Tesla is already offering low 1.99% financing on six-year loans for customers looking to buy the $48,990 long-range, all-wheel-drive Model Y, the series production version of the newer car that debuted in early April. Gone are the days when Tesla had to keep hiking prices to avoid being hopelessly swamped by demand. Now CEO Elon Musk has to fight for every new customer.
Just weeks after the launch of the Model Y refresh, a slightly newer version of the five-year-old crossover, Tesla informed buyers on Sunday they can already have the car at a discounted financing rate. Interested buyers can qualify for a six-year loan at 1.99% if they put down $3,999 for the purchase of a long-range all-wheel-drive version. By contrast, financing rates for some of Tesla’s upscale models top 6%.
It’s actually kind of tragic. Tesla would have been, no, should have been a key domestic EV maker. They should have been our global offering in a strategically important industry. But instead, they’re rapidly becoming a pariah. And it’s all because of one man. One terrible, terrible man.
This is a very, very important lesson that America MUST learn: just because someone is rich, that does not mean they are smart, or good, or trustworthy. Personality matters, a lot. I am certain that if Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning could go back, they would tell Mr. Musk “no thank you, we’re not interested in your investment,” even though they really needed the money. It wasn’t worth it, it came with strings attached. Within just a few years of taking Musk’s money, both men were forced out of the company, and Musk was well on his way to convincing millions of Americans that we was a super genius who singlehandedly invented the electric car.
In this country, we have not only tolerated megalomaniacal narcissists like Musk, we’ve celebrated them. That has to stop. Look at where it has gotten us. One of them is president now! If we don’t learn from this, and start to see men like Trump and Musk as the disease that they are, we are doomed. If we don’t get these men under control, they will control us.
Except Tesla never made good cars. It was always clear that real car manufacturers will learn to make good EVs before Tesla learns to make good cars. For some time Tesla was supported by fans who could ignore major design flaws and investors looking for short term profits. Long term best case scenario for Tesla was always to just become another, normal car maker.
For a brief window Tesla was the only company making a “good” EV in that all their competition was making cars with sub 150 mile range (sometimes significantly so). Teslas have always been bad cars, but they were the best EV. Then all the other manufacturers finally got the memo that they couldn’t keep ignoring the EV market and grudgingly made decent EVs which almost by default made Tesla the worst EV on the market.
i lot of people like the ioniq 5, im guesisng people are waiting for rivian to come out. anyone outside of the us, is probably going for BYDs.
That’s simply not true, the last couple of years quality is up massively. The highland Model 3 is fine really, sure there are some things Tesla could’ve done better, but that goes for most manufacturers. I drive one and I haven’t had any big issues, I do have some annoyances though, but there are also things the car does way better than its competition. People also seem to forget that Tesla was pushing out over the air feature updates while VW was manually updating their ID3 range on the parking lot in the docks.
The Model 3 and Y in its current state, at its prices before these wild discounts and 0% financing, is objectively a very competitive car and would probably made the top 3 list in every country in 2025 and possibly 2026. Let me put it differently, if Ford sold the Model 3 and Y, it would outsell any other vehicle on the planet. The only reason the Model Y will not be the best selling car this year is Musk and by extension the direction the US took with the elections. At least here in Europe, people don’t really want to buy a Nazi symbol of a car. And frankly, if I could get rid of mine today, I would, not because the car is bad, but because of the Nazi in charge.
i remember at the time he bought XITTER, some idiot on reddit i believe went ahead and purchased a 140k version of tesla, eventhough many people said it was such poor quality and warned him from buying it, and he later posted a video of how cheap the insides were, you could easily rip the cheap plastic linings of the inside of car.
You have to KEEP TEACHING the lesson. Because when you’re 25 years older, and kids are just coming into the world, they don’t ‘get’ how bad it is. They just hear it. I heard all about how WWII went, who was bad who was good blah blah.
Look now, we have Gaza. Look now, we have Trump. AfD in Germany.
Where do you think we failed (globally)? Like, how have we (seemingly) made a 180 in just under 100 years?
Capitalism
He also forced some dumb features in the electric car…like the stupid door handles, and lack of buttons.
remember he cancelled the lidar/Radar in his older models and disable dit for people who owned it, and went for cheaper camera system.
Full “self” driving that only uses cameras and nothing else such as radar/lidar.
“delete!”
teslas have always been defective, its only because Elon was able to market it better.
just because someone is rich, that does not mean they are smart, or good, or trustworthy
The richer someone is seems to correlate with the absence of one or more of those traits.
