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Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

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Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#31

Post by JoeAltmaier »

mrdoops wrote: post #29
throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

What's stopping existing car companies from doing direct sales like Tesla? Removing barriers to customers giving you money is generally a win. How many Tesla's were purchased in the last year that wouldn't have been if the stressful dealership was in the way? How about a subscription / lease deal where they ship you the new model every year? Sell a cheaper tier for the 2nd year used vehicles. Do telemetry on driver s…

Regulation. Most states don't permit car sales without a dealership.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#32

Post by zwily »

mrdoops wrote: post #29
throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

What's stopping existing car companies from doing direct sales like Tesla? Removing barriers to customers giving you money is generally a win. How many Tesla's were purchased in the last year that wouldn't have been if the stressful dealership was in the way? How about a subscription / lease deal where they ship you the new model every year? Sell a cheaper tier for the 2nd year used vehicles. Do telemetry on driver s…

What’s stopping them? Laws in pretty much every state. Laws that have been one of Tesla’s biggest pains. They’ve managed to overturn some of them, but most the time they just get special exceptions carved out for them.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#33

Post by Rebelgecko »

miketery wrote: post #7
lflux wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had my credit union's car purchasing department handle my car purchase. Did everything over email - I told them what I wanted and in what color, they did the legwork to find a dealer that had what I wanted. Emailed me a quote, then the dealer delivered it to my door. No haggling, no visiting dealers, just email and signing some papers.

What sort of credit union offers car purchasing service? what other services do they offer?

My bank and credit union both offer car buying services via TrueCar (which my bank actually owns around 10% of so they really encourage people to use it). In my case I paid around 5% less for my car than the "best" price I was able to get by visiting a dealer and going through the traditional song-and-dance routine. It seems like one of the big benefits is that they make it really easy to check the prices at a bunch of dealers. I don't remember if they actually offered any substantial saving at my local dealer compared to the price I "negotiated", but I was able to find a dealer that was willing to do a cheaper price around 70 miles away.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#34

Post by Zanni »

throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

For those that haven't had the Tesla experience, it's a refreshing change of pace. They don't have dealerships, only showrooms and service centers. You can schedule a test drive at a showroom (or online), and your rep will be happy to help you configure your car right there if you decide to buy, but you can also go home and leisurely plan your configuration over the internet. You can see the price of every option before you add it, and when you're through, you get an exact total that you can pay through the website. No pressure, no haggling, no upgrades. When your car is ready, you pick it up at the service center. That's it. The cars aren't cheap, but the buying process is the most pleasant I've ever experienced.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#35

Post by zamalek »

throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

You will hit these problems when you deal with salespeople on the floor and not salespeople in an office. That being said, here's hoping you never have to own a car. I'm stuck burning dinosaurs and it sucks.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#36

Post by mixmastamyk »

Zanni wrote: post #34
throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

For those that haven't had the Tesla experience, it's a refreshing change of pace. They don't have dealerships, only showrooms and service centers. You can schedule a test drive at a showroom (or online), and your rep will be happy to help you configure your car right there if you decide to buy, but you can also go home and leisurely plan your configuration over the internet. You can see the price of every option bef…

Sounds great. Has privacy of driving data become an option yet, and is it observed?

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#38

Post by zem »

mrdoops wrote: post #29
throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

What's stopping existing car companies from doing direct sales like Tesla? Removing barriers to customers giving you money is generally a win. How many Tesla's were purchased in the last year that wouldn't have been if the stressful dealership was in the way? How about a subscription / lease deal where they ship you the new model every year? Sell a cheaper tier for the 2nd year used vehicles. Do telemetry on driver s…

there are (good and proper) laws to prevent a car company from having a dealership network that is entirely dependent on them, and at the same time competing with that network by doing direct sales. since tesla doesn't have a dealership network they should technically not fall under those laws, but regulations tend to be 'no' by default (again, probably for good and proper reasons, since there are tons of incentives to game the system otherwise)

edit: as per this comment, seems i was wrong about this just being regulators saying no by default: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18772642

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#39

Post by rory096 »

nightski wrote: post #37

The cheapest Tesla will be $46k once the tax credit expires at the end of the year. While that is a lot cheaper than before, it's still out of reach of the vast majority of Americans. I'm rooting for Tesla but that is a huge gap to close.

Note that the tax credit phases out over the course of a year, so for Tesla it'll be $3750 in H1 '19 and $1875 in H2.

Re: Detroit News Vehicle of the Year is a Tesla

#40

Post by Zhenya »

throwaway98121 wrote: post #3

We sold our vehicle because the monthly payment, insurance, gasoline, and parking costs were adding up to about $1000 a month. I planned on downgrading from an Infiniti to a 3 year old Honda Civic or Fit. I visited three dealerships in my area. The experience was horrible at all three. I consider myself a decent person, but I now judge people who work in car sales or car sales management and not in a good way. Anyway…

Meta question: why did you use a throwaway account for this?
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