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Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

electrek.co

211–220 of 328 posts

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#211
post #19

Anecdata from someone living in a small Swiss village (c. 1,500 residents outside the ski season): - I see a handful of Teslas around the village. I would guesstimate 5 local residents own them. - The local taxi firm has a couple even. - Filling stations on the autoroutes have the charging points (at least in Romandy) - The country is small so, hey, it seems ideal I'd like to get one but it doesn't fit my use case (n…

Why buy a car you'll own and pay for the whole year based on the usage for a few weeks? Wouldn't it make more sense to rent a road trip car when you need it?

I know I'm a tiny minority on this usage, but I own cars because I like cars; as in tinkering with them. My two cars are pre-2000, and I only drive them rarely. But when I do, I usually cover several hundred, if not thousands some times, kilometres before I put them away again. But I take the train or bike to work.

While I am not on long trips with them, I instead tinker with them. However, buying a used car can often be a lot cheaper than buying cheap modern car + renting one for road trips, that will cover usages (daily and road trips) decently.

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#212
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t talk about Tesla. I am talking about a small car, electric or not, that cost a fraction to buy, drive, insure and will be easier to park. And then renting for that fishing trip or long road trip when your small car won’t do.

I looked at this for a fun car to use at the weekends twice a month but it wasn't cost effective. To rent for a weekend: - Rental: £300 (dependent on the car, but £300 was the cheapest) - Fuel: £100 To do it twice a month, between April and October would cost £5,600. Instead I picked up a fantastic car for just under £10,000 with less than 50,000 miles on it. Man Maths has me at (over 12 months): - Depreciation: £500…

One small tip for renting cars is to look around at a few rental places, ideally in lower-traffic or lower-population areas. £300 for a weekend seems pretty high (but comparable to e.g. renting from the local airport here), whereas I could take an Uber to an Enterprise just outside of town for ~$30 and get a "premium" car for $140 for the weekend (48 hours at $70/day).

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#213
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

accelerating really fast in a straight line is probably the most pointless aspect of "performance" for a car that gets driven on public roads. modern hot hatches that cost $25k are already too powerful to fully appreciate without getting your license taken away. a 230i or m240i is going to be much more fun to drive 10-15 mph over the speed limit than any Tesla. get one with a manual transmission while you still can.

I drive a sports car on public roads. Straight, level, boring public roads with low speed limits. Straight line is basically the only thing that matters 90% of the time. For the other 10% of the time, the difference between a Tesla and the ICE equivalent still doesn't matter or possibly even favors the instant response of the electric drivetrain.

It sounds like you're just not driving on the right public roads.

In the US, to name just a couple, there are:

    - Hells Canyon, Idaho
    - Saddle Road, Hawaii
    - Mulholland Highway, California
    - Route 9W to Storm King Highway, New York
    - Route 348, Helen, Georgia 
    - M119, Harbor Springs, Michigan
    - Highway 1, Big Sur, California
In the UK:

    - Horncastle to Louth
    - Cat and Fiddle
    - Evo Triangle
    - Forres to Alford
    - Black Mountain Pass
    - St Ives To St Just

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $35k Model 3 was "announced" in 2016, over two years ago, with $1000 pre-order deposits taken at that time. https://www.engadget.com/2016/03/31/tesla-unveils-its-35-000... There were promises about how this car would arrive in 2017 back then. > The $35,000 (before federal tax credits) Model 3 sedan made its world debut at an event in Los Angeles. On stage, Elon Musk announced that the car will have at least 215 m…

Upselling is standard practice for car sales. I don't think barely anybody ever buys the base model of a car.

There's a difference between upselling and bait and switch, though. Upselling, imo, is trying to convince you to get a higher priced model, or falling back to the base while it's in stock. Here Tesla is advertising a vehicle they do not have in stock. It's like getting you in and then saying they misquoted the price and it's actually $10k more (to me).

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say it probably wouldn’t work out well for anyone. Where I live, ~50% of motorists are armed and no permits are required to do so. Road rage never ends well for anyone involved here. The moral of the story is: be respectful of others. If you’re a motorcyclist in a state where it’s illegal to lane split, don’t do it. If you’re a driver in a state where it is legal, don’t be a dick to motorcyclists if they are lane…

>I’d also like to add that I think lane splitting is wildly dangerous and dread driving in California. Surely motorcyclists die from this every year? So it's a bit contentious, but from what i've seen, it's safe as long as it's done safely, which is a dumb sentence, but let me explain: There are really 2 things that people talk about with "lane splitting": * Filtering - moving up between stopped cars at a light to th…

I appreciate the in depth reply and hadn’t considered the different types of splitting.

> And obviously at no point should anyone ever be flying between cars going 20mph+ faster than the cars around them. That's not safe splitting, and that's not what I want either.

