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How I Used and Abused My Tesla – What a Tesla Looks Like After 100,000 Miles

194 points by taylorwc 10y ago

matt_morgan 10y ago
Everything about cars is changing fast. I was a skeptic, now I'm sold (not just owing to this article, but this is a great example).
- castratikron 10y ago
  Together with electric cars, autonomous driving, and ride-brokering services like Uber and Lyft, we really are in a primordial soup phase of transportation. There's going to be some rapid changes even in the next 5 or 10 years.
vaishaksuresh 10y ago
>However, once people realize they can pay $35,000 for a killer car that can earn them $30,000 in a year by simply pressing a button and telling your car to go pick up passengers for you while you work or sleep — it’s game over. That is not happening in the near future. At least not in a meaningful scale.
- msoad 10y ago
  And if it does happen, you will not be the one owning and profiting from those cars...
  - Zyst 10y ago
    Yeah, I don't see why companies like Uber and Lyft would, so to say, share a piece of the pie, instead of buying these types of cars themselves. I could see competing products (Apps) with less infrastructure launching this business model though. So I guess it might exist in one way or another in the end.
    - aianus 10y ago
      I was going to post a response on how they wouldn't have enough money from private sources to build that many taxis but it seems it'd cost only ~$23 billion to replace every single taxi in the United States with a Model S. That's shockingly cheap.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    Well, you could do it to defray some of the cost of the car by making use of its idle hours, but it probably wouldn't make sense to buy a car just (or even mostly) to rent it out, for much the same reason that individuals don't do it today. Plus, when Teslas are usable as self-driving cars, the value of the rides provided will drop precipitously -- that figure would be more like $5000, and you'd have to lock up usable hours for it and perhaps pay some penalty to renege on specific hours.
    - prostoalex 10y ago
      Those two effects are mutually opposing forces - are car owners willing to take the risk of someone contaminating their car by smoking, spilling, eating, puking or having sex to earn a pretty penny?
      - wolf550e 10y ago
        I think all robotaxis will have inward facing dashcams that transmits into a vault in the cloud in near real time. If the car comes back undamaged, the video is deleted. People who hire robotaxis might need to have money in escrow if they don't have enough reputation.
        vertex-four 10y ago
        Escrow really doesn't exist on a personal level today - why would people suddenly go from the current situation to being perfectly find putting hundreds/thousands of dollars in an escrow account in the future? What do we do about people who can't afford that?
        vishvananda 10y ago
        We have the equivalent for car and room rentals. The escrow is just a hidden feature of our credit cards. If you try to rent a car without a credit card, you are usually required to put down a deposit.
  - vaishaksuresh 10y ago
    Right! Why would I buy a car when I can get a self-driving car to pick me up and drop me off when I need?
- namlem 10y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if Nevada had this by 2022.
- ghaff 10y ago
  There are these things called markets. I don't expect this particular scenario to happen anytime soon. But I pretty much guarantee that if I can buy $OBJECT in a competitive market and rent it out for some ridiculous rate of return in a competitive market, competition for that renting will drive down prices until it's not a ridiculous rate of return any longer.
maxxxxx 10y ago
I wonder when the free charging is over. That energy still has to be produced somehow somewhere.
- mikeash 10y ago
  It's likely that the Model 3 will not include free Supercharging, so that's probably when it'll be over as far as when they start selling cars that don't get it for free. As for existing cars, never. Free charging is part of what you get with the car, and they'd be breaking that contract if they changed it unilaterally. Fortunately, electricity is usually pretty cheap, and on average the money they set aside from each car for running the Superchargers will match or exceed the cost of running them.
  - sammydavis 10y ago
    It's not really free today. If you buy less than the 85kwh battery, it costs $2000. If you buy 85 or higher, it's included.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      It's included on all cars they sell right now. The old Model S 60 had it as a $2,000 option, but the new one has it built in. Of course, it's never really free, us customers pay for it one way or another. "Included and unlimited" is probably a better way to describe it.
- baddox 10y ago
  A speculation I read often is that Tesla will continue offering free charges to Tesla vehicles and will pay for it by charging to charge (hmm, how to better phrase that) non-Tesla electric vehicles.
  - pyromine 10y ago
    Suggested rephrasing. >will pay for it by charging to charge will subsidize supercharger access for Tesla vehicles via selling access to non-Tesla Electric vehicles
dragonwriter 10y ago
> However, once people realize they can pay $35,000 for a killer car that can earn them $30,000 in a year by simply pressing a button and telling your car to go pick up passengers for you while you work or sleep Long before that is the case, there'd be no incentive for the manufacturer to sell the car at all; they'd make more money just pushing the button themselves the minute the car rolled off the assembly line.
