in gold across the seat. In 2018, Musk tweeted about taking Tesla private at $420 a share, which ended up in a massive fine from the SEC and Musk being removed as Tesla chairman.

He then, decided to change the Model S pricing to $69,420. Funny, isn’t it. Not only this, Tesla also cut the price of its Model S “Long Range" sedan by 4% in the United States, days after the electric-car maker reported record quarterly deliveries.

The company, which is expected to report third-quarter results on Oct. 21, cut the price to $71,990 from $74,990 in the United States. It also trimmed the starting price of Model S by 3% in China. Earlier this month, the carmaker cut the starting price of its Chinese-made Model 3 sedans by about 8% to 249,900 yuan ($36,805).

Tesla said it delivered 139,300 vehicles in the third quarter, a record for the company, yet shares fell as some analysts doubted if Tesla could hit its ambitious year-end target. Shares of the automaker, which have surged this year, were up nearly 1% at $445.25 in premarket trading.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also revealed that the company will launch its next-gen Full Self Driving (FSD) set of features to a limited number of expert and careful drivers on October 20. “Limited FSD beta releasing on Tuesday next week, as promised. This will, at first, be limited to a small number of people who are expert and careful drivers," Musk said in a tweet on Monday.

The FSD add-on currently costs $8,000 but Musk has indicated that the price will rise further as new features are enabled. Musk has been talking about FSD a lot in the past couple of years, calling it an investment in the future that will become far more valuable once fully autonomous cars get regulatory approval.

Tesla also rolled out the 2019.40.2 version of its software to some electric vehicle owners and this update includes features like Adjacent Lane Speed Adjustments and Stop Sign Detection that are required for FSD.

With Inputs from Reuters, IANS

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