Attack of the Chinese Tesla Clones
If there’s one place you can knock the Tesla Model S, a car so good it “broke” Consumer Reports’ rating system, it’s cost. The electric sedan is crazy expensive, starting at $71,000 and topping six figures fully loaded. The Model X SUV unveiled last month runs $143,000 decked out with a nice trim package.
To temper its elitist image and lure more consumers, Tesla promises to launch the smaller, more affordable Model III in 2017. CEO Elon Musk hopes the car’s $35K sticker price sends a positive message to investors and critics who question the company’s long-term potential for profitability and growth. After all, it’s one thing to sell 50,000 cars a year to rich people. It’s quite another to sell hundreds of thousands of cars to those who are merely well off.
In China, though, where non-union labor remains cheap, supply chains are as supple as they are massive, and attitudes toward intellectual property are quite lax, some aspiring auto barons think they can undercut Tesla by, well, ripping off Tesla. These brash entrepreneurs plan to build near carbon copies of the Model S and sell them for significantly less than the real thing.