- bmh_ca 10y ago
  You raise an important point. I imagine selling the cars externalizes the cost of financing the car and risks associated with the service.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I imagine selling the cars externalizes the cost of financing the car and risks associated with the service. Sure, and that makes sense in most realistic cases. A $35,000 car that returns an expected $30,000/year isn't a realistic case. Anywhere remotely close to that, and the case for selling the cars to consumers to realize (reduced) returns more quickly and insulate the manufacturer from risk just isn't there. Heck, even if the company decides they don't want to be in the business of owning the fleet, the fact that it is expected to return $30K a year means that the price that can be supported will be much higher (or, conversely, the fact that the car can be sold for $35K will drive down the returns as more people buy the car, and supply drives down market clearing price for all the productive uses.)
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Not really they can externalize the risks on their own. But if they own the cars they can save a metric ton of money. You would be surprised just how much of the cost of a mid range car is in the interior not only because they need to outsource those materials and gadgets usually but because the interior is one of the few things that is still done mostly manually. An autonomous car that drives people around doesn't need an infotainment system, doesn't need fancy driver and side passenger seats doesn't need tons of stuff. Heck you would be able to take out the driver/passenger side completely out of the picture if you are designing a dedicated autonomous taxi. Add to that all the other crap that every car now has to have to be competitive and it adds up to a metric ton of saving. Ford/GM/Whoever can design the cheapest simplest shittiest car they can think off that no one would ever want to buy because it doesn't have 5 different suspension settings and xband radio that sync with your phone to get you your latest podcasts and a climate controlled cup holder that keeps you drink cool in the summer and warm in the winter, seat warmers padded pedals and that turbo charger because when buying a 30K it's 0-60 is still important for no apparent reason. They can cut the cost of making the car by probably 50% easily if they don't have to built it to compete in the market, no one cares about 0-60 or xband when they take a 15min uber ride. And not only would you save money on the manufacturing you would save tons of money by being able to recycle the cars afterwards, you can get a very large part of the cost of the BOM of a car by recycling it and since car manufacturers basically say bye bye to the car once they ship it to the dealer they never see a penny out of it. The next big saving/cost reduction is not having to deal with customers a very large portion of the cost of a car is the infrastructure and network a car manufacturer has to set up to support the car. They have to provide service for the first 3 years 100,000 miles - that's gone, they have to setup a network of authorized dealers and provide support and training - that's gone, they have to setup a network of authorized repair and service providers - that's gone. They have to track every car and know where and when it was sold and where it is if they need to do a product recall - that's gone or well every easy since they run all the cars. They have to support the car by law by providing replacement parts sometimes for decades depending on the country which means they either build considerably more parts than they need or have to continue to have the ability to construct them for years which is expensive as duck - this is also gone. Heck the advertisement costs alone is probably couple of 100's of millions a year globally if not N/A only, take that out too because now you don't need to tell people what's in your new Fjord Mikata M30 because you aren't selling direct to customers anymore. If you can reduce the cost of the car by 50%, and get 60-80% of the cost of the BOM back by recycling it after 3-5 years it's a no brainer to cut the middle man and stop selling cars to people period. When take out all of that the financing becomes a non-issue the cars are assets not only that they have value but they also generate income even if Ford/GM needs financing they won't have issues getting it for the same reason that for individuals it's easier to get financing for a work vehicle than for a leisure car.
mkhalil 10y ago
Am I the only one who feels like depreciation should of been taken into consideration when he was calculating how much it cost?
- blakes 10y ago
  I think deprecation should only be taken into consideration if one is planning on selling the car in the future, and I get the feeling that he is planning on driving that car into the ground.
  - aardvark291 10y ago
    In which case the value will reach $0. That's called depreciation...
    - roninb 10y ago
      I think the point being made was, if you don't plan on selling something, does it matter what it's worth? As in, I'm not going to factor my child's value into my assets since I'm not going to sell it. Or in the OP's case, since his car will never be sold, it's not relevant how much value he's losing by keeping it for x years. Not that the car's value doesn't depreciate, just that the value of the car isn't ever important after the initial cost.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - sangnoir 10y ago
