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

&gt; 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 <p>Long before that is the case, there&#x27;d be no incentive for the manufacturer to sell the car at all; they&#x27;d make more money just pushing the button themselves the minute the car rolled off the assembly line.

<p><pre><code> &quot;Tesla also has an 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty for the Drive Train &amp; 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.&quot; </code></pre> You can read this as:<p><pre><code> &quot;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.&quot; </code></pre> 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!

&gt;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.<p>That is not happening in the near future. At least not in a meaningful scale.

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

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&#x27;re shit out of luck on the powertrain apparently, at least according to another post here, and that&#x27;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&#x27;ll be a real achievement. As it stands, this simply shows the Tesla is not a total lemon, incredibly useful information, but expected.

A contrary article to this piece, is this submission, <i>Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars</i>: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11233898" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11233898</a><p>Their main point is not that Tesla cars are badly manufactured. But that they don&#x27;t make repair manuals available, they don&#x27;t sell replacement parts, they lock down access to the car&#x27;s systems, don&#x27;t give salvage titles, and that these cars will be very difficult and expensive to repair in the future.

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.<p>Just consider that owning a Tesla or any plug-in electric in Flagstaff is completely backwards.

<p><pre><code> 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 </code></pre> The subprime lending crisis in a nutshell

&quot;I did have the drive train replaced at about 65,000 miles and the battery replaced at about 76,000 miles&quot;<p>Is that a regular occurrence?

Everything about cars is changing fast. I was a skeptic, now I&#x27;m sold (not just owing to this article, but this is a great example).

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

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

Here is another positive testimonial[1] of Tesla Model S&#x27;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.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jalopnik.com&#x2F;heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-after-100-000-miles-1785360286" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;jalopnik.com&#x2F;heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-after-100...</a>

I&#x27;ll be impressed if that was 100k of &quot;taking corners in a spirited manner on potholed&quot; roads, something every car sold to an auto enthusiast in a state with a real winter is subject to. That&#x27;s where I draw the line for &quot;hard miles&quot;. Putting around the southwest in a manner that doesn&#x27;t scare customers isn&#x27;t hard miles. &quot;Abused&quot; is a misleading title.

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

Now that&#x27;s epic.<p>&gt; 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.

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.

I really want to buy a Tesla. Like really bad.<p>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.

Also see previously:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12304241" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=12304241</a>