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Comment by impostervt | Hacker News Reader

So I know it has little to do with the numbers, but I just got a Model 3 this last weekend.

Originally I was quoted as 2-14 weeks for delivery, but then I was told they had some already available I could select and receive within 2 weeks. There was one available that was exactly the same as what I wanted, so I chose it. Why I had to even choose is weird.

The whole process has spoiled me. Scheduled test drive, financing done online completely (omg that used to take forever to do in person), no annoying sales guy to work with (just ordered online), delivered right to my house.

The car is also fun to drive. I haven't had a new car in 20 years, and driving was just a chore. But now I look forward to driving it, even on my commute to/from work.

It has been weird getting used to how EVERYTHING is different from a normal car, but again, I'm not sure I can go back.

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There's a few things to think about here.

First, Tesla does not yet have real competition in their market niche. They can do things differently. Every car they produce will be sold at full price. There's no incentive to involve a sales staff at this time. It is interesting to hear that you scheduled a test drive though. I'm curious if / when there is meaningful competition in electric vehicle sales, if anything will change on Tesla's end (or if other players will start to adapt to this model.)

Second, buying a car is, at most, one really dreadful day every three years (ideally more like five to ten.) Sales staff can get away with murder, and everyone gets over it and forgets just enough of the pain to go deal with it again in another five years. GM tried to change this with Saturn, but for various reasons, Saturn failed, and that prevented an improved sales model from catching on. (It seems like dealers find this horrible practice works in their favor, especially if everyone keeps doing it, but will it keep working if competition arises with a different model?)

Third, did you trade a car in? This is very typical for most people buying new cars, as many don't want to go through the effort of selling privately. I'd like to hear more about this process.

Fourth, did Tesla work with your preferred lender for financing? I'm curious how big of a network they have. For the last 20 years, I've only financed through my credit union. Anything the dealer wants to arrange is sure to be a nightmare financial institution I wouldn't want to touch with a ten foot pole!

I did have a trade in, a 2011 Toyota Venza with low miles. Tesla offered me ~ $7,300. Carmax offered ~$10k. Carvana offered me $11,300ish AND they came and picked up my car. As with Tesla, I'm not sure I can go back. Even if Carmax had offered me more, it would have involved them doing a car inspection while I waited in their showroom. Carvana didn't even SEE my car before they made an offer, and having them pickup my car was super easy.

My "financing" was leasing through Tesla. I know, I know, not a great decision financially, but I'm not sure if I want a Tesla long term. I have kids and the Tesla is obviously smaller than my old Venza and I still worry about going on trips how it will do. But as a bonus, getting a lease meant less paperwork from a bank. I use a credit union too, but this was still easier.

Re: trade in: https://www.tesla.com/tradein

Re: financing: in 2017, I used a local credit union for financing. The process was super straightforward and only took a couple of days.

"Every car they produce will be sold at full price.": If you have a moment, can you expand on that? Are you talking about the various temporary sales/deals/discounts that one sees with other automakers and their dealerships? Thanks!

I mean, I'm not doing extensive research, but seeing waiting lists and online ordering, I'm making assumptions about Tesla selling everything they can produce. (Maybe that's their trick? :))

With other automakers - I'm not referring to deals; just that everyone walks in and "negotiates" their price. The manufacturer may or may not get MSRP depending on their agreements with the dealer, but the dealer is incentivized to sell cars, not at rock bottom prices, but rather whatever price they can get buyers to pay. The alternative is that the car sits on the lot which has overhead, and can lead to depreciation of the car given enough time.

Not OP, but former Tesla owner.

> Second, buying a car is, at most, one really dreadful day every three years ...

This was an interesting point for me because Tesla was my first automotive purchase. (I had an ICE car a family member gifted to me previously.) Wisdom of buying such an expensive car so early in my life aside, it means my bar for the "automotive purchasing experience" is much, much higher than the general populations, just because I was so spoiled off the bat.

> ... many don't want to go through the effort of selling privately.

I similarly gifted my ICE car to my partner, but I later sold my Tesla in a private-party sale (we moved to a major metro and were downsizing). It was surprisingly straight-forward, though that's likely because I went through a Tesla-seller specific website to list the vehicle.

> Did Tesla work with your preferred lender for financing?

My credit union gave me what basically looked like a check, and said "Whatever amount you need to pay Tesla, write here, sign there, and hand to their representative." I verified with Tesla that this was something they were familiar with and they made positive noises. Totally hitch-free when I went to pick up my vehicle.

A friend of mine did his financing thru Tesla's recommended agency--AFAIK there's no issues there, but with the ease my CU made it work I don't see why I'd use a 3rd party.

All in all, insanely straightforward experience. Like OP said, the ability to spec and see the price online, no sales pressure or negotiation, is a huge, huge win to me. I get stressed out dealing with sales tactics in Art Van over a couch--a $50k car would give me an aneurysm.

The process is annoying (2-15w wait) but better than haggling with sales guy for 4h in the middle of the workday. Also the cars tend to be fun to drive. I miss my stick shift, but much better carseat space.

