With SUVs eclipsing every other car sales category in America, it's a shock to see anything but an upward trend among crossovers—but such is the case with the Tesla Model X. Reports from Bloomberg show the EV hasn't seen the U.S. registration figures expected for the EV, a vehicle that was expected to help Tesla expand its production in preparation for the Model 3. Thanks to its gimmicky Falcon doors and $82,500 base price, the Model X seems to receive all the negative press and none of the good PR. What gives?
Many expected the X to follow in the path set by the Model S, the company's luxury sedan that has skyrocketed in sales as of late. IHS Markit shows that the SUV's registrations has fell consistently during the last two quarters, straying away from the luxury SUV uptick we've seen over the past year. Tesla head Elon Musk seems to expected a bit of this in the beginning, but perhaps not as much as current figures show.
Musk was quoted saying:
“Model X became kind of like a technology bandwagon of every cool thing we could imagine all at once...That is a terrible strategy.”
Many market specialists agreed. Jake Fisher, director of automotive testing at Consumer Reports, said in a phone interview with Automotive News:
“SUVs are popular because of utility, and this is an SUV that doesn’t have a lot of utility...The X was a big science experiment to say, ‘How far can we go?’ And they went too far.”
Expect Tesla to take a different approach to the Model 3—for that car, Tesla that will develop and sell the simplest examples first. Musk released in a tweet Monday that he "was an idiot" for not taking the same angle with the Model X, which is something that may be showing now.