I think this is what I’m mostly referring to. We can definitely agree here! It seems to happen all too frequently when I’m driving in CA (mostly LA and SF, some SD).

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at this for a fun car to use at the weekends twice a month but it wasn't cost effective. To rent for a weekend: - Rental: £300 (dependent on the car, but £300 was the cheapest) - Fuel: £100 To do it twice a month, between April and October would cost £5,600. Instead I picked up a fantastic car for just under £10,000 with less than 50,000 miles on it. Man Maths has me at (over 12 months): - Depreciation: £500…

One small tip for renting cars is to look around at a few rental places, ideally in lower-traffic or lower-population areas. £300 for a weekend seems pretty high (but comparable to e.g. renting from the local airport here), whereas I could take an Uber to an Enterprise just outside of town for ~$30 and get a "premium" car for $140 for the weekend (48 hours at $70/day).

This is for renting sports cars (fun cars) for weekend use. Enterprise and the like don't have such cars available in the U.K, it's more of a specialist market.

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Tesla Model 3 is very capable of long road trips, especially in the summer, with a range of 500km or more. The only exception would be if you’re driving in very remote areas with no charging infrastructure, but that almost doesn’t exist any more in Western Europe. The Tesla Supercharger network, combined with its ability to charge on CCS charging networks like Ionity, make it uniquely suited to long distance trav…

You can drive a manual in stop and go traffic (and I don't mean that suburban sprawl "run through the gears between each stop light" type of stop and go you get in some places, I mean like going 10-30ft at a time between stops). That doesn't make it not obviously worse for the task than an automatic. The extra cognitive load of having to worry about range and where you're going to charge is a pain in the butt that mo…

Having just done a 1000 mile (1600km) road trip through Oregon, it wasn't really that big of a hassle. I told my car where I wanted to go, the tesla routing software put down pins on where to charge and told me how long to charge. That was it.

If anything, planning for gas stops is much more of a burden, because usually as you are driving, once you get to ~1/4 full you are thinking to yourself "Ok, where can I stop to get gas? Is there a place close enough? Which stations have the best price?"

With this, all of that cognitive load was gone and handled for me by a smart routing computer.

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upselling is standard practice for car sales. I don't think barely anybody ever buys the base model of a car.

The difference is that the base model EXISTS in the other stores. The $35k model 3 doesn't exist yet. But Mr. Musk has been touting that number for the past 3 years anyway. Its not common practice to tout a number for a mythical, non-existent car.

Having higher shipping times (or other inconveniences) on cheaper/base models is also pretty common in car sales tactics to help with the upsell.

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#219
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a Model 3 even with readily available charging that still means ~1 hour waiting on a supercharger per charge, and you've gotta do that 2-3x to get from, say, Amsterdam to Kitzbuhel for a skiing road trip. Figure 15 Euro minimum to use the charger during that time? (I'm using range numbers and charging costs available on the web to run this calculation) I know it's _possible_ to get somewhere without range anxiety…

I drove from San Diego to SF in one of my many long trips and most of my charging stops were 10 minutes. I also had two 20 minute stops, one 30 minute, and one 15 minute. The 30 minute stop was near the end where I wanted to arrive home near half full. Food, checking out local shops, and coffee + bathroom break for those three longer stops. For the short stops, it was just get a bit of charge, maybe a quick stretch o…

I was going off of a brand new Model 3 performance review on TopGear.com from the Fremont factory to LA design center, which indicated it was closer to an hour with a single stop. (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gsS-Q3j_Pk)

Re: Tesla Model 3 becomes best-selling car in Switzerland

#220
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a Model 3 even with readily available charging that still means ~1 hour waiting on a supercharger per charge, and you've gotta do that 2-3x to get from, say, Amsterdam to Kitzbuhel for a skiing road trip. Figure 15 Euro minimum to use the charger during that time? (I'm using range numbers and charging costs available on the web to run this calculation) I know it's _possible_ to get somewhere without range anxiety…

> Amsterdam to Kitzbuhel for a skiing road trip That's a 10 hour drive! You're genuinely choosing a personal vehicle on its ability to drive literally all day? I mean, sure. Everyone has their own preferences. But this is a wildly beyond median data point. Most people will take a trip like this once every few years at most. The vast majority are going to look at that trip and fly/train and rent a car in Austria. Buy…

My family's done this drive a couple times for vacations. Much easier / cheaper than flying and renting with all your gear, etc.

In the United States I routinely am in the car for 8-10 hours each way to visit family, but most of my daily driving is short distances. I don't want to own two cars.

I agree with you completely - buy the car you want. What I am hearing from a lot of folks here though is "I bought the car I wanted (for most of my driving) but I'm also saying it's the same or better on long road trips"

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