        > I think the point being made was, if you don't plan on selling something, does it matter what it's worth Yes, it matters. There are a lot of intangible assets that are not sold (such as Goodwill), even those can be given quantifiable value
        roninb 10y ago
        Right, but the author was estimating cost over the lifetime of the vehicle, not possible breakeven down the road if they get bored and sell or some other general use-case. In the author's case, is the up front cost they included not enough? I guess maybe you're being pedantic and saying everything's value is always important to make measured decisions, but that seems lame in this discussion so I assume I'm glossing over some fundamental fact.
eddieh 10y ago
Flagstaff, AZ gets electricity from the Cholla Power Plant in Northern Arizona. The plant burns coal and is considered one of the dirtiest power stations in the nation. Just consider that owning a Tesla or any plug-in electric in Flagstaff is completely backwards.
- monocasa 10y ago
  It's still much more efficient than if all of the cars had been running gasoline engines.
- outworlder 10y ago
  From a city pollution point of view, it is not, as you have no exhaust. And you are only a power plant upgrade away to have all cars automatically "switch".
  - eddieh 10y ago
    Actually, from a city pollution point of view, cars registered in Flagstaff do not even have to pass smog. Flagstaff does not suffer from pollution like much larger metropolitan areas. The local environment is completely beside the point anyway. We're not replacing coal power stations. It isn't an "upgrade" away. Our energy demand is increasing so any new stations supplement rather than replace existing power stations. The stakeholder wouldn't shutdown a power station before its lifetime anyway. They need to recoup their investment. The current operational units at the station will not be shutdown until 2025 and they'll probably add more to extend the lifetime of the station. And furthermore, if the plant was to be supplemented with solar, where do you think the energy will come from at night when the car is plugged in?
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      > And furthermore, if the plant was to be supplemented with solar, where do you think the energy will come from at night when the car is plugged in? Eventually, stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage
revelation 10y ago
As this was the first really expensive car I’ve owned, I needed to find a way to help pay for the car. Naturally, Uber came to mind The subprime lending crisis in a nutshell
- S_A_P 10y ago
  Interesting take. There is already a subprime lending crisis in the automotive loan market, along with a glut of used cars that somehow arent depreciating. I wonder if people start deciding that they want to overspend on a car they want and decide to "uber" their way into affording it...
  - greenshackle 10y ago
    Quickly followed by articles blaming Uber for it.
    - S_A_P 10y ago
      Agreed and that was not a shot at uber it was more just remarking on the nature of bubbles
  - tunap 10y ago
    Hehe, they cannot drive the jalopies to Mexico fast enough. It is amusing to see a junker towing two more junkers along I-10 enroute to today's crossing point. Amusing, that is, until you speak to some dealers and find out the "why" is to keep used vehicle values inflated.
tinco 10y ago
"Tesla also has an 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty for the Drive Train & Battery. This was great, as I did have the drive train replaced at about 65,000 miles and the battery replaced at about 76,000 miles." You can read this as: "Tesla also has an 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty for the engine and fuel tank. This was great, as I did have the engine replaced at about 65,000 miles and the fuel tank replaced at about 76,000 miles." That just makes it that much crazier. The most important and expensive components of this car actually do break down fairly quickly, but the manufacturer just covers them under a lifetime warranty!
- Tloewald 10y ago
  Right — assuming people bought their cars and used them normally (10-15k per year), having to replace the battery and drive train for say 50% of cars under warranty would be pretty die. He's also quite likely effectively free-riding on the supercharger system.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    If Tesla's costs for electricity are similar to mine (a big assumption, I know), then that 27,615 mile trip cost them about $1,100. With 20+% margins on $70,000+ cars, I think they're doing OK on that end. I don't think his experience with the battery and drivetrain are typical. I've heard that earlier cars had a lot of drivetrain replacements, but not so much recently. And when Tesla replaces them, it's often because of a simple problem and it's just easier to throw in a new one than to fix the existing one on site. They then ship the old one back to the factory, refurbish it, and use it for another replacement. I haven't heard much about battery replacements under warranty. From what I do hear, most people with high-mileage Model Ss are still doing great with their batteries.
  - nickff 10y ago
    How is it "free-riding"? He paid good money for the car, and the supercharger subscription is a part of the package.
    - 10y ago
arprocter 10y ago
"I did have the drive train replaced at about 65,000 miles and the battery replaced at about 76,000 miles" Is that a regular occurrence?
- olyjohn 10y ago
  I sure hope not. Many gas cars don't even go in for their first service until 100,000 miles. 300,000 is not even difficult to hit on any car built in the last 30 years.
