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Comment by readhn | Hacker News Reader

"So sure, the car cost about $70,000. And it had to have its drive unit (ENGINE) replaced a few times. "

That sounds like a failure to me.

If this was 70,000$ FORD that had to have its engine replaced 2-3 times then people would be screaming LEMON. But since its Tesla - it is ok somehow.

Anyway what matters for taxi driver is the cost per mile. Tesla spending: 70,000 + 3,700 (electricity) + 7,000 (repairs) = ~ $80,000 Toyota camry spending: 23,000 + 10,000 (gas) + 2,000 (repairs) = ~ $35,000

Tesla: 80,000$/100,000 miles = 0.8 USD/mile Toyota camry: 35,000$/100,000 miles = 0.35 USD/mile

Cost per mile driven: Tesla > Toyota by 2.3x

Total cost: if he was to sell Tesla today he would lose $35,000. If he sold camry today he would lose $13,000

Financially Tesla still does not make sense.

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The first drive unit repair was a recall. The second was after 75,000 miles. In both cases, he had his car back after 24 hours.

The criteria for a lemon is that a car is repaired for the same thing multiple times, has been under repair for an unusually long time, or has a defect that impacts safety. Every US state (and this guy is in Canada) has slightly different limits. Replacing an electric motor twice, with little delay, isn't going to hit those limits.

Otherwise, we'd call cars that need timing belts every 60k miles, or water pumps every 100k miles.

I've had to deal with a lemon. You don't scream LEMON until the 3rd repair; and you don't scream LEMON when the second repair is at 100k miles. (The lemon law that I'm familiar with would say that a car only lasts 150k miles.)

There are no lemon laws in Canada, just as an FYI.

It was a double lemon... Who said otherwise?

"Tesla replaced the drive units free of charge with 24 hours"

Obviously there were manufacturing defects which were covered under warrantee. The same thing happens with every brand. Tesla might be worse, I don't know. I forgive them not because "TESLA" but because a) they are a young company, b) they did the right thing by the customer, and c) they have been honest about their quality problems and put resources into fixing the production line, and d) they're doing a good thing by showing the world that electric vehicles aren't a totally stupid idea.

Where does your $7,000 repairs figure come from?

he didn't answer your question about the $7,000 in repairs.

that says a lot.

We had electric vehicle manufacturing boom in America >100 years ago.

One of the first licensed female drivers in USA was driving electric car over 100 years ago.

What we need is an effective political and economic reform that supports long lasting changes in this area. Not another $100,000+ dollar toy (Tesla X) for the rich.

Have you heard of the Tesla 3? Tesla S and X have helped subsidize the development cost for it.

The problem of analysis like this is all of the things you leave out that many other people consider valuable.

For example, a complete calculation for you might look like:

Driving the quickest 4 door sedan ever made: $0

Driving the safest car on the road: $0

Driving a super peaceful and quiet car: $0

Driving a car without a jerky transmission: $0

Having a ton of cargo space: $0

Reducing emissions: $0

Fitting 7 people in a car (5 adults + 2 kids): $0

Not supporting the oil industry: $0

Not ever having to stop at gas stations: $0

Supporting a company driving innovation in battery storage and automobiles: $0

----

TOTAL value of driving a Tesla vs. Camry: $0

For me, for all of the above numbers, make the numbers large enough where the Tesla is cheaper than the Camry.

I don't know a single person that has an extra $40,000 to spend on a car because they want to not support the oil industry. Also, stopping at the gas station once a week isn't a big deal, but having to send your only car into the shop for days while it's repaired could be a huge problem.

We all value things differently. I'm not saying you're wrong. To me, owning a car is more than just fuel + service costs.

We are talking about taxi drivers.

I spend twice as much money on Linux laptops so I don't support Apple, Microsoft, or much of the commercial software industry. I'm sure my counterpart in the automobile market is out there somewhere.

Why? Can you not buy the Microsoft laptop at half the price, wipe out windows and install Linux?

My understanding is that yes, he could, but then Microsoft is paid for the Windows license which he does not want and will not use, so they lose out on the profit from that license by him paying more for an exclusively Linux laptop.

AFAIK, you can buy the same laptop without windows installed from manufacturers like Dell. They actually reduce the cost if you choose to not have the OS. I don't know who sells linux only laptop for twice the price, given that linux is free. How is twice the price justified if you're actually not paying for the OS?

