That’s why many of us are so looking forward to the Model 3, a much more affordable car, especially when considered from a total cost of ownership angle.
Is there a resale market and what are depreciation costs? How would Model 3 affect resale prices of older mega-$$ models?
There are direct costs (gas or electricity) and there are indirect costs. As I was driving home from my class today, I noticed that I had 45 miles worth of gas left in the tank. The distance to the house is 28 miles, which meant that I either had to scramble to get gas in the morning or I needed to get off the freeway and fill 'er up. I was tired and hungry, and it was raining hard… An electric car would have solved this issue.
Then there are oil changes… Twice a year each car has to visit the shop to get a gut cleanse. That gunky crud that comes out of the engine needs to be properly recycled/disposed of. Neither Mr. nor I are exactly enthused about taking the cars for the oil changes… It is a hassle. So yes, there’s more to that than just electricity v gas costs.
@mom60 All of the above! And ixnaybob mentions tons of stuff that make me want one even more (and the fact that he also has a kid at Skidmore means we have more in common than Tesla fandom!). It’s just a quantum leap forward in driver/car integration. And they’re so pretty (at least the S and E are)! I’m fortunate to live in a city with a zillion charging stations, so when I make the leap, I know it’ll be easy to charge up away from home. Sigh! Someday…
My husband wanted one so bad. I had two issues with it.
First we are tall people and I did not feel that the back seat provided enough clearance for out heads. I felt it was a safety issue.
Two we live in the upper Midwest. I did not have much confidence in the battery working at full range when it is -15 outside. We live an hour from the major city and I was worried about getting home if we had gone up for dinner in the cold.
Has anyone driven it in our kind of cold?
My husband purchased a gas plug in hybrid from Ford. I think it is a Fusion. There is the gas for back up and I can live with the price much more easily.
@“Snowball City” , your second is a legit concern. I’m not sure about the first, but then again, I’m 5’ 8" and drive an X and I think you were referring to an S. I will say that I had a (claimed) 6’ 10" guy sit in my car and he fit in the driver seat, but he didn’t have much headroom.
In cold weather, the battery does not operate at full range. There are tricks to combat this, mostly having to do with warming up the battery while plugged in, rather than on battery power. Your ICE vehicle also gets less range in very cold weather, but you don’t worry about it because of ubiquitous gas stations. A guy who owns the most Teslas in the world (7), lives in the Arctic Circle in Norway. Interestingly, like me, he didn’t care a fig about cars until he read about Tesla. Tesla sells extremely well in Norway, a sign of Norway’s affluence and environmental concern.
It is 19 degrees this morning, not -15, but I will still appreciate being able to pick up my iPhone, open the Tesla app, and turn on the climate control before I head out, without feeling guilty about idling an ICE, or worrying about the car being stolen. In NJ, it’s more often useful on hot days, but I’ll take it :).
And yes, there is no dispute about the price. I configured an expensive X, toward the high end of its price range. I didn’t need all of the options, but researched the order in which they were being manufactured. I called it “a tax on impatience.” I had ordered it and put a deposit down 2.5 years earlier, and my ICE car literally had parts held on with duct tape, no exaggeration.
I don’t retain car info. If I sat in it about a year and a half ago and it was not the kind people where lining up for- what was it? I know it was over $60,000. How the roof sloped for the back seat was the problem. Our kids are all just under 6 feet tall.
We have a detached garage. My husband wanted the kind of plug in that would charge more quickly. Our electrician said it would run about $2000 to install it. That was a bit of a shocker too. We live in a rural area and as far as I know there are no charging stations around.
The Ford is working out well for his commute- work to home on all electric except when there is bitter cold. Of course the fit and finish isn’t as nice as the Tesla but it is good enough.
Lol. Like that Norwegian guy, Mr. B did not care a fig about cars - now he wants a Tesla, and he will get his wish as soon as we figure out where he will be parking it. The “new” digs will need a new roof. I want a metal roof. Mr. wants to wait for Elon’s shingles. 
I went camping once in the wood in an isolated area. The only one gas station nearby sold diesel and regular, nothing else. The car we took could only take high octane. We don’t take that car to camping anymore. I wouldn’t like to have to worry about running out of gas/battery. We are into outdoor activities and go to wild, deserted places often.
@“Snowball City” , if it was 1.5 years ago, it must have been a Model S. The Model X and 3 weren’t out yet, and the Roadster was pretty rare by then.
I’m glad that you’re happy with the Ford. Aside from being a Tesla fanboy, my interest is in EV, sustainability, clean air, etc., and what’s important is that people find and use sensible transportation.
Your electrician sounds high, but I don’t know what’s involved. I paid less for my installation, in expensive NJ. Fwiw, there is a 30% federal tax credit for installing an electric vehicle charging station, and various state and local incentives.
@BunsenBurner I’m convinced that Elon’s Shingles is actually a painful skin condition rather than something having to do with solar. Can’t you imagine a doc on a tv show gravely telling a woman in the ER waiting room, “I’m sorry, ma’am, we’re doing everything we can, but his liver condition is exacerbated by his severe case of Elon’s Shingles.” Of course, Dr. House would be able to find a cure…
Where is that emoticon that looks like it it is spraying red wine all over the keyboard?! Mr. B is laughing hysterically with me. 
If you don’t have solar, you are just moving the pollution somewhere else (although I don’t think you can fully charge a Tesla every day from your average rooftop system). The hidden pollution and environmental impact of producing a car like a Tesla may counteract the emissions gains at the tailpipe.