  - arprocter 10y ago
    It undermines the whole article, seeing as the tone is 'wow my car made it to 100k' I'd be interested to hear the reasons so much needed to be replaced, instead of just a passing mention that a large amount of repairs were done
    - dragontamer 10y ago
      > I'd be interested to hear the reasons so much needed to be replaced Seems like a large-scale manufacturing defect affecting 2013 and 2014 Tesla Model S. http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt-match-its-high-performance/ http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt... > The main problem areas involved the drivetrain, power equipment, charging equipment, giant iPad-like center console, and body and sunroof squeaks, rattles, and leaks.
- dragontamer 10y ago
  I dunno about the battery. But the Drive train of the Tesla Model S is notoriously bad. http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-test/2013-tesla-model-s-drive-unit-iv-the-milling.html http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-tes... > Drive Unit IV: The Milling That's the article when Edmunds had to replace the drive unit for the 3rd time (aka: the 4th Drive Unit)
  - sammydavis 10y ago
devy 10y ago
Here is another positive testimonial[1] of Tesla Model S's long term reliability. Great reliability, simpler design (than conventional ICE cars), unlimited mileage warranty and cheaper per-mile operating cost make Tesla Model S a terrific choice for taxis. [1] http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-after-100-000-miles-1785360286 http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-after-100...
- serge2k 10y ago
  Did that one require a drivetrain replacement too?
joesmo 10y ago
Ok, but what are the costs beyond $100k? Even the worst cars as far as maintenance (BMWs and such) can make it to $100k fairly reasonably. This is even more important in the Tesla apparently because after 8 years you're shit out of luck on the powertrain apparently, at least according to another post here, and that's where the actual expensive parts lie. If this guy comes back in a few years (after the warranty expires) with this same Tesla at 200k still going strong and still having spent only a couple thousand max on repairs, that'll be a real achievement. As it stands, this simply shows the Tesla is not a total lemon, incredibly useful information, but expected.
vosper 10y ago
How on earth did it cost $1000 to get a door handle repaired?!
- jms18 10y ago
  They aren't like a doorknob. I had to replace an interior door handle on a '99 Miata (interior is far easier than an exterior; exterior means pulling the door skin off for access and having to deal with paint matching), and a Miata is real straightforward repair job. But I still took a photo of each and every little piece I pulled off not knowing when one would break or be deformed before or after this process. (And having to locate a dealership to order the part shipped while showing him a handful of broken parts and a complete photo of "this doohickey".) $1000 would be steep price to pay for a Corrolla but not outlandish. I would bet the cost of replacing one on a BMW 3 series would be more.
foolfoolz 10y ago
biggest story on here is 500 uber rides only made $6000 dollars
- tedmiston 10y ago
  And that's probably before taxes :/
Houshalter 10y ago
A contrary article to this piece, is this submission, Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898 Their main point is not that Tesla cars are badly manufactured. But that they don't make repair manuals available, they don't sell replacement parts, they lock down access to the car's systems, don't give salvage titles, and that these cars will be very difficult and expensive to repair in the future.
- serge2k 10y ago
  Yeah but Tesla. Tech startup. Wooo disruptive and wonderful. If ford tried it people would complain, but Tesla locking things down is just fine.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  So, just like Apple.
tedmiston 10y ago
Now that's epic. > Tesla Road Trip Savings: My 27,615 mile (the circumference of the Earth is 24,901 miles) 48 State plus Canada road trip cost $8.37. I had to pay for electricity 2 times, the rest was FREE thanks to the Tesla SuperCharger network. There were about 180 SuperChargers when I started the trip. There are now almost 300 in the USA. Gas savings assuming a 25 MPG car using a national average of $2.75 a gallon = $3037.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
I'll be impressed if that was 100k of "taking corners in a spirited manner on potholed" roads, something every car sold to an auto enthusiast in a state with a real winter is subject to. That's where I draw the line for "hard miles". Putting around the southwest in a manner that doesn't scare customers isn't hard miles. "Abused" is a misleading title.
woodandsteel 10y ago
If a Tesla is this cheap to drive, and self-driving cars cut out the labor costs of transportation services, then it becomes cheaper to just use Uber et al than own your own car. At that point the ICE auto industry will be really screwed, and the switch to all EV cars could come about a lot faster than has been predicted.
deevus 10y ago
I really want to buy a Tesla. Like really bad. Out of curiosity I had a look at the current pricing of a Tesla in Australia. My jaw just about dropped when I found that a new P90D costs $255,000 AUD. That is a difference of $50,000 if you convert the US price to Australian. Ouch.
colinprince 10y ago
Also see previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304241