Don’t need to be smart to be born into money, which is where basically all the richest have come from.
Don’t need to learn to treat people with compassion if you can afford to entirely opt out of public society
Don’t need to be trustworthy if you have enough to pay people to be around you.
Past a certain bank balance, a person loses their humanity.
maybe if one is truely from rag to riches they will understand, and not to pretend “im poor and made lots of money” people, that come from well off family but not super rich.
Literally no one goes from rags to billionaire.
That’s just a lie they try to sell so enough people think they could be in the group that benefits one day.
I think the education needs to go further. Being billionaire rich is in itself a huge red flag; and people having this much money should immediately cause people to distrust them on every level because nobody gets that rich from honest work, from paying their employees fairly, from caring about the environment and general wellbeing of mankind.
Being a billionaire should disqualify people from owning and/or having shares in any economical sector deemed essential to societal wellbeing, not to mention from holding any kind of public office or even from exercising any kind of political agenda at all. They’re rich, they don’t need representation. They actually can take care of themselves.
australia has the opposite in many ways… we have a thing called tall poppy syndrome where we internally believe everyone should be equal so much that we sometimes tend to tear people down for doing better than others
a middle ground would be nice
Yeah bruh, I am in the market for an EV to replace my old Camry. Zero chance I’d ever look at Tesla. Zero.
Not a new Tesla. But a used Tesla, if the car is good, why not. The nutsack won’t be getting anything out of it
We just got a good deal on a used Kia Niro EV. Pretty happy with it so far.
Toyota makes excellent EVS. Also the Hyundai Ioniq 6 looks pretty hot.
people liked the ioniq 5, my parent is driving a leased ioniq 5. the only thing is the flimsy looking door handles, why cant they just make a normal handle.
I’m trying to buy a car, Tesla hasn’t been on the list for good reasons. A Kei truck is very tempting.
I dislike Slate based solely on the fact that their video has appeared at the top of my YouTube home page several times, even though I generally don’t interact with videos about cars.
Point taken but it reminds me of an old proverb: hate not the player, as the game is that which should be despised.
I appreciate that it’s the first different take on an EV or cars in general since, well, Tesla? The customizability options, low starting price, and they’ve done some fun marketing stunts so far. There may be plenty of reasons to be skeptical about it and perhaps it’ll even flop or be ghostware, but (the option for) a non-fastback crossover SUV with physical buttons has me, again, hopeful.
He thought he could be Henry Ford, but Ford was a bit less overt in his Nazism. And, it should be remembered, Ford almost destroyed the company before being forced out by his own family. There are downsides to one man being the image the public has of a company.
family guy did made cutscenes of FORD, and his obsession with using his vehicle against jews.
A swastikar will park in front of my house when I get groceries on Sunday and I HATE IT. I don’t want anyone thinking that’s our dumpster or going to vandalize it and accidentally hit my sweet cute lil car. 🤬
The only reason I’d be caught driving a tesla is if it had a completely true bumper sticker that said “I bought it after he blew his brains out.”
Lol
I wouldnt drive a Tesla if they paid me to drive it.
better a broke bitch than a fascist
they are death traps, even thier regular models are lacking QC in many places. there is a reason you never hear people buying a used one. i only heard of a Clout chaser doing this once.
50k is way too expensive for a car in 2025.
BYD sells theirs for 12k.
Bring them to the US or compete you fucking nepobaby fascists.
Prices in China:
BYD Atto 3: 16k USD.
BYD Seal: 25k USD.
Tesla 3: 32k USD.Prices in Germany:
BYD Atto 3: 33k USD.
BYD Seal: 45k USD.
Tesla 3: 46k USD.Comparing prices like you do just looks like bad faith. And I’m not saying this to support Tesla but to highlight that there is some serious BYD shilling going on here.
You want Tesla to compete? I guess the US already has prison slave labour and reduced safety measures for Teslas, it’s just missing some billions of US tax money flowing in and you got what you wished for.
Not a good idea? But China doing exactly that is OK, because US bad equals China good?
Maybe putting tariffs on chinese imported EVs (like the EU does) is the reasonable thing to do to protect your own industry and jobs.
I mean… if you want a 12k car you can have a 12k car, but don’t expect it to be as good as a 50k car, even if the 50k car is only as good as a 40k car.
Edit: But also the new Y RWD is going for like 38k after rebates, so it’s not even a 50k car.
28k value at best. It’s a damn Tesla not some spaceship with the ability to be your housewife.
You think a Tesla is only as good as top trim Corolla sedan?
Edit: To be clear, I’m not knocking the Corolla, it’s a great car.
