Tesla and Elasticities: An Economics 101 Lesson

Mike Smitka
Prof of Economics, W&L

An elasticity is a qualitative and quantitive tool to put bounds on real-world behavior. If a change in one variable leads to a more than proportional change in another, then the relationship is "elastic." Numerically, it's the ratio of percentage changes. Here I apply it to a simple but interesting case, Tesla's $1,100 price cut.

The demand for cars is not very elastic in price. There are lots of 300+ models to choose from in the US, from a variety of manufacturers and in types ranging from compact cars such as the Fiat 500 and the Smart to full-sized pickup trucks replete with towing packages and other options. Then there are performance cars, and most popular of all, small SUVs and crossovers, such as the Toyota RAV4 and the Honda CR-V. There's very little substitutability across vehicle classes; someone looking for a pickup truck does not cross-shop the Fiat 500. The price isn't terribly important. And so demand for any single model is inelastic – it can help sway the choice against a similar vehicle.

(Mea culpa: my wife drives that latter. I prefer a smaller sedan with a stick shift, in my case a Chevy Cruze. My son drives a Subaru Forester, bought used, and we have a F-250 pickup to handle the tasks of living in the woods.)

...a 2% drop in price leads to an 8% drop in gross revenue and a 60% drop in net profit...

For the Tesla Model 3, there are (at least according to afficionados) no similar vehicles. Someone either wants one (and has the money to make that happen), or they don't. A $1,100 difference in price, or a decrease of about 2% with average sales prices (ASP) of $50,000, won't lead to many more sales – if you can't afford a $50,000 vehicle then you probably can't afford one at $49,000. It might make a big of difference if you're comparison-shopping against a similar-sized BMW or Audi. Let me ere on the high side, and assume a 1.0 elasticity. That is, the 2% drop in price will push up the quantity demanded by 2%. As a result, total revenue for Tesla will be unchanged: the drop in price will be just offset by the increase in sales.

I ignore the impact of the phasing out of Federal tax credits. As of January 1st, those drop from $7500 to $3750 so net of the just-announced price cut by Tesla, the bottom line cost to US consumers has in fact risen by $2650.

But for a company with a parlous balance sheet, what matters isn't total revenue but profits and cashflow. Now Tesla claims a gross profit margin of 24%. They don't calculate that in the same way as other car companies – despite self-proclaimed industry-best margins Tesla has never earned a full-year profit. But for the sake of argument, and to keep numbers round, let's us 25%. Given an ASP of $50,000, they then have a gross profit of $12,500 per vehicle. And they've just cut that by 8%.

The bottom line is clear: if Tesla is extraordinarily lucky, they'll maintain total revenue. But they'll earn 10% less gross profit on that revenue. With automotive revenue of $6.3 billion, and a gross margin of 25%, they've gross income of $1.6 billion. Lop off 8%, and this falls by $126 million. So assuming nothing else goes wrong relative to 2018Q4, net income falls from $210 million to $80 million, or a 60% drop in net profit. While timing may affect that – lower sales in Q1 as Model 3s sit on ships en route to Europe, and then higher revenues in Q2 as they make their way to customers – the impact is permanent.

Note that at each step along the way I have rounded numbers in favor of a better profit number for Tesla. Tesla has also cut prices for Model S and Model X over the past 6 months, without any increase in sales. I don't try to factor that in, again to provide a more optimistic case for Tesla.