194 points by taylorwc 10y ago

Everything about cars is changing fast. I was a skeptic, now I'm sold (not just owing to this article, but this is a great example).

castratikron 10y ago
Together with electric cars, autonomous driving, and ride-brokering services like Uber and Lyft, we really are in a primordial soup phase of transportation. There's going to be some rapid changes even in the next 5 or 10 years.

vaishaksuresh 10y ago

>However, once people realize they can pay $35,000 for a killer car that can earn them $30,000 in a year by simply pressing a button and telling your car to go pick up passengers for you while you work or sleep — it’s game over. That is not happening in the near future. At least not in a meaningful scale.

msoad 10y ago
And if it does happen, you will not be the one owning and profiting from those cars...
- Zyst 10y ago
  Yeah, I don't see why companies like Uber and Lyft would, so to say, share a piece of the pie, instead of buying these types of cars themselves. I could see competing products (Apps) with less infrastructure launching this business model though. So I guess it might exist in one way or another in the end.
  - aianus 10y ago
    I was going to post a response on how they wouldn't have enough money from private sources to build that many taxis but it seems it'd cost only ~$23 billion to replace every single taxi in the United States with a Model S. That's shockingly cheap.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Well, you could do it to defray some of the cost of the car by making use of its idle hours, but it probably wouldn't make sense to buy a car just (or even mostly) to rent it out, for much the same reason that individuals don't do it today. Plus, when Teslas are usable as self-driving cars, the value of the rides provided will drop precipitously -- that figure would be more like $5000, and you'd have to lock up usable hours for it and perhaps pay some penalty to renege on specific hours.
  - prostoalex 10y ago
    Those two effects are mutually opposing forces - are car owners willing to take the risk of someone contaminating their car by smoking, spilling, eating, puking or having sex to earn a pretty penny?
    - wolf550e 10y ago
      I think all robotaxis will have inward facing dashcams that transmits into a vault in the cloud in near real time. If the car comes back undamaged, the video is deleted. People who hire robotaxis might need to have money in escrow if they don't have enough reputation.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        Escrow really doesn't exist on a personal level today - why would people suddenly go from the current situation to being perfectly find putting hundreds/thousands of dollars in an escrow account in the future? What do we do about people who can't afford that?
        vishvananda 10y ago
        We have the equivalent for car and room rentals. The escrow is just a hidden feature of our credit cards. If you try to rent a car without a credit card, you are usually required to put down a deposit.
- vaishaksuresh 10y ago
  Right! Why would I buy a car when I can get a self-driving car to pick me up and drop me off when I need?
namlem 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Nevada had this by 2022.
ghaff 10y ago
There are these things called markets. I don't expect this particular scenario to happen anytime soon. But I pretty much guarantee that if I can buy $OBJECT in a competitive market and rent it out for some ridiculous rate of return in a competitive market, competition for that renting will drive down prices until it's not a ridiculous rate of return any longer.

maxxxxx 10y ago

I wonder when the free charging is over. That energy still has to be produced somehow somewhere.

mikeash 10y ago
It's likely that the Model 3 will not include free Supercharging, so that's probably when it'll be over as far as when they start selling cars that don't get it for free. As for existing cars, never. Free charging is part of what you get with the car, and they'd be breaking that contract if they changed it unilaterally. Fortunately, electricity is usually pretty cheap, and on average the money they set aside from each car for running the Superchargers will match or exceed the cost of running them.
- sammydavis 10y ago
  It's not really free today. If you buy less than the 85kwh battery, it costs $2000. If you buy 85 or higher, it's included.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    It's included on all cars they sell right now. The old Model S 60 had it as a $2,000 option, but the new one has it built in. Of course, it's never really free, us customers pay for it one way or another. "Included and unlimited" is probably a better way to describe it.
baddox 10y ago
A speculation I read often is that Tesla will continue offering free charges to Tesla vehicles and will pay for it by charging to charge (hmm, how to better phrase that) non-Tesla electric vehicles.
- pyromine 10y ago
  Suggested rephrasing. >will pay for it by charging to charge will subsidize supercharger access for Tesla vehicles via selling access to non-Tesla Electric vehicles

dragonwriter 10y ago

> However, once people realize they can pay $35,000 for a killer car that can earn them $30,000 in a year by simply pressing a button and telling your car to go pick up passengers for you while you work or sleep Long before that is the case, there'd be no incentive for the manufacturer to sell the car at all; they'd make more money just pushing the button themselves the minute the car rolled off the assembly line.

