Selling online without negotiated price is a big change. That should make the dealerships really uncomfortable in the long run… he's kind of saying "oh the dealerships could rent out Mustangs" but is that actually realistic?
https://twitter.com/pluginalberta/status/1531406942119137281
> "We only profit in one way: from new car sales and new car sales alone," Maron said. "We can't ... profit from services because our cars have far less parts than gas-powered cars. There's no regular service visits for engine tune-ups and oil changes. ... We don't make money off financing programs. We don't have insurance products or add-ons. A franchise dealer would look at this and scratch their heads. They would not know how to make money on this model."
> Maron says Tesla is fully committed to its mission of replacing all gas-powered cars with electric vehicles -- a mission auto dealers may not be eager to embrace.
> "We don't simply believe that electric vehicles represent a nice complement to gas-powered cars," Maron said. "We believe it's imperative they are replaced entirely by electric vehicles. ... It would be impossible for traditional dealers to convey this message adequately. This isn't a knock on them, but dealers are not fundamentally committed to the mission of EVs — we are. They make 99% of their revenue off of gas-powered cars. If you're opening a Yankees team store, are you going to ask a lifelong Red Sox fan to manage it?"
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johanabhuiyan/tesla-sla... (2016: 7 Reasons Why Tesla Doesn't Want To Sell Through Dealerships)
> Someone on Twitter recently posted their Model S turning over 400km with only $3k in maintenance costs.
400 kilometers and a $3k maintenance bill somewhat reflects the image of Tesla that you see a lot on the internet. Whether or not that is actually the case.
? LOL
Why not just use megameters? 400Mm
OK, something about that looks odd. But what's the point in SI units if you can't actually use them?
Maybe 250k miles?
That said I had a dealer cuss me out for bringing them a quote from a mechanic for the same clutch replacement. "I can't f**ing cover my dealership like that" as if it was my problem. Same dealer who charged me $2k for a repair when they had the recall letter in their inbox.
Heck, the dealers even have a hard time getting parts.
I'm solving the interim by having 4 vehicles + mass transit + wfh.
Is that, maybe, a little bit ... overkill? Quadruple redundancy, plus a failover, plus reduced demand. Phew!
Citation needed. Both my EVs and ICEs needed similar amount of service. Breakage of drive trains are super rare nowadays (expect for over engineered performance stuff and just broken designs), same as breakages of batteries (cough, Bolt, cough).
All stuff my cars needed a service for in last 20 years were comfort features, gizmos, internal materials, electrical goblins, etc. Both ICEs and EVs.
Transmission fluid for modern cars lasts about 100k miles. So you’ll do it maybe once, unlikely at your dealer as you won’t pay dealer tax for an old beater.
Exactly the same for timing belt and spark plugs.
Drive trains aren’t money makers for dealers for a long time.
The best citation on this site.
this was new to me and the 'to the rock' part didn't make sense to me, so i looked it up.
http://marvin.cs.uidaho.edu/About/quotes.html this page says it's actually this: "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggy' until you can find a rock."
find a rock as in kill them? :O
The entry level 3 with absolutely nothing on it is $47K before tax. In any case, this specific example was a high end Model S.
For example, with Tesla, the company optimizes delivery numbers of cars sold by sacrificing quality control, and their service center model is anemic and almost an afterthought, especially when it comes to addressing the QC issues their customers experience.
For every Tesla with 400k miles on them with a few thousand dollars in maintenance costs, there are a dozen cars that are delivered to customers like this one[1] from today on r/TeslaLounge, with 17 blatant issues upon delivery that QC should have caught early on in the process. There are stories on that subreddit about customers having to wait months, without a loaner car, for service centers to fix their cars or to even get service centers on the phone about the status of their repairs and cars.
Dealerships act as an intermediary customer that can perform QC, repairs, customization, service, maintenance, reject deliveries etc that manufacturers choose to skimp out on.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/v3jkn3/update_...
How do you know this? Did you see their internal data? There are lots of anecdotes going around about Tesla's quality. However, with all the TeslaQ it is hard to believe that there is real correlation between anecdotes and data. Here are my anecdotes - I owned 6 Teslas over last several years. Not one of them had any QC issues. I had one service done because I hit tire debris and front break dust shield started making noises. Tesla fixed that for me quickly with no charge. As for the data - during earnings calls they mentioned that they do pay close attention to their customer experience data and they had period of time where service was lagging. But they started addressing this issue and saw improvements. The way they are growing I do believe they need to keep close eye on customer experience, but looks like they understand that themselves and use data to make sure they are on top of this. Unfortunately there's not much reliable independent data to have better understanding of this issue.
Add: The intent of my comment was to ask if parent info is based on specific data or just anecdotes. As an example, I gave my own anecdotes and mentioned that they are not reliable correlation to the data. Somehow the responses I've got are all about anecdotes, mine or others, also some personal judgement of my ability to appreciate cars or judgment of my life circumstances that required me to have these many Teslas. Can we get back to discussing the main point I'm making - do we have data to make any of these judgements?
