Who Wants 30k Used Teslas? | Hacker News Reader

Who Wants 30k Used Teslas?

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48 pointstype_Ben_struct99 comments

Open articleView on HN

https://archive.ph/shrmq

How Hertz’s bet on Teslas went sideways

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928913

Hertz is ditching even more electric cars

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40183174

Disclosure: I work for GM, this is solely my own opinion

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This article doesn't mention it, but the other problem Hertz has is that Tesla has lowered the price of their vehicles. This is great news for new buyers, not so much for people who want to trade or sell their vehicles. Incidentally, this is why other OEMs offer cash-back or other limited time or limited scope offers - they can have less effect on trade-in values.

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Incidentally, this cycle of downward pressure on new vehicle price is a partial cause of GM's decline. GM had a goal to remain the #1 North American automaker by sales volume - to do this they sold a lot of cars to rental fleets - those rental cars come back on the market after about 1 year at a discount and compete with new car sales and put downward pressure on price.

Again, if you are a consumer looking for a low price, this is nice; if you are looking to run a company that can invest in product engineering, not so much.

Aren't used car prices high?

Have they actually come back down?

>> $13,078.58 to fix a quarter-size hole

Years ago I read this advice "Find an under-served market and serve it cheaply."

There's an opportunity here for a 3rd party to service and repair Teslas at a reasonable price.

There are plenty of reports about how Tesla has made this difficult. Tesla parts are difficult to obtain even for Tesla’s own service centers: there are frequent months-long waits. “Certified” non-Tesla shops get parts at a lower priority, non-certified shops simply cannot order most parts (just basic stuff like bumpers)

0: https://www.reddit.com/r/Insurance/s/fkcTScUDpL

Maybe someone needs to found the Framework Computer, Inc, of electric cars.

Seriously, this should happen sooner than later.

We're quickly entering a world where car manufacturers are trying to extract profit from subscriptions (see: BMW heated seats, Toyota remote start, Ford BlueCruise, etc). On top of that, most cars are now shipping with an encrypted CAN bus, which lands us right back in the same "trusted computing" quagmire as every other consumer electronic device.

I have the skillset and network to design, prototype and source just about any part or assembly. If anyone wants to do this, seriously, reach out.

Framework is great, but their existence doesn't change the harmful antirepair practice of other companies. Similarly, the ratio of servicable cars on the road won't change the fact that offering less service is cheaper, and forcing first-party repair can even be profitable.

> their existence doesn't change the harmful antirepair practice of other companies

Their existence doesn't but their success does. If and when Framework becomes large enough to steal a significant portion of marketshare from less repair friendly companies, they will adapt or die.

I wish you were right, but historically I don't think anything suggests a change. There has always been a market for repairable and rugged laptops, but their market share loses out to expensive and easily replaceable machines. Skimping on repairability lets you focus on some other feature that you can market instead, which will almost always seem sexier than "the topcase costs less than $500 to replace".

There are success stories here; IBM and Panasonic didn't struggle to find customers for the Thinkpad and Toughbook respectively. But the market was never forced to "adapt or die" as you put it; in fact, the rugged and repairable machines were now the ones that had to adapt. How can you compete against a monopoly on repair pricing?

What if you had 30k or 10k teslas hanging around for parts though?

Software lock ala apple?

Interesting, I've seen people using tesla drive motors in electric conversions, so maybe that's easier if they're controlled by some 3rd party hardware, because you're just fighting the motor not the whole car as a system.

Definitely, and even with some legitimate reasons. The inverter and the motor are linked by a calibration.

This is one of the reasons I disliked Tesla from the outset. Other manufacturers have various levels of challenge on repairs, but from the very moment they released the model S, they have been extremely aggressive at making any sort of third party repair impossible. Even connecting to the vehicle diagnostics got the vehicle to phone home and people at Tesla to actively subvert your attempt to learn or diagnose anything. For as much shit as we talk about "being green", making a car harder to fix (and thus much more likely to just get totalled and scrapped when it could ostensibly be fixed and serviced) is about as "anti-green" and anti-consumer as I could imagine.

>>Soon, a body shop found a quarter-size hole in the undercarriage he hadn’t seen before, which led to revelations of deeper issues inside. “The high-voltage battery pack is damaged and could cause extreme safety concerns,” a Tesla technician texted him. Because the hole was “exterior damage,” it wasn’t covered by the warranty, which meant a $13,078.58 repair bill.

Looks like selective quoting to me, the quarter sized hole was under the battery pack, which was damaged.

Since the hole was punched upward from the ground, it counted as exterior damage.

So $13,078.58 to fix the hole and battery pack issue.

That 13k to fix the battery pack is the main problem. Repairs on a Tesla are a lot more expensive than repairs on an average car.

