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They've been doing that for a long time, trying to explain in TCO terms instead of sticker price. It can be somewhat misleading at times but I get the rationale
by npunt 8y ago
They've been doing that for a long time, trying to explain in TCO terms instead of sticker price. It can be somewhat misleading at times but I get the rationale.
- xienze 8y ago>It can be somewhat misleading at times but I get the rationale. “Somewhat misleading”? Acting as though money saved on gas reduces your purchase price somehow is just straight up lying. The car still costs $35k when you sign on the dotted line, gas costs don’t factor into that at all. If you want to talk how much it’ll cost you after n years of ownership, talking about gas costs is perfectly valid. Purchase price though?
- npunt 8y agoDisagree. Electric vehicles have a very different cost structure than gas vehicles. For vast majority of buyers this will be their first electric vehicle and market education needs to be done. There's 90+ years of gas vehicle culture education to un-do here. Total Cost of Ownership is a legit (and even preferred) way to represent cost in most industries. It's just not common in consumer purchasing. This is a variant of TCO. They provide a good calculator where you can figure it out. I think there's room for discussion about how prominent you make the TCO calculator and the particular copy used in that. This is why I said it was somewhat misleading, because I think it could be better. But I definitely don't think it's lying, that's awfully black and white.
- camjohnson26 8y agoYou don’t save any gas if the car is sitting in a service center for months waiting on repairs, which has happened to a lot of people. They should advertise the car at its sticker price. Any extra gas savings should be a bonus.
- VikingCoder 8y agoThe price of the car is X. You don't get to SUBTRACT the cost of gas from X. You can compare X to some other car's (Y + Gas).
- cma 8y agoIf you put an asterisk by it you can
- FireBeyond 8y agoSo if they're all in on being all evolutionary and measuring TCO, they mention depreciation on the car's value, right? Didn't think so. Or the cost of installing a 240 line to your garage? Hmmm.
- Spooky23 8y agoIt’s lying because it’s not an apples to apples comparison. You can buy a similarly equipped Honda Accord for $10k less without all of the Tesla drama.
- r00fus 8y agoI really doubt the Accord would have the same acceleration or features as the M3. And it consumes a decent amount of gas which is more expensive than volts. It's more of an apples+cart comparison. It seems shady because they can't know what kind of car you're coming from - so they average it (in their favor).
- Spooky23 8y agoThey choose to be ignorant of it. The federal government even publishes per mile total costs for most vehicles that makes it fairly trivial to do. It’s a bullshit metric. They could honestly present the information in a way that looked good for them as well... or even use it as a cross sell for solar.
- Avshalom 8y agoBut again. The car costs 35000 it doesn't cost 26000. You can't buy it for 26000. There is no amount of driving that will make the car cost 26000.
- camjohnson26 8y agoAnd it ignores parts of the ownership experience that are more expensive like insurance.