Or you end up like me on Christmas Eve 2019 picking out the truck you want, sitting with the sales person for 3 hours even though I'm not haggling, and I offered to pay what they put on the sticker. I said, I want to be in and out in 30 minutes.

And now, here I am April 2, 2021. The vehicle is still untitled, unregistered, and basically a paperweight sitting in my driveway, because the sales guy screwed the paperwork up so badly, that the DMV cannot make heads nor tails of it. The bank is constantly hounding me for a title, I tell them to talk to the dealership, they say to talk to the DMV, and over a year later, I've been paying $800/mo for a car and insurance I cannot even use.

Seems like you should sue?

Or maybe not dangle commission in front of a sales shark with a unrealistic 30 minutes requirement for some rather complex paperwork.

Why blame the guy trying to make the process easy for everyone? He gave the dealership a sweetheart deal and he still got screwed.

If you try to force 60 minutes of paperwork into 30 minutes corners get cut. Because that's highly unusual he ended up in some broken state where the dealer, dmv, and insurance are all in a weird state with no clear resolution.

Guess blame is a strong word, but not too surprised. Sure time/hassle is worth money. Generally similar is best achieved with an email or fax. "I'm willing to buy exactly car foo with options bar for MSRP, please contact me when the paperwork is ready for sign. I won't sign if any attempted upselling happens when I arrive."

I’ve never heard anything like this. Sorry to hear about it.

Curious though, u you obviously drove it home the night you purchased it. What changed later?

I actually drove it off the lot that same day, and drove it for 17k miles during quarantine before they started enforcing registrations and inspections again.

They let me drive it off after waiting for hours and all the banks closing before they could finish the paperwork. So I signed a few documents (some of which blank... a mistake I'll never make again), and drove from Texas where my family lives back to New York, where I live.

bought in texas and trying to get it fixed in NY. Ouch; I can feel the frustration.

If you don't enjoy haggling, you can just pay sticker price. Tesla eliminated haggling by simply not allowing you to pay anything different than sticker price, so I don't see how this is a plus.

It's an overall benefit for consumers because manufacturers that allow haggling presumably factor it in into their sticker prices because it's such a common practice. The best hagglers are perhaps worse off with the Tesla model, at least if their time spent haggling is not valuable to them, but everyone else tends to benefit.

That's a nice assumption but I don't believe this to be true. Before the pandemic hit, VW (the make, not Porsche or Bugatti) made only a few hundred Euro profit per vehicle, with some lower class models even less than 100€.

Tesla just saved themselves from building a sales network.

They made a few hundred up front, then a few thousand on the adjustment and thousands on maintenance and warranty work.

It’s a bit more complex then that. Tesla is acting both as the dealer and manufacturer via a direct sales model. Technically in a strict dealer model the manufacturer only sets some pricing guidelines like minimum advertised pricing and suggested retail price and they are not involved with haggling. They may also offer pass through incentives to get inventory to move. The direct sales model works when the product is in demand and you are willing to build the infrastructure for interacting with customers.

The original idea of the dealership model was that car manufacturers could make cars and dealers could sell, service and do the local marketing and brand awareness. A robust nationwide network of independent dealers was developed such that each dealer would know their market best and be able to market and serve those customers better than one large entity. Somewhere along the way this went sideways and car manufacturers were actually restricted from direct sales in most states since technically they would be competing against the independent dealers they also supplied. Not many other industries have really evolved this way.

> If you don't enjoy haggling, you can just pay sticker price.

You still are forced to go though good cop/bad cop sales routines for 'add-ons' like mats, some sort of paint protection and crap like that.

Offer the sales guy $50 to skip the presentation - they know your a hard sale and will just take the fifty.

I find it extremely enjoyable. I look forward to the part where the dealer tries to sell you their own items. It’s fun to just say “no thank you” over and over.

I've never once experienced this at a dealership.

Heh, I've had to haggle down to sticker price. Keep in mind that increasingly dealers are putting significant line items on the sticker. "Underbody rust prevention spray", "Upholstry sealent", 3rd party alarms (often just a kill switch), and things like "market price adjustement".

Seem various hot/new cars (WRX, WRX STI, Forester XT, Ford Focus RS, VW Golf R, etc) list on the floor well above MSRP.

There’s a somewhat quiet industry of car buying agents, often just someone working out of their house, that can take care of this for you. Usually they can save what they cost, and are often worth the saved time regardless.

(If anyone reading this turns this into a successful exploitative gig-economy business model, please send a bitcoin. Thanks.)

Or a 30-week wait for a Model Y as recently experienced by a relative. Every month I'd ask if he'd heard about his Model Y, and the answer was mostly the same: nothing yet. As much as I have cheered Tesla, there is a tendency to over-promise. Yes, sitting in a dealership and haggling can be a pain, but if you need the car soon then Tesla may not be the right choice for you. This too shall pass...probably...