That makes a used Tesla a less attractive option, and makes any Tesla more expensive to insure. In the long term that also makes new Tesla's less attractive. Low resale value and high insurance costs both increase the monthly cost of owning one, which is the number the majority of consumers will look at.

How much does a battery pack cost to manufacture? How much does it cost at retail? Also there is the under armor which was damaged as well.

What else is required to remove and reinstall?

I could see a new pack costing about 10k retail, probably 7 mfg costs.

To remove and install a new one:

0: Lift car on Jacks.

1: Disconnect old pack connector at car.

2: Discharge old pack

3: Remove old under-armor panel

4: Remove old pack from car

5: Install new pack in car

6: Install new under-armor panel

7: Reconnect new pack to car

8: Run diagnostic tests

That looks like a 3 to 4 hour job minimum, with specialized equipment dealing with high voltage to me.

I think 13k is not a bad price at all.

Yes, 13k may be a perfectly fine price for the issue.

But that means a Tesla does not have as low a cost of ownership as people originally thought. It doesn't need oil changes, but now you have to deal with a low resale value and high insurance costs. The savings on fuel and mechanical maintenance may be lost to that.

IDK if people are buying Teslas for their cost of ownership, but yeah if they are they are in for a shock.

It's not just a quarter size hole. It's a quarter size hole in the high voltage battery pack, which is indeed extremely dangerous and needs specialized equipment and skill to replace.

I would imagine there’s a major blocker here or it would already exist.

My bets are on supply chain or Tesla refusing to honor warranties if you get work done elsewhere.

Indeed, if there's no second source OEM provider of compatible Tesla parts, then the reason for stupid expensive Tesla repairs is simply that Tesla makes more profit/share price improvement from selling a new car over repairing an already sold car.

At least until people start to consider them unrepairable.

Tesla can void your warranty at any time. Tesla can remotely disable features on their vehicles. It's a tough job repairing something that you then cannot guarantee in any way.

Sounds like the first job for any repair shop will be disabling Tesla's root access!

Which, like, someone should sue Tesla for violating the CFAA when they do that. If you bought the car and you own it, Tesla remoting in and changing things on your car is a CFAA violation.

So can Apple, but people get iPhones fixed all the time. Of course, a car is 40-80X more expensive than a phone, so stakes are lower for someone seeking out a non-licensed repair shop.

But it probably comes down to right to repair, and can Tesla be shown as impeding this right. My guess, is yes. But I also think, as usual, the authorities are reluctant to penalize Elon. He makes such a stink about such things, they'd rather penalized John Deere.

Can apple really reach into your device and just shut it off remotely? Cause tesla can.

Yes. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102541

> With Activation Lock, your Apple ID password or device passcode is required before anyone can turn off Find My, erase your Mac, or reactivate and use your Mac. Even if you erase your Mac remotely, Activation Lock can continue to deter others from reactivating your Mac without your permission. All you need to do is keep Find My turned on and remember your Apple ID and password.

It wasn't to fix the hole, it was damage to the battery that wasn't covered by the warranty because of the hole.

From Teslas own service website:

> Only new Tesla parts, Tesla-approved fasteners, and Tesla-approved structural adhesives must be used when performing repairs on Tesla vehicles.

https://service.tesla.com/docs/BodyRepair/Body_Repair_Proced...

What’s not clear: how much are those “new Tesla parts”?

Tesla uses some scary language to make it seem like they are the only ones that can repair their product.

They have taken a page out of the Apple playbook.

> Tesla does not allow the use of any used, recycled, alternative, aftermarket, or third-party replacement parts. Use only new parts ordered directly from Tesla.

I didn't read all the was too the fine print, but these statements are patently nonsense. Maybe doing the things they don't like will void your warranty or something, but adhesives don't get stickier just because Tesla decrees it.

They may well advise you on what to do, or even try to fuck up your car's software if they detect you've defied them, but they can't just issue commands or make statements about the impossibility of letting someone else fix your bumper.

Sometimes I wonder how much careful / research is appropriate for questions like this. To wit:

For me, thinking in broad strokes seems sufficient here:

(1) Tesla has a reputation for lengthy, extremely costly repairs.

(2) Tesla is led by Musk, whose leadership strikes me as erratic and unreliable in the best of times.

(3) Tesla seems to be in financial trouble, which I'd expect to only exacerbate (1) and (2).

(4) Tesla just called into question the availability of their U.S. charging network, which reminds me that a Teslas are local-only vehicles unless you're confident there's a charging network to support your trips.

(5) I can't afford to spend $30k on an unreliable vehicle, nor a reliable one with $5k+ repairs.

I'm curious if looking at this more carefully would change my mind. And if so, is there a way I could have recognized that before contenting myself with the broad strokes mentioned above?

