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Comment by odammit | Hacker News Reader

This would be great. I have a 2014 Volt and I love-ish it. I live close enough to the office that and can charge in both locations so I've gotten up to 5000MPG. I'd like to buy a more luxury electric car but refuse to drive that weird blue embossed BMW.

nb4 Wut about Tesla? I ain't made of money, son.

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You can't afford a Tesla, but can afford a Mercedes Benz and considered a BMW? - huh.

MB B250e lease is around $400/mo. BMW i3 lease is under $300 right now. Tesla lease starts at $1,000.

Knock about $200 a month off the Tesla lease for TCO based on Delta between electricity cost in petroleum fuel cost.

Edit: i'm wrong. See below.

Edit 2: In quite a few places, you can get time of day metering, where you pay lower rates for electricity at night.

In Chicago, I pay $0.01/kwh between midnight and 5am; its essentially free to charge my Model S (it's slightly more at my place in Tampa, ~$0.06/kwh at all hours).

Both the B250e and i3 are electric as well. The B250e actually uses a motor from Tesla.

My mistake! Thanks for correcting me.

The national average cost for gas is $2.67/gallon, Electricity $0.12/kwh. Based entirely on fuel costs, the Model S 85 costs $0.04/mile and the 20 mpg BMW M4 costs $0.13/mile. In order to save $200/month on fuel with the tesla, you'd have to drive 2200 miles a month. In the area I live, where gas is cheaper than average and electricity is almost twice as expensive, that number is 5000 miles/month.

That gas price should be closer to $3.16 at the moment. If we're talking about the luxury car market, it's far more likely the vehicle is going to be consuming premium gasoline.

Tesla are much more expensive in Europe. In fact, I could have an BMW M4 and a Golf R for the price of a mid-range Model S with some options - I know which two cars I'd rather have...

An M4 is price equivalent to a Golf R in Europe? Wow - quite a different story here in the US.

I think he meant he could buy both of those instead of the Tesla.

Yep!

facepalm I see now.

It's the same as the difference between a Model S and a Model 3. Both Mercedes and BMW offer cars starting at the $35k mark (C class, 3 series). Given how anticipated the Model 3 is, evidently there are quite a lot of people who feel okay with a $35k starting price, but not with a $70k starting price.

You can get a used Model S for about 45K. Still not cheap, but AFAIK the maintenance costs are quite low.

When it comes to maintenance there is not much day light between a Volt and any Tesla Model.

There is not much at all, there is a big different I would assume in service quality though. My Volt has been in Chevy service for over a month with a failed transmission. That is where the "love-ish" comes from.

^ Sample size: 1

Yikes.

Get on the phone with your Volt Ambassador and yell. From what I've read the problem with GM & EVs is the huge gap between the excellent engineering quality of the product and the crappy quality of their dealerships. I'd say get your car out of that dealership and into one that has a better track record with EVs and make sure GM corporate hears about it.

(Also a Volt owner)

Is there such thing as Volt Ambassador?! I have got in touch w GM they are equally slow...

Well at least up here in Canada there are and pretty sure they at least used to have them down there. I got a call from mine a month or so after purchase, just to check on me and see how happy I was.

I suffer from "nicest shit syndrome" (read: sucker) which means if you offer me a Mercedes with a few options to upgrade I'll just do it.

When I priced out and test drove an S it was over 100k.

Edit: Just repriced, 107k w/o the speedracer package (just the 100 kWh)

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