bmh_ca 10y ago
You raise an important point. I imagine selling the cars externalizes the cost of financing the car and risks associated with the service.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > I imagine selling the cars externalizes the cost of financing the car and risks associated with the service. Sure, and that makes sense in most realistic cases. A $35,000 car that returns an expected $30,000/year isn't a realistic case. Anywhere remotely close to that, and the case for selling the cars to consumers to realize (reduced) returns more quickly and insulate the manufacturer from risk just isn't there. Heck, even if the company decides they don't want to be in the business of owning the fleet, the fact that it is expected to return $30K a year means that the price that can be supported will be much higher (or, conversely, the fact that the car can be sold for $35K will drive down the returns as more people buy the car, and supply drives down market clearing price for all the productive uses.)
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Not really they can externalize the risks on their own. But if they own the cars they can save a metric ton of money. You would be surprised just how much of the cost of a mid range car is in the interior not only because they need to outsource those materials and gadgets usually but because the interior is one of the few things that is still done mostly manually. An autonomous car that drives people around doesn't need an infotainment system, doesn't need fancy driver and side passenger seats doesn't need tons of stuff. Heck you would be able to take out the driver/passenger side completely out of the picture if you are designing a dedicated autonomous taxi. Add to that all the other crap that every car now has to have to be competitive and it adds up to a metric ton of saving. Ford/GM/Whoever can design the cheapest simplest shittiest car they can think off that no one would ever want to buy because it doesn't have 5 different suspension settings and xband radio that sync with your phone to get you your latest podcasts and a climate controlled cup holder that keeps you drink cool in the summer and warm in the winter, seat warmers padded pedals and that turbo charger because when buying a 30K it's 0-60 is still important for no apparent reason. They can cut the cost of making the car by probably 50% easily if they don't have to built it to compete in the market, no one cares about 0-60 or xband when they take a 15min uber ride. And not only would you save money on the manufacturing you would save tons of money by being able to recycle the cars afterwards, you can get a very large part of the cost of the BOM of a car by recycling it and since car manufacturers basically say bye bye to the car once they ship it to the dealer they never see a penny out of it. The next big saving/cost reduction is not having to deal with customers a very large portion of the cost of a car is the infrastructure and network a car manufacturer has to set up to support the car. They have to provide service for the first 3 years 100,000 miles - that's gone, they have to setup a network of authorized dealers and provide support and training - that's gone, they have to setup a network of authorized repair and service providers - that's gone. They have to track every car and know where and when it was sold and where it is if they need to do a product recall - that's gone or well every easy since they run all the cars. They have to support the car by law by providing replacement parts sometimes for decades depending on the country which means they either build considerably more parts than they need or have to continue to have the ability to construct them for years which is expensive as duck - this is also gone. Heck the advertisement costs alone is probably couple of 100's of millions a year globally if not N/A only, take that out too because now you don't need to tell people what's in your new Fjord Mikata M30 because you aren't selling direct to customers anymore. If you can reduce the cost of the car by 50%, and get 60-80% of the cost of the BOM back by recycling it after 3-5 years it's a no brainer to cut the middle man and stop selling cars to people period. When take out all of that the financing becomes a non-issue the cars are assets not only that they have value but they also generate income even if Ford/GM needs financing they won't have issues getting it for the same reason that for individuals it's easier to get financing for a work vehicle than for a leisure car.

mkhalil 10y ago

Am I the only one who feels like depreciation should of been taken into consideration when he was calculating how much it cost?

blakes 10y ago
I think deprecation should only be taken into consideration if one is planning on selling the car in the future, and I get the feeling that he is planning on driving that car into the ground.
- aardvark291 10y ago
  In which case the value will reach $0. That's called depreciation...
  - roninb 10y ago
    I think the point being made was, if you don't plan on selling something, does it matter what it's worth? As in, I'm not going to factor my child's value into my assets since I'm not going to sell it. Or in the OP's case, since his car will never be sold, it's not relevant how much value he's losing by keeping it for x years. Not that the car's value doesn't depreciate, just that the value of the car isn't ever important after the initial cost.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - sangnoir 10y ago
      > I think the point being made was, if you don't plan on selling something, does it matter what it's worth Yes, it matters. There are a lot of intangible assets that are not sold (such as Goodwill), even those can be given quantifiable value
      - roninb 10y ago
        Right, but the author was estimating cost over the lifetime of the vehicle, not possible breakeven down the road if they get bored and sell or some other general use-case. In the author's case, is the up front cost they included not enough? I guess maybe you're being pedantic and saying everything's value is always important to make measured decisions, but that seems lame in this discussion so I assume I'm glossing over some fundamental fact.

