I remember the breathless threads singing Elon Musk's praises when this thing was announced - GAME CHANGER! Thousands of people lining up to pay a grand to reserve a car that didn't even exist yet!
How's that working out? Not too good, it seems. From Edmunds' long term test car review:
Where we drove our long-term 2017 Tesla Model 3 in April is a bit less relevant than what happened while we were driving it. We did local commuting and a few freeway journeys, sure, but everywhere we went the car was fraught with problems. Sixteen weeks into ownership, we've had so many issues with our Model 3 that we started a shared Google Doc to catalog various warning messages, necessary screen resets and general failures.
Forget that this is a "cutting-edge" EV with a cult following. That's irrelevant if Tesla wants to be anything more than a footnote in automotive history. Our Model 3 cost us $56,000, and by that standard alone, the ownership experience so far has been unacceptable. But this is no ordinary $56K car. We put down a $1,000 deposit to get on a two-year waiting list for this car and it's falling apart. |
I said it at the time and it's proving true: Tesla as a mass-production automaker was always doomed to fail.
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in the market for a new car that the major manufacturers will have EV cars figured out so that 1. They can go a decent 300 or 400 miles without recharging and 2. They can produce them to be about the same price as a gas powered car. Cars like the Nissan Leaf that would probably sell for about 17K if gas powered are about 30K. Why would I want to pay double?
I have no confidence in Tesla.
If you're really interested in a Nissan Leaf, you can get a used one for well under 10k now with the battery still under warranty.
Btw, what is the expected life of the battery in an EV car? And, how much to replace it? You need to figure that in the operating costs.
Not actually interested in a Leaf. I was just giving an example of how much more expensive an EV car is.
Btw, what is the expected life of the battery in an EV car? And, how much to replace it? You need to figure that in the operating costs.
Well the Tesla Model S has had good to great battery life expectancy. The 3 is built with newer tech that should last even longer.
I believe the Leaf has had trouble with their batteries. Tesla has the best battery technology. I believe they have guarantees for 8 years, 100K miles but are likely to last much longer.
https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/tesla-battery-degradation/
Problem with that is most people want to charge their car at night when the sun isn’t shining. In order to charge with solar at night, you’d need a HUGE battery to store the power you generate in daytime.
This car is not for everyone but to dog it without seeing it is not very smart. I purchased a Honda truck last year and it cost just shy of $40K. So the cost of the 3is not crazy if one is looking for that kind of performance car.
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electric cars will be so much cheaper to run that gasoline cars.
Problem with that is most people want to charge their car at night when the sun isn’t shining. In order to charge with solar at night, you’d need a HUGE battery to store the power you generate in daytime.
Not really, most solar tech feeds the grid and reimburses you.
Problem with that is most people want to charge their car at night when the sun isn’t shining. In order to charge with solar at night, you’d need a HUGE battery to store the power you generate in daytime.
Not really, most solar tech feeds the grid and reimburses you.
Sure. But there are issues there too:
1) In most cases there are limits to how high a backfeed current the power company can handle. No matter how much juice you can produce, you may not be able to transfer it all.
2) The grid was not really designed to work in reverse. When it’s just a handful of people, it’s not a problem. As more people do it, it’s becoming a issue. A lot of infrastructure will need to go in to handle it.
3) Who pays for that? And the grid in general? People with panels have little or no electric bill. But they still make use of the grid, both as consumer and producer. That has costs that theyre not contributing to. Increasingly, power companies are slapping fees on consumers who want to do this, which negates some of the cost advantage.
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And the manager was badmouthing their all electric car all over the place. He said the stated range is only 100 miles, but if you turn on the radio it drops to 85. And it takes 21 hours to recharge. He says it's a glorified golf cart.
I’m shocked that a car dealer would have bad things to say about cars he doesn’t sell.
No, he was. He was talking about Ford's electric car.
It didn't kill Ford and it shouldn't kill Musk.
In football and in car making: innovation = risk
It didn't kill Ford and it shouldn't kill Musk.
In football and in car making: innovation = risk
One big difference: Ford was producing over 1 million OTHER cars to offset the loss incurred by Edsel. Tesla has a tenth that. It can’t afford to miss on this car.
SpaceX is a separate company, so no.
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electric cars will be so much cheaper to run that gasoline cars.
Problem with that is most people want to charge their car at night when the sun isn’t shining. In order to charge with solar at night, you’d need a HUGE battery to store the power you generate in daytime.
Isnt Tesla making those as well? The power wall.
Isnt Tesla making those as well? The power wall.
Yes. They cost $5500 apiece plus additional hardware and installation. To fully charge a Model 3 with the smallest battery option you’d need 4 Powerwalls. So that’s $22,000 plus whatever the rest costs. Probably around $30K all in. You’d need 6 for the 3’s larger capacity battery. Plus more to keep the rest of your home powered.
Sure, you can. I don’t think you can charge your car directly from it though. It would be connected to your house’s wiring and you’d charge from the wall outlet you had installed for the car.
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I mean, I'm not a pauper but I don't. My little commuter was $11K, my wife's crossover was $19K.
To answer my own question.....17.1 mill new, 42.7 used. Used cars have an average sale price of $19,400 in 2017.
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New-car prices have risen in step with the economy since the Great Recession and the average price is now beyond the means of most median-income Americans, says Bankrate.com, which based its calculations on the 20/4/10 rule of a 20 percent down payment, four-year loan and payments of principal, interest and insurance making 10 percent of a household’s income.
This is very much based on personal preference and subjective. I'm an engineer, and I look at a car like any other machine I own. I'll drive a car until I've run it into the ground, and I can usually afford much better cars than I actually drive (because IMO, leaving an expensive car on the street in NYC is about as wise as leaving a big pile of money there instead).
I know people who literally make half the money I do, and they drive around in luxury cars they can't afford. I don't want to judge them, and to each their own, but it seems awfully stupid from a financial perspective to me.
Not to mention that immediately after you buy it, it loses value.
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Or do you need 4 to charge st all?
Sure, you can. I don’t think you can charge your car directly from it though. It would be connected to your house’s wiring and you’d charge from the wall outlet you had installed for the car.
It would be more inconvenient if you had to plug directly to the battery, limiting where you could place it.
How many of these batteries could a residential solar system fill up anyway? I thing that would be the limiting factor.
I think fed was $7500 and my state was 2500, so 10,000 off the top?
The internal combustion engine is still king.
The internal combustion engine is still king.
Your points on the losses of power is transmission and charging are valid. But you leave out a number on the other side of the ledger:
1) Power plants convert fuel to energy far more efficiently than internal combustion engines.
2) A lot more energy is consumed distrributing fuel to the more than 150K gas stations in the US than the less than 10K power plants. Some of which do not need fuel (wind, solar, hydro)
3) Gasoline used by cars has to be refined at great energy cost, and a great deal of it has to be transported from overseas. Most power plants are fueled by natural gas or coal, which require little or no refining and are sourced in the US.
4) Electric cars are able to recover power via regenerative braking. They also do not use fuel while idling and operate the many car components (power steering, AC, etc) more efficiently.
It’s a much more complex analysis than you make it out to be.
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