Estimated cost to build Tesla Model 3 — $28,000
German experts say parts and labor on the latest Tesla run $28,000
We have an idea of how much a Tesla Model 3 costs to buy.
The electric car has been touted as coming with a $35,000 price tag, but it is expected that a Model 3 costing that amount won’t be a reality until next year. The cars currently coming off the assembly line have been said to cost closer to $50,000, due to extras and technological bells and whistles that lift the Model 3’s price nearer to the luxury-car level.
One of the basic tenets of business is to get the cost of a product down as much as possible, sell that product for as much as possible and make as much of a profit as possible. So, just how much does it cost to make a Model 3?
Well, according to some engineers in Germany… about $28,000.
That’s what the Electrek blog, which reports on the electric, autonomous vehicle and clean car industry, says. Electrek cited the German magazine WirtschaftsWoche, which said it spoke with German engineers who had completed a teardown of the Model 3 and who determined that the car’s materials and logistics costs come to $18,000, with another $10,000 coming from the labor required to build the vehicle.
(By the way, you’ll need to brush up on your highschool German to read that WirtschaftsWoche article.)
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for
comment on the report, or what its Model 3 production costs are. However, that
didn’t stop Tesla’s main man, Chief Executive Elon Musk from giving his thumbs up to the Model 3 article, or production costs:
For its part, Electrek said it would probably be smart to take the Model 3’s $28,000
production price “with a grain of salt,” in part because Musk has said that Tesla can’t, for now, build the car at a profit. However, Musk did say that a big ramp-up in Model 3 production could end up dropping the car’s assembly price to a point where it would be very profitable for Tesla.
Right now, Tesla maintains it is on track to roll 5,000 Model 3 cars a week off its production line by the end of June.