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Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

tesloop.com

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Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#21

Post by mod »

burkaman wrote: post #8
com2kid wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure why they mention the fuel cost of these cars without citing the electricity cost of the Tesla. It does make the numbers bigger. The article didn't break the fuel number out for the Tesla, but it does state it is included in the total.

It says that, but the math doesn't leave any room for fuel. > During the first 300,000 miles the total combined maintenance and fuel costs of the Tesla Model S were $10,492, with a total of 12 days in the shop. Of these costs, $6,900 was scheduled maintenance and $3500 was headlight damage due to driving through deep water. I guess maybe they're including fuel costs in "scheduled maintenance"?

My God, those must be some special headlights.

They cost more than any car I've ever owned.

Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#22

Post by vonmoltke »

portman wrote: post #6
tyrust wrote: post #2

Neat. >During the first 300,000 miles the total combined maintenance and fuel costs of the Tesla Model S were $10,492, with a total of 12 days in the shop. Had this been an Mercedes S class, the scheduled routine maintenance and fuel would have been $86,000 ($52,000 maintenance and $36,000* fuel) with 112 days of servicing, or for a Lincoln Town Car $70k,000 ($28,000 maintenance and $42,000 fuel) with around 100 days…

> The electric drivetrain, when coupled with a vast supercharging network... I took that to mean that the car exclusively refueled on Superchargers, so the fuel cost was $0. That is a legitimate apples-to-apples comparison to the ICE vehicles.

Exclusively refuelled using proprietary infrastructure currently provided by the car's manufacturer is not an apples-to-apples comparison to anything.

Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#23

Post by praxulus »

tomcam wrote: post #18
andrei_says_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noticed that you framed the debate as a zero sum game between "Tesla" and "reason". Doing so diminishes the possibility for an open discussion. Edit: thank you for updating your post. Your understandable frustration is still clear but now the discussion is much easier.

Not trying to troll or be rude, but I actually can't find any problem with the original post. Could you elucidate?

It originally ended with a line saying something like, "I realize that Tesla is popular and reason is not, so bring on the downvotes"

That's basically saying "most of you are unreasonable," which is a pretty dickish way to start a conversation.

Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#24

Post by vonmoltke »

mod wrote: post #21
burkaman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says that, but the math doesn't leave any room for fuel. > During the first 300,000 miles the total combined maintenance and fuel costs of the Tesla Model S were $10,492, with a total of 12 days in the shop. Of these costs, $6,900 was scheduled maintenance and $3500 was headlight damage due to driving through deep water. I guess maybe they're including fuel costs in "scheduled maintenance"?

My God, those must be some special headlights. They cost more than any car I've ever owned.

The headlights in my 2003 Acura CL were $1000 apiece in parts alone (in 2006).

Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#26

Post by jmcgough »

Reminds me of the argument made in https://shift.newco.co/this-is-how-big-oil-will-die-38b843bd... a few months ago:

Gas powered vehicles require many more (and more complex) parts, which inevitably need to be replaced throughout the lifespan of the car. There's a big incentive for services like lyft, uber, and future autonomous driving companies to move to electric vehicles because they have much fewer moving parts, and therefore are cheaper to maintain on a per-mile basis.

Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#27

Post by dmix »

dmitrygr wrote: post #14
andrei_says_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noticed that you framed the debate as a zero sum game between "Tesla" and "reason". Doing so diminishes the possibility for an open discussion. Edit: thank you for updating your post. Your understandable frustration is still clear but now the discussion is much easier.

correct - making people wait for months to get required service is NOT reasonable (And you can make no excuse for it). Other car companies (including those that provide electric cars), do act reasonably in terms of their service capacity matching demand. The fact that Tesla did not plan for this does not make it excusable.

The way I see it is that running businesses as complex as building, selling, and servicing a car with many unique innovations (high-end electric-only, charging stations, skipping dealer-only system, presales, iterative features, etc) that they very likely won't get everything right the first time.

Particularly the type of things big companies who move slowly do best.

You may find that unreasonable, but I believe this is a perspective that drives many poorly thought out regulatory laws which punish experimentation and companies which fail to execute with an (unreasonable) expectation of perfection. Another perspective is that these are growing pains of an immature company that many people took a (known) risk betting on, particularly people from a high-income bracket who could afford their early models.

Tesla should certainly be held responsible for their failures so they fix them - not fixing them would be what is unreasonable in my books.

There is a popular business concept called 'crossing the chasm' [1] that applies well here. Jumping from startup -> mainstream company is a significant leap which many companies fail to do. Tesla has not yet crossed this market gap and their ability to consistently provide support services such as these, rather than simply an innovative new product that people want, will likely be their primary challenge in the future.

[1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Crossing_the_Chasm

Edit: I see you've made an edit on the subtext predicting downvotes from Tesla fanboys which I believe was the sentiment OP was referring to

Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#28

Post by cmurf »

hinfaits wrote: post #3

To me, no part of that article was that surprising (impressive nonetheless) except for the $6500 headlight repair from "driving through deep water". Wonder how exactly that happened, and what damage was caused to the car.

And a definition of deep.

Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#29

Post by SilasX »

portman wrote: post #6
tyrust wrote: post #2

Neat. >During the first 300,000 miles the total combined maintenance and fuel costs of the Tesla Model S were $10,492, with a total of 12 days in the shop. Had this been an Mercedes S class, the scheduled routine maintenance and fuel would have been $86,000 ($52,000 maintenance and $36,000* fuel) with 112 days of servicing, or for a Lincoln Town Car $70k,000 ($28,000 maintenance and $42,000 fuel) with around 100 days…

> The electric drivetrain, when coupled with a vast supercharging network... I took that to mean that the car exclusively refueled on Superchargers, so the fuel cost was $0. That is a legitimate apples-to-apples comparison to the ICE vehicles.

I don't think that's apples-to-apples -- you have to go out of your way to always use a supercharger, so you'd have to account for the value of the time lost in traveling to a supercharger station compared to doing all the same journeys and using nearby gas stations. (Refueling at a supercharger is slower too, so that's extra fillup time.)

Alternatively you could use the electricity cost of recharging it at home, plus the cost of the occasional missed journeys that are out of range from not always being full. (Say, book their cost at what you'd pay for an Uber for those legs.)

(I don't know if charging a Tesla at home overnight is enough to get to 100% -- anyone know?)

Re: Tesla Model S Hits 300k Miles with less than $11k maintenance costs

#30

Post by woofyman »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #16
dmitrygr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and only one of those makes you wait months for maintenance appointments

I'd still rather buy a Tesla. Edit: look up how many people GM killed with their ignition switch recall (124). I'm not putting my wife and daughter in a legacy automaker vehicle just because those cars get fixed faster https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_swit...

11 cars had zero fatalities over a 4 year period.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/25/autos/safest-and-deadliest-c...

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