Tesla: The Model 3 is now the best selling luxury car in America - CNN
Tesla's secret
success story: Model 3 is best selling luxury car in America
The fact that the Model 3 is selling in a luxury car price range is not a bad thing for Tesla. Luxury cars are
more profitable than mass-market cars. That's crucial for Tesla's attempt to become profitable and avoid a cash crunch that its critics are expecting.
CEO Elon Musk even acknowledged this the reason the $35,000 Model 3 will have to wait.
"Shipping min cost Model 3 right away
would cause Tesla to lose money & die," he tweeted back in May.
Tesla prefers to use the term "premium sedan" to describe the Model 3, rather than luxury model. The company did not offer a comment for this story.
Beating the competition
But the Model 3 is currently competing with America's luxury brands -- whether or not Tesla wants to admit it. And the numbers show that
it's beating that competition -- by a large margin.
"If look at what the company has done, it's truly unprecedented," said Rebecca Lindland, senior analyst for Cox Automotive. "It's not only almost single handedly jump started the electric vehicle segment, it's moved from a niche automaker to be a
mainstream competitor for the luxury brands."
Tesla announced Tuesday that it sold 55,840 Model 3s in the third quarter, nearly all of which went to American customers. The Audi Q5 was the next bestselling luxury model in the United States -- Audi sold 21,000 of them over the past three months.
To put the Model 3's
success in perspective, Tesla sold more Model 3s than GM sold Cadillacs or Buicks -- of any model. The Model 3 also outsold all Honda Acuras and Ford's Lincolns and Tesla sold more Model 3s than Lexus, BMW, Mercedes and Audi sold cars (when including SUVs, the big four luxury makers each outsold the Model 3).
The Model 3
surpassed those established brands even though Tesla doesn't advertise and, in most cases, Tesla has far fewer stores than its competitors' dealership network.
Quiet dominance