Related:<p><i>How Hertz’s bet on Teslas went sideways</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928913">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928913</a><p><i>Hertz is ditching even more electric cars</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40183174">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40183174</a>
Disclosure: I work for GM, this is solely my own opinion<p>---<p>This article doesn't mention it, but the other problem Hertz has is that Tesla has lowered the price of their vehicles. This is great news for new buyers, not so much for people who want to trade or sell their vehicles. Incidentally, this is why other OEMs offer cash-back or other limited time or limited scope offers - they can have less effect on trade-in values.<p>---<p>Incidentally, this cycle of downward pressure on new vehicle price is a partial cause of GM's decline. GM had a goal to remain the #1 North American automaker by sales volume - to do this they sold a lot of cars to rental fleets - those rental cars come back on the market after about 1 year at a discount and compete with new car sales and put downward pressure on price.<p>Again, if you are a consumer looking for a low price, this is nice; if you are looking to run a company that can invest in product engineering, not so much.
>> $13,078.58 to fix a quarter-size hole<p>Years ago I read this advice "Find an under-served market and serve it cheaply."<p>There's an opportunity here for a 3rd party to service and repair Teslas at a reasonable price.
Sometimes I wonder how much careful / research is appropriate for questions like this. To wit:<p>For me, thinking in broad strokes seems sufficient here:<p>(1) Tesla has a reputation for lengthy, extremely costly repairs.<p>(2) Tesla is led by Musk, whose leadership strikes me as erratic and unreliable in the <i>best</i> of times.<p>(3) Tesla seems to be in financial trouble, which I'd expect to only exacerbate (1) and (2).<p>(4) Tesla just called into question the availability of their U.S. charging network, which reminds me that a Teslas are local-only vehicles unless you're confident there's a charging network to support your trips.<p>(5) I can't afford to spend $30k on an unreliable vehicle, nor a reliable one with $5k+ repairs.<p>I'm curious if looking at this more carefully would change my mind. And if so, is there a way I could have recognized that before contenting myself with the broad strokes mentioned above?
$25,000 for a two year old $47,000 car with 70,000 miles already on it may not be that great a deal. A brand new one is that price so you're basically paying 31.5 cents a mile to buy the newer ...
They will probably go to Ukraine:<p><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/why-teslas-totaled-in-the-us-are-mysteriously-reincarnated-in-ukraine/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/why-teslas-totaled-in-the-us-are...</a>
Can Tesla authorized mechanics offer pre-purchase inspections for cars that are sold by third parties?<p>I know Tesla themselves do it if you buy a pre-owned car from them.
If used cars will have software locks and fixing will be prohibited without cloud services their price will drop much quicker after the time of warranty
> If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high.<p>That is the fundamental takeaway.<p>These are specialized machines, with specialized parts, and specialized repairs.<p>---<p>And to be fair, this isn't all that much different than other luxury cars like BMWs and Audis.
Are you able to run FSD on these used Teslas? I currently do not own one.<p>But FSD 12.3.6 looks amazing.<p>I'm not sure why Waymo or Mercedes gets ranked ahead of Tesla - clearly, Tesla is a few years ahead of them in terms of self-driving technology.
This article is biased in my opinion. Colleague bought BMW with broken gearbox. Warranty covered 2/3 of repair costs. That’s typical mistake when buying nice car and not checking it thoroughly.<p>For electric vehicle it is even more important. I would lift the car during test drive in random repair shop, go by myself under it and check the bottom. Battery is most expensive part there. And most fragile too. And also easy to check without special tooling.<p>I also wouldn’t buy a car with 70000 miles on it. That’s the mileage when things start to fail. It is also out of warranty. Battery might be still under warranty, but that’s not very useful. Tesla solved these issues in the past. Other thing is that these were rental cars. So they were treated extremely poor for years. The buyer of Herz Tesla should be well prepared for all possible expensive surprises.<p>Edit: I wouldn’t buy a car made after 2005 with 70000+ miles on it. The family cars made before outlived the ones made after 2015. 7 data points at the moment.<p>Edit2: CAN-Bluetooth dongle with an app isn’t really a tool. Not having it while buying a car for 25k is a gamble. Add also tool for paint thickness measurement. Everything else is naive. Nobody sells very good car for a very good price.