Twice the price was an exaggeration. However, as some one driving a XPS 13 dev edition (the original) right now they are definitely not priced as "cheap" notebooks. Someone has to write the drivers (or source components with good drivers) and make sure they work properly as configured. In the case of the XPS 13 dev edition Dell absolutely puts resources into at least trying to get that right. The laptop runs really well on Linux and many many laptops today do not because of driver issues. This is not news to anyone who has been using Linux longer than 5 minutes on real consumer PC hardware. In the old days, if you complained about hardware compat people would tell you to hack on the driver!

I'll say Linux handles the XPS 13 well when dragging a window from a hidpi screen to a 3440x1440 screen isn't completely broken (so far even Gnome on Wayland can't do that right)

Edit: and 3440x1440 is just my case, it's broken for dragging windows onto anything except another hidpi monitor that uses the same scale factor as the main one.

Wayland should allow for that to work well. Give it some time, it's not early stages but it's still not a production-ready environment unless you're living on the extreme bleeding edge, with a knife sticking out your head and all.

That makes sense to me. I personally moved to a Mac for the exact same reason. I would end up spending more time configuring the machine and getting things to work than doing actual work. That has drastically improves since I switched. Anytime I need linux, I just run a VM.

This sounds like you spent $80K on Linux laptops.

I've spent at least twice that for linux-based laptop deployments in my corporation.

Well that's awesome!

Well they solve that problem the same way any other repair shop does by loaning you another car.

But to get back to your original point, I honestly think you are just plain wrong. If I look around at the street here I see huge amounts of people that have spent 40 grand extra (and often much more) for essentially vanity, a marketing illusion whereby an expensive car confers elevated social status to whoever is driving it. Their transport needs could be perfectly served by an economical, reliable car (frankly, for a huge number of people out there, lots of their transport needs could be solved by a fricken bike) yet they didn't buy that.

You should talk to more Tesla owners then, lack of emissions is a big selling point.

> Driving the quickest 4 door sedan ever made: $0

Unlikely. The Cadillac CTS-V crushes the track while Tesla gets heat-throttled. Based on the track numbers I've looked up (IE: Laguna Seca lap times), the CTS-V is superior by over 10-seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TcCuzaRFIw

https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/model-s-laguna-seca-la...

CTS-V is a larger vehicle with approximately the same weight as the Tesla S. They even made a Station-wagon version of the CTS-V (didn't sell very well).

I'm not really a car enthusiast, but I know that there are plenty of cars in the ~$70,000 range that crush the Tesla S on the track. Until Tesla can manage to not overheat and then throttle their batteries after the first two turns... it isn't really going to deserve a "quickest car" definition.

I mean yeah, its fast. But... its like... $35,000 Hot-hatch fast. Not CTS-V Sedan fast. Certainly not supercar fast. All that weight and the thermal-throttling really hurt Tesla times.

------

In fact, based on the laptimes on that forum post, any $35,000 hatchback (even the 4-door FRONT-wheel drive Ford Focus ST) beat Tesla's laptimes on Laguna Seca. I'm sure the better built Focus RS crushes the Tesla.

In most places I've seen, 'quickest' usually refers to straight-line acceleration (generally 0-60 times or 1/4 mile). They claim a 2.8s 0-60 for the ludicrous option, and I believe it's hit 2.6, though I don't know what was was done to do that (modifications or just ideal conditions, that kind of thing). Either way, it's damn fast.

The CTS-V is in the mid 3 range for 0-60.

That doesn't diminish your point about track performance, but I don't think your parent was referring to lap times.

> That doesn't diminish your point about track performance, but I don't think your parent was referring to lap times.

Which makes sense, the taxi driver is not going to the racetrack but is flooring it to merge onto the highway.

Main mission of Tesla is to deliver economic reliable fully electric mode of transportation. So far it is failing to deliver on the economics but we are still hopeful.

Most of the things that you list are what i call "first world problems", they are not important for the main goal. (i agree on gas, emissions and oil industry, even though who is going to make us tires? PETCO?)

If you give people 10,000$ new electric real car that is a real and reliable car. Guess what? People will gladly take a big cut on comfort, speed, "coolness" and other unimportant features in favor of economic transportation.

Rubber used to come from trees. The US invented rubber from oil to get around an embargo in WWII.

> Driving the quickest 4 door sedan ever made: $0

The Tesla can’t even reach 160km/h, while on the Autobahn the average speed on some stretches is around 180km/h, how is it the "quickest 4 door sedan ever made" when even a fucking VW passat sedan or minivan is faster?

> Fitting 7 people in a car (5 adults + 2 kids): $0

Which is standard in any car that isn’t a Seat Ibiza?