Well the Corolla will be built better, for sure.
The 12k BYDs are better build quality than Teslas
What can a Tesla do that a BYD can’t?
OP was talking about a 12k BYD vehicle.
If you want to get a similarly priced BYD you can get similar features, but in terms of that 12k car OP wants
A model 3/Y has
bigger battery (more range)
better sound system
more HP/Torque
more storage capacity
more airbags
multi zone climate control
bigger touch screen
I’m sure the list goes on and on. You get what you pay for.
Edit: I think the BYD Seal is the model 3 competitor in price/features.
A Tesla probably has more issues out of the factory than my 2001 RWD Toyota Tacoma which is rust bitten because it was owned by a water company on the coast. That is to say a Tesla is barely worth its weight in scrap.
I’d say it really depends on the factory here. I’ve heard some very bad things about the US-based ones though
Most of its issues are design and engineering related. Over use of computer systems and a fucky if functional body being the most obvious issues, then there’s the fact that I’m pretty sure they allow way to much power into the battery. Those three things alone are enough for me to question its worth since if one fails the others won’t help, let alone shit like the doors.
Wow… it’s crazy. I was just thinking about it and honestly I don’t think I’d drive a Tesla if it was given to me with a bow on the roof. That’s some serious brand implosion right there.
Also, I know of at least one company in my area (where a friend of mine works) who used to have a Tesla fleet for their employees and who have all been switched to Polestars now.
I might take it apart and put the innards in my 85 Bluebird for fun. But it’s probably DRM’d so who knows when it’ll kill itself. It’d be like driving an HP printer - get in one day and the bastard will say PC LOAD LETTER, or more contemporary, “Problem with the ink system.”
It’d be like driving an HP printer
I vaguely remember the Nazi fuck running the company literally pulling the Disney app from the car via software update because Disney stopped buying Twitter ads. Even HP doesn’t have that kind of turn around on fuckery.
one thing you dont do is MESS with the MOUSE.
haha, they know better than to drive around tesslars, that could get vandalized.
Don’t live in the US, but you’d probably have to pay me to be seen driving one of those. I can afford not to and dignity has a price
Offering low interest rate finance is not a “discount” lol
Yes it is. Low interest rates are literally a discount on high interest. Lower interest reduces the overall cost of the loan by a shitload.
Interest is an increase in price*. Lower interest isn’t a discount, it’s a smaller increase. Calling it a discount is like punching you instead of stabbing you and calling it nonviolence.
*In exchange for better payment conditions, but that’s not relevant to the point.
I’m really not sure you understand how discounts work. Or interest rates.
Tesla’s do not come with interest. Interest that you get by taking out a loan to purchase one is a price increase. You’re paying more. A lower interest rate doesn’t mean you’re getting a discount, it just means that you’re only paying a smaller amount increase. The car itself is still the same price it was before - what is changing is how much extra interest you’re repaying on top of the cars price. The interest isn’t on the car’s price, it’s on the amount of money you borrowed.
You’re just playing semantics. Lots of customers finance cars. Before the “discount” they had to pay $X/month, now they pay $(X-discount)/month. They literally pay less each month because of the discounted, subsidized rates. It’s a discount for folks that finance through Tesla. I’m not sure why you think you’re the only person that understands the simple concept of interest here. You’ve just decided that the definition of discount only applies to MSRP arbitrarily. Is a point of sale tax credit not a discount either?
You’re just playing semantics.
I’m playing semantics? I’m not the one saying that a lower interest rate is a discount. An interest rate is by itself a price increase, not a discount. The interest rate is on the LOAN, not on the car. The car is the same price as it was. The LOAN is always more than the price of the car.
This is like saying that you get a “discount” if you pay the RRP in cash. You don’t, you’re just not paying interest on a loan. It’s not a discount.
I’m not sure why you think you’re the only person that understands the simple concept of interest here.
Because you guys calling this a “discount on the price of the new model Y” clearly don’t lol. It is a simple concept, yet you guys are showing again and again that you don’t get it. When interest rates on mortgage decrease you don’t say “house prices have just been discounted!”, do you?
No thanks Leon Hitler, you can shove your vehicles where the sun does not shine. I will stick with my Leaf and it will not burn down my garage.
Just seeing a Tesla reminds me of the arrogance of musk saying he “deleted” jobs. The choice of words tells you what he thinks of us.
Eff him. Never again.
Same. I look at all them in disgust.
Yep, he killed the brand. He probably doesn’t care in the end. But everyone working for Telsa will.
