Hacker News Reader

Comment by portman | Hacker News Reader

> The electric drivetrain, when coupled with a vast supercharging network...

I took that to mean that the car exclusively refueled on Superchargers, so the fuel cost was $0. That is a legitimate apples-to-apples comparison to the ICE vehicles.

View on HN

I don't think that's apples-to-apples -- you have to go out of your way to always use a supercharger, so you'd have to account for the value of the time lost in traveling to a supercharger station compared to doing all the same journeys and using nearby gas stations. (Refueling at a supercharger is slower too, so that's extra fillup time.)

Alternatively you could use the electricity cost of recharging it at home, plus the cost of the occasional missed journeys that are out of range from not always being full. (Say, book their cost at what you'd pay for an Uber for those legs.)

(I don't know if charging a Tesla at home overnight is enough to get to 100% -- anyone know?)

This is a comparison of the vehicle for their business, which is a "city mobility service". I imagine any business like this is either going to have on-site fuel, or an agreement with a fuel depot with good rates, and drivers would stop by that location on the way home anyway, so this is probably comparable for this type of service use.

> I don't think that's apples-to-apples -- you have to go out of your way to always use a supercharger

For average person - yes, Tesloop, however, is Culver City - based, also known as home to the Culver City Supercharger, so there's a bit of a hometown advantage for them.

In fact, Tesla's recent penalty fee for hogging a supercharger spot long after the vehicle has finished charging is related to Tesla owners' complaints (on TMC, Twitter and Facebook groups) about Tesloop vehicles parked overnight in Culver City supercharger spots.

Okay, but then the comparison should be marked as a TCO comparison just for Culver City, which is, for that reason, atypical.

The other thing is this is just a data point for one car. If the results were for a dozen cars or more it would be useful. Imagine if Backblaze gave failure rate based on 1 HDD.

Exclusively refuelled using proprietary infrastructure currently provided by the car's manufacturer is not an apples-to-apples comparison to anything.

Supercharger cost is $0? Apparently only for the first 400kWh per annum for models S and X, which Tesla says is good for about 1000 miles [1].

Electricity is not free, even if Tesla is subsidizing it.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/support/supercharging

All older S and X have free unlimited supercharging, and new ones do as well if brought via a referral.

True but the more relevant question for someone making a decision today is how the economics change if you include the cost of electricity.

It is very misleading - I would call it deceptive - for the article to say "total combined maintenance and fuel costs of the Tesla Model S..." [my emphasis] when the fuel costs are covered by Tesla, especially as this is a loss-leader that you can no longer take advantage of.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com