> Supporting a company driving innovation in battery storage and automobiles: $0

You mean a company using laptop batteries chained together as car battery because actual innovation was too expensive?

>> Driving the quickest 4 door sedan ever made: $0

>The Tesla can’t even reach 160km/h, while on the Autobahn the average speed on some stretches is around 180km/h, how is it the "quickest 4 door sedan ever made" when even a fucking VW passat sedan or minivan is faster?

(1) The top speed of Tesla Model S is governed at 255km/h (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S) - I'm fairly sure you don't see a lot of minivans doing more than 255km/h.

(2) In typical automotive review usage, "quickest" means acceleration (rather than top speed, which would more typically be referred to as "fastest") and the Tesla certainly qualifies as one of, if not uniquely, the quickest 4-door production sedans ever made.

> The Tesla can’t even reach 160km/h

This is just factually inaccurate. Searching youtube for "model s autobahn"[0] results in dozens of counter examples, including accelerations from 0-240km/h and cruising in excess of 200km/h for 40-60km (I watched a couple of the acceleration videos to verify the titles, but did not verify the long-distance ones maintained the speed)

Per Tesla's website, the slowest Tesla you can buy now will top out at ~210km/h, though I think that used to be ~195 before they went to all-wheel standard.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=model+s+autobah...

What are you quoting from? I can not find that text in the linked article (as of Wed Aug 17 15:44:38 EDT 2016).

Looks like they updated the url at some point:

http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-after-100...

It looks like he expects it to pay off after 200,000 miles, where he was paying > $1000 a month in repairs on his Subaru. So the question is still very much open.

Something is wrong with his thinking if he is using Subaru as a taxi. Look at the reliability ratings.

Subarus are some of the most reliable cars on the market, and they handle Quebec winters better than Priuses.

Better than average reliability for subarus, you are correct i had to look it up. Surprised that audis are making a come back, i did not know they were rated better than average nowdays. Audis had some real nice lemons in the 90's/'00s. Lexus and toyota still beat them all.

http://www.consumerreports.org/content/dam/cro/news_articles...

If the driver can charge >2.3x more for a Tesla per mile, which isn't all that ridiculous (considering the prison-grade vinyl seats, constantly yakking ad screens and near-criminal lack of legroom in Camrys with plexiglas dividers), it starts to make more financial sense.

If i had a choice to go to the airport for 40$ or for 92$ which would i (or >90% over people) choose? hmmmm. i'll go with 40$ thank you.

If I were 6'4" (193cm) or taller, I'd take the Tesla for $92 any day. Even my current 5'8" (172cm) self would hesitate taking a Toyota Camry taxi due to the lack of leg and knee room, which is why I almost always avoid them in favor of Uber or Lyft, whose cars don't have the divider.

I don't think you get the point here. You are not getting married to that car. You are only going to use it for a few minutes.

Having to pay 2.3x just for a few minutes for zero additional utility derived isn't something most people do, Unless in a extreme emergency. Even those who are tall would agree.

People use Uber Black over UberX - many people are ready to pay for comfort even for a few minutes. Another case are business trips - neither me no company I work for cares if I spend $40 or $80 for a taxi from airport.

If you were that tall you might just be used to angle both thighs towards the middle of the car while in the back seat. Rarely a problem (as long as the middle seat remains unoccupied)

Source: being tall.

Are you really comparing a Model S to a Camry? Does that seem fair to you?

What should i compare it to? Riksha?

Another luxury sports car that would be absurd to use as a taxi outside of the novelty. A Lexus LS would be more apt if you want to keep the Toyota thing going.

I think a comparison to the Cadillac CTS-V is fair. Similar weight, similar size, similar costs.

Both are toy cars for rich people.

Sure, compare it to some flashy Bentley sedan and pet yourself on the back!

The truth is Tesla is still just a toy for the rich.

I cant wait to see how model 3 turns out and if Tesla indeed will be able to deliver reliable (key word) "lower" priced cars.

You've only included a single year of gas/electricity in your calculation. That makes no sense for something that wins in operating cost not in up front cost.

Assuming repair costs even out (not a small assumption, but), in about seven years the cost of the camry and the tesla will be about even. Ever year of service after that is entirely profit (aprox. 5k/year saved in gas).

Tesla: (7 years × 3700 electricity + 80000 vehicle cost) / 233,000km = 0.45 $/km

Camry: (7 years × 10000 gas + 35000 vehicle cost) / 233,000km = 0.45 $/km

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