Who Wants 30k Used Teslas?(nymag.com) |
Who Wants 30k Used Teslas?(nymag.com) |
How Hertz’s bet on Teslas went sideways
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928913
Hertz is ditching even more electric cars
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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.
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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.
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.
Have they actually come back down?
Years ago I read this advice "Find an under-served market and serve it cheaply."
There's an opportunity here for a 3rd party to service and repair Teslas at a reasonable price.
Looks like selective quoting to me, the quarter sized hole was under the battery pack, which was damaged.
Since the hole was punched upward from the ground, it counted as exterior damage.
So $13,078.58 to fix the hole and battery pack issue.
That makes a used Tesla a less attractive option, and makes any Tesla more expensive to insure. In the long term that also makes new Tesla's less attractive. Low resale value and high insurance costs both increase the monthly cost of owning one, which is the number the majority of consumers will look at.
My bets are on supply chain or Tesla refusing to honor warranties if you get work done elsewhere.
At least until people start to consider them unrepairable.
> Only new Tesla parts, Tesla-approved fasteners, and Tesla-approved structural adhesives must be used when performing repairs on Tesla vehicles.
https://service.tesla.com/docs/BodyRepair/Body_Repair_Proced...
What’s not clear: how much are those “new Tesla parts”?
Tesla uses some scary language to make it seem like they are the only ones that can repair their product.
They have taken a page out of the Apple playbook.
I didn't read all the was too the fine print, but these statements are patently nonsense. Maybe doing the things they don't like will void your warranty or something, but adhesives don't get stickier just because Tesla decrees it.
They may well advise you on what to do, or even try to fuck up your car's software if they detect you've defied them, but they can't just issue commands or make statements about the impossibility of letting someone else fix your bumper.
For me, thinking in broad strokes seems sufficient here:
(1) Tesla has a reputation for lengthy, extremely costly repairs.
(2) Tesla is led by Musk, whose leadership strikes me as erratic and unreliable in the best of times.
(3) Tesla seems to be in financial trouble, which I'd expect to only exacerbate (1) and (2).
(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.
(5) I can't afford to spend $30k on an unreliable vehicle, nor a reliable one with $5k+ repairs.
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?
Then you should get a Tesla, because once you get past the FUD on HN, Reddit and the media, in the real world Consumer Reports found that Teslas had the lowest repair and maintenance costs compared to other car brands. Yes, even Toyota and Honda.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/consumer-reports-names-cheapest...
The submitted story is passing off one anecdote as if it applies to all used Teslas sold by Hertz, and it already showed up multiple times on HN's front page from different media outlets. You can make a story out of that for any brand, but curiously there's a pattern there. There's a lot of anti-EV propaganda in the media and social media in the past year. And it's working very well, given comments like yours.
(have over 200k miles collectively on three Teslas)
Somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.70/kWh vs $5/gallon of gas, someone else can go deeper into the math.
https://www.wired.com/story/why-teslas-totaled-in-the-us-are...
> 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period.
https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty
In reality, an NMC battery would last 1000+ cycles. If you get 200 miles to a charge then you’re looking at 200k miles. LFP will be 2 - 3x this.
I know Tesla themselves do it if you buy a pre-owned car from them.
That is the fundamental takeaway.
These are specialized machines, with specialized parts, and specialized repairs.
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And to be fair, this isn't all that much different than other luxury cars like BMWs and Audis.
It's different in that those have much larger and more readily available 3rd party repair shops, parts, and used parts. You can often shop around and get alternatives. With Tesla you're a lot more locked in.
And...I'm sure it's better than Tesla in this regard, but it was still extraordinarily painful anytime something went wrong.
(Part of this was the engineering of the car itself. Like, something as basic as replacing the fan belt is basically full disassembly of the engine compartment.)
And by work on I mean I've done the intercooler, downpipe, brakes, rotors, calipers, plugs, injectors, and silly things like airfilters, fluids, etc.
The official diagnostic software from BMW is available for only $2700 per year. Plug it in, click a few buttons and it tells you exactly what is wrong with any BMW, troubleshooting steps, diagrams of the parts and what parts to order etc: https://bmwtechinfo.bmwgroup.com/
If you're not an official shop and don't care about the legalities, the same can be downloaded for $10 at home...
You must watch a LOT of advertising.
I imagine you are fans of Disney and Nintendo too? Maybe throw in some Samsung if you arent too infatuated with Apple.
For example, a down payment for a home :)
$30.000 is a lot, I know it's a luxury car, but a new model 3 is still "only" 50.000USD. The discount simply isn't high enough and $30.000 is more than I would want to spend on a new car anyway. I can get a Hyundai i10 for $20.000 which functionally does the exact same thing for me. Sadly it's not electric.
Yeah, that's not going to do it. By, like, an order of magnitude.
The rest of the world outside the US exists? 150K gets you a very nice studio/loft in a brick building in central Budapest/Krakow/Belgrade.
But FSD 12.3.6 looks amazing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Lamborghini is 3s+.
I'll call that an amazing piece of hardware.
In an ICE sure (and that is even questionable, had a '96 Honda Civic go 300+k) but what wears on an EV aside from batteries? Bearings? There's so much less mechanical crap that an EV should really outlast a gas bunner by decades. Then again all the plastic crap and junk electronics have crippled automobiles.