They are primarily battery cell constrained at this point and also limited by not having factories in all geographic regions. They have nearly zero unsold inventory at all times. They will build cars for export to the EU early in the quarter for example. A 30 week delay is extreme but I’d expect 4-8 weeks depending on when the order was placed in a quarter. I’d expect this to last for at least a few more years until 4680 cell production and the Europe and Texas factories are ramped up.

I got a car during the pandemic and the only difference is that I had to talk to a salesperson for a few minutes. I actually prefer to talk to a person for big purchases. You’re exaggerating this “process”.

I'm glad you had a good experience, but the one car I've bought from a dealer was the typical horrible sales experience -- long negotiation, then making me wait forever, then they put the wrong price on the contract and apologize for their "mistake" when I point it out.

Yes, this. And then they put their “paperwork” fee of $600 on it and I have to argue with them about that. And then they want to push their financing on me instead of accepting my pre-arranged financing.

I refuse to ever buy another vehicle the old way. The Tesla process sounds great and I’ll consider it if my old beaters die.

Just pay sticker price and you will get the Tesla experience

It could be that I got lucky. First time car purchase. My local dealership is actually a high volume dealership so they probably have the entire process as streamlined as possible. I was also surprised they willingly said yes when I asked for 10% off which was really good for this particular vehicle, and they immediately and moved to the next step. Car delivery was also very convenient.

My wife has asked to replace the gas minivan with a Model Y (we have a model 3), and I've refused because I want the safety margin of a EV and a gasoline vehicle. That said, I really don't like driving the van, and it feels like a chore to be driving somewhere and not being able to click down twice and activate autopilot.

> I want the safety margin of a EV and a gasoline vehicle

If you have a moment, can you expand on that? My first thoughts when reading 'safety margin' here are either driving range or crash safety? Thanks!

>it feels like a chore to be driving somewhere

Of course, it's a minivan. Buy a car that handles well and it doesn't feel like a chore anymore.

What extra "safety margin"?

What do you mean by safety margin?

Any body panel or other build quality issues? I have a friend who bought a model S a few years ago and had major issues and I've heard horror stories, so I've been trying to give them time to improve on that stuff.

Haven't seen anything so far. I did notice some rattling from the console display this morning driving over bumpy roads, but that MAY have been from the junk I have stored in the center console. I do wish it wasn't just two big holes/had some organization.

I've heard that some people complaining about rattling just have (LOL warning) "junk in their frunk." :)

I am still a little gun-shy about Tesla after my friends' awful experience, but it's been a while. The model 3 is the best somewhat affordable long-range EV in the US market in many ways.

Build quality is fine on mine. The biggest issue, by far, is the steep rate of decline in battery capacity. I have a 2 year old Model 3 Performance, which started at a 310 mile range. In only two years, my maximum range, at full charge, is down to 255 miles.

It's a stepwise function, also, not linear. You might wake up one day expecting to take a road trip and discover that the BMS has decided to randomly take 5kWh of cells out of the pack.

In about another year, my car will be limited to local commuting only.

That's pretty awful. I hadn't researched that aspect of Tesla and now I really would have to. It makes their high driving ranges less impressive.

I've also been researching the latest generation Leaf. I have a 2013 Leaf that is extremely reliable, has no build quality issues worth mentioning, and has only lost about 15% range in 7 years. Of course it lacks fast charge so the battery has not been stressed much, and it hasn't been kept in a really hot climate. Leafs have passively cooled batteries so I would avoid them somewhere that gets really hot for more than a small part of the year.

The latest generation Leaf has less sticker range than the Tesla model 3 but if the Tesla degrades like that the two are a closer comparison. The Leaf is much more affordable. Also doesn't have self-drive but I don't trust Tesla's self-drive yet. Latest generation Leaf has some basic "cruise control assist" I think which is about all I'd trust with today's state of the art.

I bought my 2013 Leaf used and see some 2019-2020 62kWh Leaf models used right now. Used Leaf has been a decent buy for a while.

There's been a couple of studies on Tesla range over time and the numbers are pretty impressive. Leaf on the other hand has had famously poor Battery life. The warranty will replace batteries at 80% range, but they had some many warranty issues that they changed from a 5 bar battery display to a 4 bar battery display via a software update, so it's harder for people to notice. So now the display only makes it obvious if the battery/range is less than 75% of new.

For the tesla numbers check out: https://electrek.co/2020/06/12/tesla-data-battery-degradatio...

A neighbor has his leaf battery replaced 3 times, once under warranty, and twice out of his own pocket... then he bought a tesla model 3.

I have a model 3P as well, but I thought the range changed based on your driving habits. I keep my max charge for daily use around 85%, which is 240 miles or so, so dividing by that is around 282 miles. When I got it I think the max advertised was 301 miles (June 2019).

I supercharge rarely, the high rate of charge is hard on the battery. I also charge past 90% (or under 10%) rarely for the same reasons.

How often do you supercharge? Charge past 90%?

Keep in mind the model 3 range depends not just on which model you get (RWD, AWD, or Performance), but also by the wheel/tire package you have.

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