Hacker News Reader

Comment by achates | Hacker News Reader

$17k before the tax rebate apparently. The cheapest one I available right now is $22,400 with 81,400 miles compared to the MSRP for a new one of $38,000. To me that doesn't sound like that great of a deal. A car, especially an electric car, with that many miles is likely over half way through it's lifespan and it's in the most maintenance heavy half to boot. As someone who always bought used cars I think the used market in general is so bad right now that next time I need a car I'm going to buy new. The value just isn't there like it used to be.

It does seem to be cheaper than other Model 3s with similar mileage that I'm seeing on Carmax so for someone who does want to buy a used Tesla then it's probably worth taking a look.

View on HN

Last year my son needed a car to get to work and we were shocked at the price of recent used cars. We found a Buick fanatic an hour away and got ourselves a 1996 Park Avenue which at the beginning of the OBD II era so it a modern car in terms of maintenance and having features like airbags, antilock brakes and traction control. We’ve had to make some repairs on it since but it was a great deal.

For me it was a real adventure because I’d never owned an American car.

Right now I am thinking about another automotive adventure which is that you can get a Nissan Leaf with a degraded battery for not much more than the tax credit you can get for buying a used EV. It would still have enough range to drive to work, pick up groceries and that sort of thing if we install a charger at home.

You have 1996 Buick in upstate NY and it isn't rusted out yet!? Was it stored in a barn?

It spent a lot of time in Ohio and only has about 100k miles. We had it up on a lift the other day and the mechanic was amazed at how good the undercarriage was. My son sprayed the bottom with WD-40 which will hopefully protect it from road salt.

We are plugged in a bit to networks that bring cars up from down south, there is a place in Binghamton that sells police cars (and other cars) from southern Pennsylvania which is already a much better environment.

I highly recommend using Fluid Film instead of WD-40. It will coat better and last a lot longer (you'll still have to put it on once a year).

The WD-40 is already gone.

You don't really need a charger at home. Just plug the car into the wall.

If you leave it plugged in overnight, you'll have a full charge in the morning.

The slow charge offered by a 110v outlet is easier on the battery chemistry as well...

> that doesn't sound like that great of a deal

That seems to reflect my experience with used rental cars in general.

Remember - this is THEIR TRUE BUSINESS.

Rental car companies traditionally get huge discounts from the manufacturers to buy their cars in volume, and in return the contract says they will not sell them early and/or with little mileage. This would compete with dealers, and degrade the market for new cars.

(I believe not tesla, it seems they didn't get a discount from them for the huge volume purchase?)

So they have to continue renting them out before they can "cash in" and sell the cars to folks who feel comfortable driving a middle-of-the-road car for a little less than a new car but with a warranty.

Not that great a car, not that great a deal, not that much hassle.

What I find interesting is that tesla kept the ev rental market from bottoming out. Early EV's usually had terrible resale values. I remember you could get a nissan leaf for 1/4 of retail after the 3-year lease was up. Tesla managed to keep the early used tesla price high by selling them themselves after the lease was up.

> I think the used market in general is so bad right now

I'm in the same boat, only I've never owned a used car after the one my parents gave me as my first car. But after going through several new cars, I thought I would try the used market. All I'm seeing are not good deals that makes me wonder why anyone would take a 5-10 year old car for not enough of a difference from new to risk the maintenance.

All of these high prices just feels really really artificial to me. I've been around enough dealership owners that it just feels exactly like what they would do. If there was ever a real reason to explain the way the prices shot up, there's no way the dealers were just going to leave money on the table by lower their prices.

COVID interrupted the supply chains for new cars, forcing people who normally wouldn't to buy used cars, which spiked the price of used cars. This is likely to be temporary because, of course, high used car prices will encourage more people to buy new cars now that they're available again, which will in turn ultimately lower the price of used cars by increasing supply. But first the new cars have to get old enough to become used cars.

Leased cars are old enough after 12-24 months. We're far enough in for the 3rd generation of that to have been sold. Twenty four months is also long enough for newer rental cars to come on the market.

My position is that this temporary is being extended because of greedy dealership owners feel like they can vs a lack of inventory. This is based on precedence of the banks not releasing all of the foreclosed properties they still own after the '08 meltdown. Also, I've been to events sponsored by car manufactures rewarding their top dealership owners. There's fewer of them than people would think as these larger owners own multiple dealerships across the country. They absolutely have the opportunity to "talk amongst themselves" while conveniently in the same place to discuss this.

The theory that dealers are going to sit on inventory to keep prices high would have to assume that they're fools.

The banks sat on the properties because they knew the government was going to lower interest rates and otherwise cause the value of the properties to increase from their post-crash low.

For dealerships to keep prices high they would have to purposely sell fewer cars. But selling more cars for high prices is the reason they want prices to stay high -- all they'd be doing is giving the high price sale to another seller. Meanwhile they're paying to store inventory and paying interest on the borrowed money they used to buy it, or foregoing alternate investment returns if it's their own money. Only to continue holding something they could sell for high prices now so that they can wait until the prices come down and sell it for a lower price later?

> makes me wonder why anyone would take a 5-10 year old car for not enough of a difference from new

Here is one reason: New cars are riddled with phone-home spyware. Cars from 10 to 15 years old today are the sweet spot of having everything as modern as you really need, but none of the bad things.

While I'd like to get a good deal on those used cars, I would pay more for them than for a new car if need be. Unless some manufacturer starts building simple cars again, I'm never buying a new car and will keep looking for cars from ~2000 to ~2015 forever.