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not-green-think/
What worries me is 5-10 years down the road. Electric cars work fine now when they are substantially less than 1% of the cars on the road, and those charging stations are largely unused. What happens when half the cars in your office parking lot are electric? Sure, lots of companies put in a few charging stations because it is not super expensive and they have enough spare power capacity to spare a few kW of juice. What about when there’s 500 cars competing for those two or four spots? What do you do when there’s 50 Teslas waiting to charge up at a supercharger?
No one who owns an office building or shopping center can afford the infrastructure to wire up hundreds of parking spots, and utilities cannot deliver enough power to run them all. Can our power grid handle charging 50 million electric cars every day?
Or maybe I am just rationalizing the fact that I can’t afford one… 
Re: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not-green-think/
That article does say that the pollution and energy consumption / CO2 production favor the electric car over the gasoline car. It does say that the manufacturing is unfavorable, due to the larger amount of material that goes in (mainly for the battery). Recycling is brought up, but cars are among the most intensively recycled objects around, since mining metals from junk cars is far less expensive than mining metals from the ground.
Note that the source of electricity matters in terms of environmental impact. For information on what each state uses to generate electricity, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants/ . Note that natural gas and coal are each about a third of the US total (though coal’s share is decreasing). Nuclear is the next largest. Renewables are small but increasing. Oil is minimal except in Hawaii.
Of course, environmental impact is not the only external impact of choosing an electric car versus a car fueled by oil-based fuel (gasoline or diesel), or choosing a more fuel efficient car fueled by oil-based fuel. Despite oil from fracking (which some consider an environmental risk), the US still needs to import some oil (unlike other energy sources), which adds to the trade deficit. In addition, oil demand that causes upward pressure on oil prices that increases oil revenues to governments that you may not like, or non-governmental oil smugglers (e.g. Daesh) that you may not like. It is odd that few pay attention to the latter two external impacts, since they are ones that the political left and right seemingly would agree on (instead of fighting over like the environmental impact).
Good grief! I was curious and looked up the price of the Tesla SUV X - it’s $100,000! Unless inflation goes crazy, I will never buy a car that expensive.
@TatinG, the prices for the Model X, and to a lesser extent the Model S (which comes in roughly $5-$10k lower than a similarly configured X) have historically been high for a number of reasons:
- a desire to “further the cause”
- a willingness to deal with the pain of early adoption
- an indifference to price among a substantial number of Tesla customers (whose other cars quite possibly include Lambos, Ferraris, Porsches, etc). My wife’s 2012 Range Rover was a six digit purchase
- a willingness to pay an exorbitantly higher price for an improvement in safety
The Model 3, which is undergoing pilot production (i.e., they have closed the factory for Model S and X production and are doing a trial run of Model 3s), will be a game changer. The “base” model is intended to sell for $35k. Typical Tesla pricing means that you can go 2x the base model by adding additional battery size, Autopilot, Cold Weather packages, etc. Iirc, the average price will be ~$45k before incentives, the incentives being substantial in some cases (in NJ, for example, my X got $7500 federal tax credit, paid no sales tax (~$9240), gets 10% EZpass discount, doesn’t require inspection, etc.).
It is probably a sign that we have more money than brains, but I paid $132k for my X. I did it with eyes wide open, and after getting approval from my wife (she’s the one working outside the home), and kids (whose inheritance I was spending :)) ). There is no doubt that I overpaid for the car, but I don’t feel bad at all.
We see Volts everywhere, an occasional Leaf, and only a few Teslas. Our local Meijer supermarket has a 6 bay Telsa charging station and I have yet to a single Tesla parked there. The few we see are charging at the mall, or at the local downtown courtesy charge spot.
@notrichenough , that is what the ‘Smart Grid’ is for. A large amount of electrical power at night is unused and that excess power could be channeled into charging cars. Same with intermittent sources like wind and solar. If you have a nuclear plant nearby evening charging produces no CO2. We run our dishwasher in the middle of the night to use that excess power.
@auntiek I don’t agree with the observation that they are “everywhere here in Oregon.” I’m in Lake Oswego and I see a few Teslas but Escalades and Porsches are much more common in the school pick up lines and around town. In Portland the alternative cars of choice seem to be Prius (with Washington plates!), Suburu, Minis, Fiats and little Zipcar logo models. I don’t see many heading out along the Sunset to Cannon Beach even though that goes by the Intel facilities. Driving the I-5 corridor to/from California I don’t recall any at the usual stops in Medford. Where do you see them?
@Oregon2016, I see them all over Portland. I live in SW, my brother in NW, my sister in SE, and my parents in NE, and I see a half dozen, easy, when going to visit any of them. Downtown, grocery shopping, at work…My kids tease me about wanting to buy one, so we’re all pretty attuned to seeing them on the road. Definitely lots of Prius, Leaf, and those little electric BMWs, too. I love all of the EVs here!
I paid $122,000 for mine. With the complete agreement from my husband plus the kids whose inheritance I’m spending. I don’t regret it for one second. Before that, the most I ever spent for a car was $21,000. I plan to drive this for a really, really long time. And yes, except for a Tesla, I’m really frugal. Paid off our house 12 years ago. Have never borrowed for anything but the house. Won’t eat at a restaurant without a coupon. As my kids said: That’s why you can afford the Tesla.