What did we learn about Australian Model 3 pricing from the UK ordering page?

When Telsa announced the Model 3, technology and car-loving Australians wanted to know two questions, when and how much. Thanks to a discussion on Twitter, Elon Musk confirmed back in July of 2017, at least one of these answers.. kind of.

Here’s the original tweet in response to Nicholas’ question about the cost of a Model 3 in AUD pricing. Musk’s answer confirmed there would be no Australian tax, a reference to what a number of other tech companies have done in the past. This meant that pricing for the same product was inflated to a number that was simply ‘what the market would bear’ rather than any correlation to the cost of manufacturing with some reasonable profit.

A confirmation that pricing would be US to AUD + import duties and sales tax lent many to create calculators to try and help people understand what local pricing would be, given no official pricing has been announced, something due when our order page goes live.

The question about timing was recently answered by Musk, explaining that the Australian order page would open up shortly after the UK. Well the UK order page is now available, so we’re any day now. In terms of when you’ll actually get the car, that depends on a number of factors, primarily how fast Tesla can make RHD vehicles.

Before we get to order, I thought it was worthwhile running some numbers given current currency exchange values and while these numbers won’t be correct, they should be in the ballpark, supported by what we see in the UK and even Canadian pricing.

Since the Tweet from Elon in 2017, an important change was made to remove import duties from new cars entering Australia from the US as part of our free trade agreement. This means a large part of the ‘import duties’ reference from his tweet, can now be removed from calculations.

There may be a few minor compliance fees etc, mainly leaving just
GST of 10% and the ridiculous Luxury car tax. This assumes Tesla are eating the shipping cost and associated insurance costs of getting your car here in 1 piece.

Click on the image below to see my calculations and let me know if the comments where I got it wrong. You can download a copy of the calculations in XLSX here.

Update
Thanks to feedback in the comments, I had forgotten to enter the values without EV incentives, the spreadsheet has now been updated with the new figures which make it more expensive, speaking to Australia’s lack of EV incentives which may impact the options you end up selecting.

When we convert US prices to AUD, the price of a Model 3 ranges from around $63K up to A$101K. Add full self-driving to this and you’re between $72.5K and A$110.6K.

When we convert the UK prices to AUD (removing VAT and adding GST), the price of a Model 3 ranges from around $64K up to A$100K for the Performance model. Add FSD and that takes the value range up to $72K to $108K. With higher prices coming from this calculation, it makes us glad the conversion is from the US. It is worth noting that Canada numbers are slightly lower again.

It’s important to understand that until the Gigafactory 3 plant in Shanghai China is online, Model 3s coming to Australia will be manufactured in America and shipped to Australia. It is worth noting that the estimated time to ship a vehicle from the US to Australia can be around 50 days.