??????? Why on earth would you need this many Teslas? Maybe if you are buying so many teslas then it makes sense why you don't need them serviced - you barely give them enough time to wear themselves out!
And in general the issues I heard about were from-the-factory issues, so only having the cars for 1-2 years each wouldn't matter much.
And how long of leases are you talking about?
When you trade in your car the dealer will give you an offer for your car. Depending on demand this may be higher or lower than what the lease company wants. When it is higher you win. When it is lower leasing would be better. Either way though, the dealer is pricing in a profit margin from selling your car, so if you don't trade in your car but sell it yourself you can get this profit margin in exchange for your time.
In the end it is about risk management. What will the car be worth in 3 years when you are ready for a new one? Nobody knows for sure 3 years in advance. Sometimes it will be worth a lot more than the lease company expects and so you win, sometimes it will be worth less and so you lose. If you don't trade your car in you probably will always win in monetary terms, though I'm not sure if it is worth the time.
If you live in a state with no sales tax, then you avoid this problem.
the reason is that tesla price increases and backlog creates added value for aftermarket teslas.
As it happens, I can sell the used car i purchased over a year ago for more than i originally paid.
Still, it probably would have been more profitable to keep driving just 1 Tesla, and sell the other Teslas as essentially new as soon as you got them.
Isn't this also terrible for the environment? The resources it takes to make one car is a lot.
Same in my experience, though it's not as extensive as yours.
It's surprising how often you see negative anecdotes about quality control amplified as representative of a larger trend. It often seems there is an agenda compelling many to work so hard circulating negative opinions.
There are definitely some disgruntled customers, too.
I think a lot of the contrary voices are people scarred by ICE experiences and searching for comparable "gotcha boogeyman" to EV's to satisfy themselves with their current car situation, whatever it is.
Which is really true for pretty much everyone in this argument on both sides.
Overall I guess the point I want to make is even thought it is rent seeking (many industries are) this one seems to provide for so many communities all across America. I find it hard to believe that ford will pass up the savings to the consumers. We all know that profits will be returned to shareholders.
how dare they sell that vehicle.
Not to mention that when they bought it, Tesla gave the buyer the opportunity to reject it and have another specimen manufactured at no cost. they decided to keep it because it appears their vanity is literally only skin deep.
And you make a great point about the importance of rejecting deliveries, which is exactly what a dealership would have done upon inspection instead of forcing layman retail customers to do it free and to their detriment. We even have Tesla customers asking why other customers choose to take deliveries at the end of the fiscal quarter[12], because Tesla has a reputation of pushing out as many vehicles as they can in order to boost delivery numbers, even if that means delivering cars in poor condition. When quality and service is consistently that bad, you can't blame the customer for accepting a delivery of the car they spent tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars on.
Also, your comment goes against HN guidelines[13]:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/u9v1mo/off_my_...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/rqie4g/gotta_lov...
[3] https://twitter.com/aprildawn78/status/1481450029462212616?s...
[4] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/nurlbg/my_model_...
[5] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/qzr5tx/how_is_th...
[6] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comically-poor-deliv...
[7] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-first-model-3-exp...
[8] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/took-delivery-today-...
[9] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/j59ovh/so_tesl...
[10] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/smettt/terrify...
[11] https://old.reddit.com/r/TeslaLounge/comments/l0ownx/my_y_ha...
[12] https://old.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/j59dp1/tesla_own...
This is my first time in 12 years on HN that mild sarcasm has been treated as confrontational. I hope you are okay.
You need an actually random sampling of delivered Teslas to determine how extensive QC issues are and whether the average one can go 400k km with only $3k servicing. Also, they defects reputed to vary substantially over time (e.g. one model year might have 5x the rate of two years later).
Brakes? Maybe you're cutting out one or two pad slaps in that 100k.
Oil changes? Yeah, you've eliminated those, the lowest margin service dealers do.
Suspension components, air conditioning, etc? No difference, and that stuff shouldn't need to be touched in the first 100k anyway.
Tires? BEVs eat tires.
Still need wiper blades, cabin filters, etc. But those aren't big items either way.
I guess I just don't see where all this recurring service revenue comes from. Cars just don't break until they're 10-15 years old. Maybe some cars are really that unreliable still?
That's excluding tires, wiper blades and air filter changes.
Owners of less reliable ICE cars probably spend more.
I have two vehicles over 100k, one closing in on 200k soon, and my maintenance on both is less than 5k.
Of course, the part no one talks about:
1. How will you do a family vacation beyond the EV range?
2. Who pays to replace the ~$15k battery and when?
Stopping for a meal, bathroom, and stretch break every 300 miles or so?
> Who pays to replace the ~$15k battery and when?
