According to Electrek.com, the electric car company has been trying to put everything in place to deliver a record number of Model 3’s to buyers in the United States in order to help people take advantage of the federal tax credit.
The federal tax credit available to Tesla buyers will fall to $3,750 for cars delivered on or after Jan. 1, then will be halved again on July 1 and go away completely in 2020. Tesla expected to phase out the more expensive Model 3 that starts at nearly $50,000, before incentives.
The automaker planned on liquidating every car in its US inventory by today but still managed to build some inventory. Tesla and Elon Musk have been promoting the Model 3 non-stop the last few weeks with Musk tweeting again on Saturday:
Reminder to US buyers that the $7500 tax credit drops in half in about 48 hours. Order online at Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 30, 2018
According to the New York Times, last week, Musk even promised to to reimburse customers if delivery problems caused them to get a tax credit of $3,750 instead of $7,500.
While still having a little over 3,000 Model 3’s is really not that bad, it may be that Tesla is seeing peak demand in the U.S. for this particular configuration of the Model 3. Tesla is moving Model 3 production to Europe in January, probably knowing the tax credit phase-out would curtail sales of the current model.
So, Tesla will maybe be left with a small inventory — unless they can still get some buyers today.
