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Comment by aardvark291 | Hacker News Reader

In which case the value will reach $0. That's called depreciation...

I think the point being made was, if you don't plan on selling something, does it matter what it's worth?

As in, I'm not going to factor my child's value into my assets since I'm not going to sell it. Or in the OP's case, since his car will never be sold, it's not relevant how much value he's losing by keeping it for x years. Not that the car's value doesn't depreciate, just that the value of the car isn't ever important after the initial cost.

> I think the point being made was, if you don't plan on selling something, does it matter what it's worth

Yes, it matters. There are a lot of intangible assets that are not sold (such as Goodwill), even those can be given quantifiable value

Right, but the author was estimating cost over the lifetime of the vehicle, not possible breakeven down the road if they get bored and sell or some other general use-case. In the author's case, is the up front cost they included not enough?

I guess maybe you're being pedantic and saying everything's value is always important to make measured decisions, but that seems lame in this discussion so I assume I'm glossing over some fundamental fact.

Even if you plant to drive it into the ground, you have to spread the cost of the car over the lifetime of it's use. If the Telsa only lasts 9 years, that's is going to add cost to his usage. If it lasts 30 years, that's going to reduce the cost of usage.

Otherwise any sort of calculation of expenses is missing one of the biggest components, the cost of the car.

I think 9 years is at the high end. The drive train was replaced at 65K and the battery was replaced at 75K miles which probably makes "into the ground" not much longer than when the 8 year warranty runs out.

> Otherwise any sort of calculation of expenses is missing one of the biggest components, the cost of the car.

They include the cost of the car as the first calculation...

> Total Cost of Ownership:

>> Cost of Tesla: $79,000 used with 35,000 miles

Is that not enough? Do you need to calculate the potential earnings every day that you decide not to sell the car over it's lifetime?

Also, perhaps this is tangential, but the author was calculating how much they had lost or saved over the course of ownership up to that point. I feel like the OP in this subthread didn't actually read the article and just commented after skimming over the cost breakdown thinking it was supposed to be something it wasn't (i.e., a cost/benefit analysis for the car's lifetime).

Also if he is reporting income then he is calculating depreciation (or should be) for tax purposes.

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