I'd typically buy a new ICE car before the 400k kilometers cited, as repair costs accelerate, so this isn't really a significant difference.
With a 300 mile range, I'd need at least 2 stops that are 4-6 hours, unless if I find a super rapid charger. That turns a sucky 12 hour day with 1-2 hours of stops into a 16 hour trip with probably 1-2 hours of additional stops still.
So now I need to power through or get a hotel.
There's already a pretty extensive network of rapid chargers, and it's growing all the time.
My understanding is that you were stuck with the charging network that each manufacturer is making.
The only people I know who only stop to refuel and then carry on until they've basically driven 12 hours straight are just trying to flex, it's some masculine thing.
More and more vehicles are getting 100-150kW charging, which definitely pushes a full charge more into the 25-40 minutes range for 80kWh EVs.
I wonder if having smaller cars would help as well, American cars/"trucks" always seem so pointlessly oversized. If the number of single occupant trips in London in things like Minis makes me sad, then I don't even want to think about single occupant trips in F150s in America.
Are you seriously resorting to a manphobic ad hominem attack at someone's masculinity for simply pointing out stopping for 4-6 hours every 4-6 hours of driving obviously doubles trip time, and would require those who are trying to save money on flying, but not wanting to waste a half-week driving to the beach or a vacation spot is obviously because that person is on some sort of bench pressing flex thing?
Perhaps you forget the US is 40x bigger than Great Britain, so obviously what works for the majority of those in Britain (e.g. 300 miles) may not cleanly translate to other countries. I'm not telling you to not get an EV. It might work perfectly for you. But as of yet, all those advocating for it and blaming the problems of the world on ICEs still hasn't addressed the basic concerns many people still have about EVs.
Tell me your a condescending narcissist without telling me your a condescending narcissist again.
We can only draw comparisons from our own experiences and the majority of people I know do not drive such long distances, the ones I do know make a point of stressing the fact that they do not stop whenever I have gone on a long journey with them.
I haven't forgotten the relative size of the US, but the same applies to any country of relative size. I guess it begs the question of _why_ you all drive so far. Does land mass correlate to miles driven? Is it because of an emphasis of road infrastructure over public transport/rail? Hmmm
My observation is that it depends on the brand of the car. If it's a Toyota or Honda, or other well to do brand that people with credit scores reminiscent of FDA minimum cooking temperatures cannot afford it's the owner's fault that the timing belt snapped at exactly six miles more than the recommended change interval, they should have got it done proactively.
If it's a Nissan, GM or <clutches pearls> Chrysler then it's obviously the car's fault that it needs a fair number of suspension parts after spending 120k being fully sent over rural gravel roads with 300lb of tools in the trunk.
This pattern of double standards that absolves "things that should be nice" from blame when they fail to meet those expectations and blames more modest products even when their failures are reasonable can be seen across many classes of products, not just cars.
People like to talk about mileage because it’s an easy-to-measure stand in for the age of a car based on its usage. But over time they forget that like in humans, there’s a lot of variation at the same age.
There’s other factors like road conditions, cost of parts, cost of labor in different parts of the country, unexpected events like fender benders, etc. that the mileage number doesn’t capture.
The same 100k mile car driven in a leafy suburb where not much goes on is going to be different from a car with the same mileage driven under harsher conditions.
Scotty Killer on YouTube said something slightly different. He said highway miles are almost one tenth of city miles. Or in other words, stop and go traffic is ten times as bad as constant driving without traffic. At least for the engine and the transmission I guess.
If there are problems, it'll be $170/hour plus parts...
A lot of people just do what the computer says and take it to the dealer. The workshop is always full... it has about 20 bays.
That's a lot of income for the dealership. If you drive a lot it'll be more than one a year...
I do as much maintenance as I can myself. If it's something I cannot manage (last year I had a split hose on the transmission radiator line) I take it to an independent shop.
US big 3 or German cars are a maintenance nightmare.
Other than normal fluid changes, I can count on 1 hand the number of repairs I have had to do on any of them.
Electric devices require significantly more servicing than mechanical ones. On the flip side, people seem content to treat electric devices like they're disposable and just buy a new one every year.
I don't think this dynamic won't hold for larger-sized EV's.
Sounds like a Toyota
Their role is to collect orders, provide test rides and service the cars.
I don't know if that's right (anybody with more info care to comment?), but it's at least enough to give me pause on the "dealers will hate nonnegotiable pricing" claim.
You are correct that there is no real money in new car sales anymore.
I wouldn't cry for nor count the dealers out just yet.
Previously I could never sweet talk dealers into the kind of deals some of my mates could.
The Tesla model is such an improvement.
If banking and Everything else is a good example, people are getting used to buy online.
I bought even my current car without seeing it before.
I bought my bike online as well.
If more and more do that dealerships might loose too much revenue anyway to keep them afloat.