^ I understand why they rushed it. That manufacturing plant wasn’t cheap and the amount of people willing to pay a ridiculous premium has never been higher. Sure, he could have waited until the summer of 2025 to release a finished product and start selling them en masse for $60K, but why when he can rush them out now for $120K to rich people while he works out the bugs.
Because it costs you sales later.
The CT is not competitive on price (now), it's not competitive in real world use (range / towing, bed size), and it's getting a bunch of bad press due to the issues. It's going to cost sales later. Had they waited until it had a few more bugs worked out it might have been better.
Just my view. I drive an Ioniq 5, the person I work with just got a Y. The Y just came in a cheaper then mine. BUT, you give up a lot for that in terms of creature comforts. He was more or less just shopping on price. Had the Y been a few $ more, he would have been driving an Ioniq.
There are 2 people I know from the LI-EV group who passed on their CT reservations. NOT because of the issues but because of the price. They both got F150L and and could not be happier. BUT, had it taken another year and they could have gotten the $60 (or 65 or 70) CT they might have waited.
It's all just cost.
Side note, having nothing to do with the above but more of a general thing about EV pricing. A big issue I am seeing now is the 'low end' models are really becoming unicorns across the board. Every make seems to have let Nissan along with KIA & Hyundai be the only sub $30K EV makers.
This is going to allow the 1970s all over again with inexpensive cars, coming from China instead of Japan this time, to dominate. And it has NOTHING to do with the cost of manufacture. It's the fact that they are cramming so much stuff in the base models that it's just putting the price up there. If I was looking for a base base base 50 to 75 mile a day total round trip commuter car do I really need a 10 speaker radio, power seats, and all the other crap?
-Dave