eddieh 10y ago

Flagstaff, AZ gets electricity from the Cholla Power Plant in Northern Arizona. The plant burns coal and is considered one of the dirtiest power stations in the nation. Just consider that owning a Tesla or any plug-in electric in Flagstaff is completely backwards.

monocasa 10y ago
It's still much more efficient than if all of the cars had been running gasoline engines.
outworlder 10y ago
From a city pollution point of view, it is not, as you have no exhaust. And you are only a power plant upgrade away to have all cars automatically "switch".
- eddieh 10y ago
  Actually, from a city pollution point of view, cars registered in Flagstaff do not even have to pass smog. Flagstaff does not suffer from pollution like much larger metropolitan areas. The local environment is completely beside the point anyway. We're not replacing coal power stations. It isn't an "upgrade" away. Our energy demand is increasing so any new stations supplement rather than replace existing power stations. The stakeholder wouldn't shutdown a power station before its lifetime anyway. They need to recoup their investment. The current operational units at the station will not be shutdown until 2025 and they'll probably add more to extend the lifetime of the station. And furthermore, if the plant was to be supplemented with solar, where do you think the energy will come from at night when the car is plugged in?
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    > And furthermore, if the plant was to be supplemented with solar, where do you think the energy will come from at night when the car is plugged in? Eventually, stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage

revelation 10y ago

As this was the first really expensive car I’ve owned, I needed to find a way to help pay for the car. Naturally, Uber came to mind The subprime lending crisis in a nutshell

S_A_P 10y ago
Interesting take. There is already a subprime lending crisis in the automotive loan market, along with a glut of used cars that somehow arent depreciating. I wonder if people start deciding that they want to overspend on a car they want and decide to "uber" their way into affording it...
- greenshackle 10y ago
  Quickly followed by articles blaming Uber for it.
  - S_A_P 10y ago
    Agreed and that was not a shot at uber it was more just remarking on the nature of bubbles
- tunap 10y ago
  Hehe, they cannot drive the jalopies to Mexico fast enough. It is amusing to see a junker towing two more junkers along I-10 enroute to today's crossing point. Amusing, that is, until you speak to some dealers and find out the "why" is to keep used vehicle values inflated.

tinco 10y ago

"Tesla also has an 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty for the Drive Train & Battery. This was great, as I did have the drive train replaced at about 65,000 miles and the battery replaced at about 76,000 miles." You can read this as: "Tesla also has an 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty for the engine and fuel tank. This was great, as I did have the engine replaced at about 65,000 miles and the fuel tank replaced at about 76,000 miles." That just makes it that much crazier. The most important and expensive components of this car actually do break down fairly quickly, but the manufacturer just covers them under a lifetime warranty!

Tloewald 10y ago
Right — assuming people bought their cars and used them normally (10-15k per year), having to replace the battery and drive train for say 50% of cars under warranty would be pretty die. He's also quite likely effectively free-riding on the supercharger system.
- mikeash 10y ago
  If Tesla's costs for electricity are similar to mine (a big assumption, I know), then that 27,615 mile trip cost them about $1,100. With 20+% margins on $70,000+ cars, I think they're doing OK on that end. I don't think his experience with the battery and drivetrain are typical. I've heard that earlier cars had a lot of drivetrain replacements, but not so much recently. And when Tesla replaces them, it's often because of a simple problem and it's just easier to throw in a new one than to fix the existing one on site. They then ship the old one back to the factory, refurbish it, and use it for another replacement. I haven't heard much about battery replacements under warranty. From what I do hear, most people with high-mileage Model Ss are still doing great with their batteries.
- nickff 10y ago
  How is it "free-riding"? He paid good money for the car, and the supercharger subscription is a part of the package.
  - 10y ago

arprocter 10y ago

"I did have the drive train replaced at about 65,000 miles and the battery replaced at about 76,000 miles" Is that a regular occurrence?

