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Comment by pm90 | Hacker News Reader

This seems amazing. Maintenance costs can easily overwhelm the average car-owner... if this is true, electric cars are more revolutionary than I thought they would be.

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Well, lower maintenance is the easy part, that's fairly obvious. The harder thing is making batteries at high rates and keeping them healthy and charging long term. One of Tesla's strengths is their battery heating and cooling system.

One major cost with Tesla is the insurance. I was quoted $380 a month on a model 3. I pay ~$700 for 6 months on 3 cars, 2 of them are 20 year old beaters and one is a new mini convertible.

Why is the insurance so high? I thought the safety features made it more safe == less insurance?

Anecdotally, my Tesla 3 costs the same to insure as my 2006 G35.

Just looked it up it’s $899 for the G35 and $913 per year for the Tesla.

It helps to not have had an accident or a ticket in over 10 years.

Same here - my insurance stayed exactly the same going from a 2010 Nissan Altima to a new Tesla Model 3.

Cost to repair and near absolute unavailability of non-OEM spare parts doesn't help.

It also seems like even moderate damage, which would NOT be a write off on an ICE vehicle, results in them totaling it because Tesla refuses to work on anything with even relatively insignificant damage (and they won't touch anything that has a salvage title, so never buy a used Tesla with a salvage title. Ever.).

A small part of it is the aluminum body panels, I think. Aluminum body panels can be repaired, similar to steel, but requires additional training/different tools. The Model S and X are majority Aluminum, whereas the Model 3 is mostly steel with a rear aluminum subframe. Basically if you get in a fender bender you need to go to a specialty aluminum body shop, which don't exist in high quantities outside of south bay.

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