Tesla says it’ll keep more stores open and raise car prices

Tesla has walked back on its decision to close most of its stores in order to save costs, announced two weeks ago. 

In a blog post Sunday, the company announced it would “keep significantly more stores open than previously announced.” As a result, the company will increase car prices by about 3% on average, globally. 

The silver lining: This will happen for all vehicles except the $35,000 Model 3.

It’s unclear how many stores Tesla will keep open, exactly, and where. The company said that the 10% of stores it had recently closed weren’t performing and would’ve been closed anyway. However, “a few stores in high visibility locations” will be reopened.

Furthermore, another 20% of locations are under review; depending on how they perform “over the next few months,” some will be shut down. 

Tesla says that all sales worldwide will still be done online. Buyers coming into stores will be able to do a test drive, and if they choose to buy a car, they’ll be shown how to do that on their phones. Tesla says that stores will cary a “small number” of cars in inventory so that some buyers can drive away in a Tesla right away. 

While the car price increase certainly isn’t something potential buyers will be happy about, Tesla says they’ll have a week to place their order before prices rise. 

As for the $35,000 Model 3, it’s pretty clear why the company isn’t raising the price of that one; Musk promised that the car will be available at that price point and any increase, especially this close to launch, would likely cause a lot of backlash. Note that the price increase does apply to the more expensive variants of the Model 3.