Why almost everyone was wrong about Tesla’s cash flow situation

Re:Why almost everyone was wrong about Tesla’s cash flow sit... by seer on Friday October 26, 2018 @11:09AM (#18309918)

I'm not sure how much it varies country to country - I'm in Eastern Europe myself (lower labor costs, higher import / taxes etc) but my trusty toyota corolla was bought for about $3000 with no "friend discounts", just a general recommendation that Japanese cars are reliable and a bit of quick looking around the local car craigslist equivalents. I've been driving it for about 7 years (12 years old in total) with no major repairs whatsoever, only routine maintenance and a couple of bodywork fixes that we can contribute to "user error".

And its not that I'm an outlier or anything, most of my friends have stories in the same ballpark. To be honest I even paid a bit too much due to my inexperience, if you're smart and know the right people you could get a better car at close to half the price.

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Re:Why almost everyone was wrong about Tesla’s cash flow sit... by jjoonathan on Friday October 26, 2018 @11:16AM (#18310004)

> Eastern Europe

Geographic variation in pricing not only fully explains the difference but actually leaves me mildly surprised that the difference is so small.

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Re:Why almost everyone was wrong about Tesla’s cash flow sit... by PeterisP on Friday October 26, 2018 @11:47AM (#18310329)

Arbitrage exists - the difference can't be that big because if it becomes so, then lots of people just drive used cars across half a continent to resell them.

International movement of used cars is a big business, generally from more wealthy countries (where more people buy new cars) to less wealthy ones, but also to cover gaps in the market if there's a disbalance in some sector e.g. a surplus of used vans because of some large company selling them off, or a lack of a particular model that's randomly gotten in fashion somewhere.

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