olyjohn 10y ago
I sure hope not. Many gas cars don't even go in for their first service until 100,000 miles. 300,000 is not even difficult to hit on any car built in the last 30 years.
- arprocter 10y ago
  It undermines the whole article, seeing as the tone is 'wow my car made it to 100k' I'd be interested to hear the reasons so much needed to be replaced, instead of just a passing mention that a large amount of repairs were done
  - dragontamer 10y ago
    > I'd be interested to hear the reasons so much needed to be replaced Seems like a large-scale manufacturing defect affecting 2013 and 2014 Tesla Model S. http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt-match-its-high-performance/ http://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla-reliability-doesnt... > The main problem areas involved the drivetrain, power equipment, charging equipment, giant iPad-like center console, and body and sunroof squeaks, rattles, and leaks.
dragontamer 10y ago
I dunno about the battery. But the Drive train of the Tesla Model S is notoriously bad. http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-test/2013-tesla-model-s-drive-unit-iv-the-milling.html http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-tes... > Drive Unit IV: The Milling That's the article when Edmunds had to replace the drive unit for the 3rd time (aka: the 4th Drive Unit)
- sammydavis 10y ago

devy 10y ago

Here is another positive testimonial[1] of Tesla Model S's long term reliability. Great reliability, simpler design (than conventional ICE cars), unlimited mileage warranty and cheaper per-mile operating cost make Tesla Model S a terrific choice for taxis. [1] http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-after-100-000-miles-1785360286 http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-after-100...

serge2k 10y ago
Did that one require a drivetrain replacement too?

joesmo 10y ago

Ok, but what are the costs beyond $100k? Even the worst cars as far as maintenance (BMWs and such) can make it to $100k fairly reasonably. This is even more important in the Tesla apparently because after 8 years you're shit out of luck on the powertrain apparently, at least according to another post here, and that's where the actual expensive parts lie. If this guy comes back in a few years (after the warranty expires) with this same Tesla at 200k still going strong and still having spent only a couple thousand max on repairs, that'll be a real achievement. As it stands, this simply shows the Tesla is not a total lemon, incredibly useful information, but expected.

vosper 10y ago

How on earth did it cost $1000 to get a door handle repaired?!

jms18 10y ago
They aren't like a doorknob. I had to replace an interior door handle on a '99 Miata (interior is far easier than an exterior; exterior means pulling the door skin off for access and having to deal with paint matching), and a Miata is real straightforward repair job. But I still took a photo of each and every little piece I pulled off not knowing when one would break or be deformed before or after this process. (And having to locate a dealership to order the part shipped while showing him a handful of broken parts and a complete photo of "this doohickey".) $1000 would be steep price to pay for a Corrolla but not outlandish. I would bet the cost of replacing one on a BMW 3 series would be more.

foolfoolz 10y ago

biggest story on here is 500 uber rides only made $6000 dollars

tedmiston 10y ago
And that's probably before taxes :/

Houshalter 10y ago

A contrary article to this piece, is this submission, Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11233898 Their main point is not that Tesla cars are badly manufactured. But that they don't make repair manuals available, they don't sell replacement parts, they lock down access to the car's systems, don't give salvage titles, and that these cars will be very difficult and expensive to repair in the future.

serge2k 10y ago
Yeah but Tesla. Tech startup. Wooo disruptive and wonderful. If ford tried it people would complain, but Tesla locking things down is just fine.
tedmiston 10y ago
So, just like Apple.

tedmiston 10y ago

Now that's epic. > Tesla Road Trip Savings: My 27,615 mile (the circumference of the Earth is 24,901 miles) 48 State plus Canada road trip cost $8.37. I had to pay for electricity 2 times, the rest was FREE thanks to the Tesla SuperCharger network. There were about 180 SuperChargers when I started the trip. There are now almost 300 in the USA. Gas savings assuming a 25 MPG car using a national average of $2.75 a gallon = $3037.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

I'll be impressed if that was 100k of "taking corners in a spirited manner on potholed" roads, something every car sold to an auto enthusiast in a state with a real winter is subject to. That's where I draw the line for "hard miles". Putting around the southwest in a manner that doesn't scare customers isn't hard miles. "Abused" is a misleading title.

woodandsteel 10y ago

If a Tesla is this cheap to drive, and self-driving cars cut out the labor costs of transportation services, then it becomes cheaper to just use Uber et al than own your own car. At that point the ICE auto industry will be really screwed, and the switch to all EV cars could come about a lot faster than has been predicted.

deevus 10y ago

I really want to buy a Tesla. Like really bad. Out of curiosity I had a look at the current pricing of a Tesla in Australia. My jaw just about dropped when I found that a new P90D costs $255,000 AUD. That is a difference of $50,000 if you convert the US price to Australian. Ouch.

colinprince 10y ago

Also see previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12304241