If Musk really cared about Telsa he would have never sided with a Republican lol.
i think he only released the truck because he needed to show the board/shareholders hes worth that 56billion package hes been eyeing since '18
I put the reason for this in song…“Nazi, nazi, bo-botsy-ko-banna-fanna-fo-fawtsy-fe-fi-moe-motsy…nazi!”.
I’ll continue to drive mine. I’ll get a used one once I drive this one into the ground.
If you want to make political stance and go for inferior car? Go right ahead. I don’t give a shit what some CEO does. I’m sure all of you stopped playing blizzard games and avoid everything owned by nestle and for sure aren’t recommending cars running literal slaves camps, right???
Inferior car? Tesla has some of the weakest reliability metrics in the industry which is shocking considering electric drivetrains are far more reliable than ICE.
Modern electric car manufacturing has far surpassed what Tesla can provide at any price point (range, reliability, comfort, you name it) unless you still believe FSD is coming in “just 2 more years bro, and it’ll be free and backwards compatible”
That’s why Tesla has the most cars on the road, the best efficiency, one of the best safety ratings and has countless of people getting +200k miles on them, right? If only we had all these exmples…
You’re gonna pull one of two things, random examples of defect, because no other car has does or BUT CYBERTRUCK THO???
So which one is it?
None of those. I don’t disagree that they USED TO BE the best electric cars.
But that’s in the past. There are very few markets where Tesla has the most market share anymore in 2025. It’s not just because of protests, they’re just not that great compared to the competition anymore. The trend has been worsening for years and Tesla hasn’t brought anything new to counter it.
As I said in my other comment. I’ve tried so many other cars… Unless there’s a car I’m not aware of / got no access to, I strongly disagree. Tesla didn’t release any major updates and they’re still ahead.
Well, I strongly disagree. The metric for complaints and outright hostile customer treatment from Tesla is far larger for any competitor. Even taking into account how many cara they sell. I tries an model 3 and a Y and they did not feel superior to the Kia EV6, Mustang eMach, Hyundai iOniq 5 or tbe ID4, and I did not even look at Chinese cars, or what you call premium from MB, BMW or Audi. I am looking forward to the Mazda e6 and the Ioniq 9 tbh. I have had a Mazda6 2.2L estate for years as a second car and have been satisfied with the performance.
I’m curious to see what Mazda does with a real EV. Their current line up is a joke. I think only Jaguar made a worse EV.
As far as the cars you mentioned? I find it very hard to believe you found those cars to drive better than Tesla. Hell, the Mustang is one of my least enjoyable cars to drive to a point where MG 4 handled and drove better than that mess. The regen even at max is just too weak, their cruise did not handle dual cariageway well, let alone A roads… And really? A VW? Yeah, now you’re not even being serious. They got slammed for being outdated and peddling the same shit for years. There’s more to cars than just drive forward, especially at those prices…
Audi, again, it lacks. It’s a ice brand not adapting to what EV world is and it shows. If you want ice car with battery? Fine, but don’t go and compare it to EVs without talking about the EV part. It’s a shitty representation of someone actually living with the car.
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You sound like an insufferable loser. Are you also terrible at video games?
This comment reads like aggressive cope
Why are you already committed to buying a used Tesla, years before your current one dies? Why make this comment at all?
Because I’ve test driven what’s out there right now. Nothing comes close to my old Tesla and I’m not going to buy a new car from a different brand when used model 3 of the current models will be better value.
People genuinely are ignorant to how advanced the Tesla system is vs the competition. I’m very fortunate to live in dealership hotspot and I’ve driven plenty. Be it byd, kia, Hyundai, Volvo, polestar, mg etc. (Fun thing to do over weekend to kill an hour).
Tesla’s from 2018 are genuinely better than competitors coming out right now. You add the better battery and heat pump from 2021 and your efficiency is basically as good as it gets. I’ve driven enough in my car to understand what makes for a good “range”. It’s all about that efficiency. The latest model 3 is a minor improvement, but still one I’ll happily upgrade to in 5 years time or so when I get close to 170k miles.
But hey, that cybertruck! Or earlier models panel gaps! It’s such useless noise bashing what is the best car anywhere near that price.
Maybe Merc’s, lucid and Rivian have it beat, but they aren’t available here or more than double the cost…
I hope it makes sense. I get outrage at Musk coming from valid places, but I’m not letting a twat ruin something for me. He has more money that god, me buying used car has next to no impact. So why bother?
What a weird thing to say! It must be fun living in your goof troop world with the other morally bankrupt incels.
Do you lie to women and say, “I’m not interested in politics”?