To be honest, I really think a newer car will be in the shop sooner than my vehicles will have a hiccup. My friends that buy Audi, BMW, jag, are usually in the shop soon after purchase for something random.
What on earth are you taking about?
Physical damage to the case, maybe. But physical damage to the cells, no way. Water damage from the cooling system will only be inside. And battery capacity is only visible in the battery management system. Which is only available from CAN with vendor-specific software.
California, the state with the highest EV sales especially for Tesla, mandates that batteries be warrantied for 10y/150k miles. 70k leaves most of the warranty intact.
It's no comparison to paying 13k for battery repair on an entry level Tesla, that was only 40k new.
What else is required to remove and reinstall?
I could see a new pack costing about 10k retail, probably 7 mfg costs.
To remove and install a new one:
0: Lift car on Jacks.
1: Disconnect old pack connector at car.
2: Discharge old pack
3: Remove old under-armor panel
4: Remove old pack from car
5: Install new pack in car
6: Install new under-armor panel
7: Reconnect new pack to car
8: Run diagnostic tests
That looks like a 3 to 4 hour job minimum, with specialized equipment dealing with high voltage to me.
I think 13k is not a bad price at all.
But that means a Tesla does not have as low a cost of ownership as people originally thought. It doesn't need oil changes, but now you have to deal with a low resale value and high insurance costs. The savings on fuel and mechanical maintenance may be lost to that.
But it probably comes down to right to repair, and can Tesla be shown as impeding this right. My guess, is yes. But I also think, as usual, the authorities are reluctant to penalize Elon. He makes such a stink about such things, they'd rather penalized John Deere.
> With Activation Lock, your Apple ID password or device passcode is required before anyone can turn off Find My, erase your Mac, or reactivate and use your Mac. Even if you erase your Mac remotely, Activation Lock can continue to deter others from reactivating your Mac without your permission. All you need to do is keep Find My turned on and remember your Apple ID and password.
Tesla Model 3 - Curb weight 3,627 to 4,072 lbs Audi A4 - Curb weight 3,450 to 3,627 lbs BMW 3 series - 3,582 to 4,010 lbs
From here: https://www.quora.com/Is-a-Tesla-heavier-than-an-ICE-car-of-....
They are equal in weight to a lot of ICE cars. Surely components will be spec’ed according to weight requirements?
I earn too much to receive any incentives, so keeping an eye on the used market to buy another Tesla or two (preferably Ys, but would take a 3).
Edit: I enjoy spirited driving, and do so frequently on roads of many different quality across the eastern US and Midwest.
We're quickly entering a world where car manufacturers are trying to extract profit from subscriptions (see: BMW heated seats, Toyota remote start, Ford BlueCruise, etc). On top of that, most cars are now shipping with an encrypted CAN bus, which lands us right back in the same "trusted computing" quagmire as every other consumer electronic device.
Their existence doesn't but their success does. If and when Framework becomes large enough to steal a significant portion of marketshare from less repair friendly companies, they will adapt or die.
There are success stories here; IBM and Panasonic didn't struggle to find customers for the Thinkpad and Toughbook respectively. But the market was never forced to "adapt or die" as you put it; in fact, the rugged and repairable machines were now the ones that had to adapt. How can you compete against a monopoly on repair pricing?
https://www.bellandbell.com/service/service-and-parts-tips/h....
I too have had cars that went far longer than this without replacement, but they probably should have been replaced.
Just because you didn't have to, doesn't mean you shouldn't have.
I'm as good of a mechanic as a diy gets. I've rebuilt entire auto transmissions instead of just sticking in another unit. I've regearied rear ends (which did get interior bearings while there). I do head gaskets as favors to friends.
I'm fairly certain all of my 200k+ mile vehicles have had perfectly safe and functional bearings.
> In theory, wheel bearings could last as long as your Tesla. Unlike oil changes or tire rotations, there’s no standard maintenance schedule for replacing them.
I do not disagree that inspections should be done to ensure things that move between motor and road are in good repair, but all vehicles in the used car market experience this. EVs have less moving parts, less than 20 typically for propulsion, leading to higher reliability.
When was the last time you had your wheel bearings inspected? Probably never. You know when it’s time to replace them when they fail.
> You know when it’s time to replace [bearings] when they fail.
Fail? They last forever!
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2022/08/01/electric...
> “It’s the complete opposite of what people feared when we first launched EVs—that the batteries would only last a short time,” he reflected.
> It’s clear that most EV batteries will outlast the vehicles they were installed in, and even then, they have a worthwhile second life before they need to be stripped down for recycling.
> “At the end of the vehicle’s life—15 or 20 years down the road—you take the battery out of the car, and it’s still healthy, with perhaps 60 or 70% of usable charge,” said Thomas.
-- Nissan executive Nic Thomas.
(and these are early gen battery pack designs that were, frankly, not very good compared to Tesla's)
Your car will go way out of alignment first. It will handle like crap, and if you try to align it at an alignment shop they won't be able to.
You can easily test yourself, jack the car up, see of there is slop in the wheel.
When we lifted our 4runner I did it myself with tape measures. 40k miles later tires wearing better than most new vehicles.
But are you implying that a bearing can be so bad that it throws off alignment, yet I wouldn't feel that massive play while it's going down the road??