I mean, there's only two possibilities:

1) There's a grand conspiracy between all the dealerships in the country where they've all secretly formed a cartel together and have all agreed to all abide by the same artificially high prices.

2) There's legitimate economic reasons for prices to be high. If there wasn't, then any single dealership could simply lower their artificially high prices and then make more profit by stealing all the customers away from their competitors and increasing their sales.

Dealerships are essentially cartels already. There's a reason it's illegal for manufacturers to directly sell vehicles, and it's not because the consumers don't want it. It's not because the manufacturers don't want it. What does that leave you?

Most manufacturers don't want to own dealerships. They don't see it as an efficient use of capital.

> A car, especially an electric car, with that many miles is likely over half way through it's lifespan and it's in the most maintenance heavy half to boot

as someone whos never had a car but is interested.. is there a good estimate for what modal maintenance costs look like? is the used car market efficiently priced for accounting for those costs?

Consumer Reports does longitudinal research on car models, their repairs, etc. I don't know if they have a dollar figure for lifetime repairs, but they will have something valuable.

OT: I don't know why Consumer Reports isn't overwhelmingly popular on HN, why their articles aren't regularly on the front page: Empirical, professional, scientific research on consumer products. They have a budget, labs, serious expertise. Also, they are a non-profit serving the public interest with exceptional integrity - they refuse advertising, buy every product they test at retail, even forbid manufacturers from citing CR, etc. It's the HN dream.

I suspect it's a generational thing - for people on HN, Consumer Reports is their parents' publication, a magazine with old-fashioned-looking layout.

I can imagine not being a Consumer Reports, uh, consumer (their user-friendliness wasn’t the best last time I had a subscription), but I can’t imagine not respecting their mission. As far I can tell, their methodology is generally sound and they seem totally incorruptible.

> I can imagine not being a Consumer Reports, uh, consumer (their user-friendliness wasn’t the best last time I had a subscription)

Not to question your preference, but to understand: How can you imagine that? The UI isn't great, but it works: search, click, read. Where else will you find anything like it? Almost all other reviewers seem to be astroturf or bought off, and the more serious prominent ones are someone's opinion trying one, not empircal, objective research.

> is there a good estimate for what modal maintenance costs look like?

This depends heavily on the make and model. Some publications like Consumer Reports will try to estimate this, and this is generally a good way to compare makes and models, but the costs also depend on things like how you drive, where you drive, and where you take the vehicle for repairs.

Maintenance can be a lot less expensive when you do it yourself.

> is the used car market efficiently priced for accounting for those costs?

Definitely not. Used cars are priced based on a large number of factors, maintenance costs being only one, and the buyers (and, for that matter, sellers) generally don't have any better information on it than you do.

a general rule of thumb is that if it was expensive to maintain new its expensive to maintain used

> A car, especially an electric car, with that many miles is likely over half way through it's lifespan and it's in the most maintenance heavy half to boot.

Teslas have shown to last hundreds of thousands of miles. I'm unsure how you've come to the conclusion that one with 80k miles is beyond 50% of it's useful life.

https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/what-is-the-average-tesla-ca...

Even Nissan's CEO has said Leafs are lasting longer than expected, and their battery management (air cooled) is garbage.

https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/21/surprise-nissan-leaf-ba...

Were those Teslas used as rental cars? Were they charged/discharged aggressively by users unconcerned with longevity?

I rented a Model Y from Hertz. The battery life was suspiciously poor during the 3 or so days I drove it, necessitating multiple trips to a supercharger.

Don't underestimate the abuse from rental customers.

It's a battery and electric motor(s), it doesn't matter if they were primarily fast DC charged and the users beat them up. I have beat the shit out of a 2018 Model S for 110k miles and I've only had to put tires and wiper fluid into it. I have primarily Supercharged it back and forth across the US more times than I can count, and I've only lost ~7% of the 100kw pack range.

https://electrek.co/2023/08/29/tesla-battery-longevity-not-a... ("Tesla battery longevity not affected by frequent Supercharging, study says")

> We compared cars that fast charge at least 90% of the time to cars that fast charge less than 10% of the time. In other words, people who almost exclusively fast charge their car and people who very rarely fast charge. The results show no statistically significant difference in range degradation between Teslas that fast charge more than 90% of the time and those that fast charge less than 10% of the time.

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/impacts-of-fast-charg...

The suspention system is the same wear. Where I live salt is what gets cars not miles.

Not an EV specific problem. Have a mechanic inspect the vehicle’s mechanicals prior to purchase if you’re risk adverse.

that is the point. the significant wear on a modern car is things that are common. ICEs last a lot longer than the rest of the car these days.

I bought a gas car from the last hertz liquidation sale and it’s been great.

I don’t think people abuse rentals as badly as you may think. Even the aggressive charging has only been happening for what, a year? It’s not going to cut the life all that much imo.

I thought they determined supercharging doesn't cause appreciable degradation.

https://www.batterytechonline.com/charging/report-supercharg...

Gas cars last hundreds of thousands of miles too. I still expect a big discount on them.

The ones which actually last, i.e. toyota/lexus products, have the associated "toyota tax" for their used vehicles. No good discounts going anymore except on dying out sedans

It’s not really a brand thing. I’ve never owned a car for less than 200k miles, and a couple for substantially more. Do the maintenance and they last.

Most cars last 200,000 miles with maintenance.

Yeah maybe I'm underestimating them in that case. Every other battery powered device I own degrades a lot faster than that but I guess car batteries are higher quality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com