Certified Pre-owned Teslas for Less Than $40K USD
electrek.co
electrek.co
I'd consider getting one of those when prices tank even further thanks to the Model 3, and upcoming Lea,f to supplement my hybrid.
Incidentally, I don't think battery life concerns are completely unwarranted - my hybrid's battery failed, and if it weren't for the extended emissions warranty in CA, I'd have been SOL. People seem to be aware of this, and it is evident in used hybrid prices, which many times cost about the same, and sometimes less that it's conventional counterpart.
Due to its severe depreciation, I believe that if a Leaf's battery failed outside the warranty, the car is totalled.
My wife would normally be the ideal Leaf consumer - most of her jobs are no more than 10 miles from our house. But still that's 20 miles out of a pool of 66 before she a) turns on the air conditioner, b) runs any errands, c) runs into any traffic that delays her, and d) forgets to charge the car at home or finds the charger full at her grocery store.
The Leaf comes with a contingency planning overhead cars with longer ranges do not and that has to factor into any future decisions; could my wife take a job say 20 miles from home? Maybe but any of the factors listed above could easily result in a dead battery tow.
If I mapped that into my own use case even as an inner city dweller the short legs on the Leaf would preclude some practical applications I have now when a car with say 50 more miles of range would handily meet. If the Leaf ever gets to 150 miles new, which implies 120 mile range when new @ 80% charge and 96 miles when the battery has lost 20% of its capacity (also @ 80% charge) that would be workable for inner city driving with the air conditioning on and enough reserves for the unexpected.
Deep charging and discharging would severely degrade a battery's lifespan. Therefore all cars - From Model S to Prius - limit the battery's SOC to about 20-80% (Varies by chemistry and car model). The user may see 0-100%, but that is merely in regards to the usable energy available.
So a Leaf reporting 80 miles of range is already taking into account degradation and provisioning.
It seems battery life would vary tremendously based on how it was used.
For all intents and purposes it was about as good as when I bought it.
People throw numbers around regarding cost for things like replacement motors and battery packs but as far as I can tell nobody knows how much that stuff actually costs either except the manufacturers, because the replacements so far have been done under warranty. That may not be true for all current-gen EVs though; I've mostly been paying attention to the Tesla stuff.
Replacement motor on 2013 Tesla Model S P85: USD 12,500
source: invoice from Tesla for my car
Tesla is at least one or two more hardware upgrades from Google/Waymo level performance.
Sometimes shipping is a key.
Besides, it makes sense when you consider that most personal vehicles have sub-5% utilization. It's more capital and environmentally responsible to have shared assets rather than underutilizing assets with high embodied costs.
Developing an autonomous car for Lyft is easier than developing it for a normal person.
I guess the cars in the $30K's are sold.