> I can't afford to spend $30k on an unreliable vehicle, nor a reliable one with $5k+ repairs.

Then you should get a Tesla, because once you get past the FUD on HN, Reddit and the media, in the real world Consumer Reports found that Teslas had the lowest repair and maintenance costs compared to other car brands. Yes, even Toyota and Honda.

https://www.kbb.com/car-news/consumer-reports-names-cheapest...

The submitted story is passing off one anecdote as if it applies to all used Teslas sold by Hertz, and it already showed up multiple times on HN's front page from different media outlets. You can make a story out of that for any brand, but curiously there's a pattern there. There's a lot of anti-EV propaganda in the media and social media in the past year. And it's working very well, given comments like yours.

$25,000 for a two year old $47,000 car with 70,000 miles already on it may not be that great a deal. A brand new one is that price so you're basically paying 31.5 cents a mile to buy the newer ...

Miles are irrelevant, they’ll last forever (based on fleet powertrain reliability stats). It’s a great deal if you’re going to drive it until it dies and you need mobility, assuming for whatever reason you don’t qualify for incentives or credits that would get a new one to the used price.

(have over 200k miles collectively on three Teslas)

Miles are very relevant. The suspension and steering components are wearing out quickly in these heavy cars.

> Tesla Model S - Curb weight 4,647 lbs Audi A8 - Curb weight 4,751 lbs BMW 7 series - Curb weight 4,244 - 4,848 lbs

Tesla Model 3 - Curb weight 3,627 to 4,072 lbs Audi A4 - Curb weight 3,450 to 3,627 lbs BMW 3 series - 3,582 to 4,010 lbs

From here: https://www.quora.com/Is-a-Tesla-heavier-than-an-ICE-car-of-....

They are equal in weight to a lot of ICE cars. Surely components will be spec’ed according to weight requirements?

Not my experience in a 2018 S and a 2019 X. Wiper fluid, tires, brake fluid, air filters are the only work done, over 100k miles on both. Paid inspections done at ~100k miles to confirm for proactive replacement if needed. Intend to operate them until the powertrain fails.

I earn too much to receive any incentives, so keeping an eye on the used market to buy another Tesla or two (preferably Ys, but would take a 3).

Edit: I enjoy spirited driving, and do so frequently on roads of many different quality across the eastern US and Midwest.

Going 100,000 miles is not the same thing as lasting "forever," which is around 250,000 miles in my opinion.

I have a 266k mile 04 4Runner, a 250k mile 04 F250, and a 188k mile 13 Chevy Volt. 'Forever' is starting to be 350k miles in crowds that don't buy new vehicles.

100,000 miles is essentially the bare minimum I'd expect from a car. I enjoy spirited driving as well (rumbly subie owner) and I'm over 100,000 miles and only had to replace wear items.

You must be very careful driver then. And the roads must be very good around you. I am pretty sure, I will need to replace something in suspension of my model Y before 60000 miles.

I assume your (probably more carefully driven) 100k did less wear than the 70k done via rental.

Bearings, they have bearings

Almost every car my family owns is over 200k miles, and we recently got rid of a 290k mile Volvo S80. I do all the work on all of our cars, and I've never had to replace a wheel bearing.

We usually get 80-100k out of them on them:

https://www.bellandbell.com/service/service-and-parts-tips/h....

I too have had cars that went far longer than this without replacement, but they probably should have been replaced.

Just because you didn't have to, doesn't mean you shouldn't have.

If a dealership's marketing says they last 100k, you can be certain they'll go 200k. They don't call them stealerships for nothing.

I'm as good of a mechanic as a diy gets. I've rebuilt entire auto transmissions instead of just sticking in another unit. I've regearied rear ends (which did get interior bearings while there). I do head gaskets as favors to friends.

I'm fairly certain all of my 200k+ mile vehicles have had perfectly safe and functional bearings.

When was the last time you had the alignment checked?

Never because I don't trust 90% of alignment jobs done by regular shops.

When we lifted our 4runner I did it myself with tape measures. 40k miles later tires wearing better than most new vehicles.

But are you implying that a bearing can be so bad that it throws off alignment, yet I wouldn't feel that massive play while it's going down the road??

I'm saying a lot of people wouldn't know the difference, and would just drive it until the wheels fall off.

You got lucky. Wheel bearing failure is usually a damage (pot holes) or manufacturing defect that slowly propagates.

That's some great luck. 4 corners * 6+ cars between mine and parents * 200k each. Only advantage I guess could be that it's in California without rust or salt splashing everywhere.

https://www.kbb.com/tesla/wheel-bearing-replacement/

> In theory, wheel bearings could last as long as your Tesla. Unlike oil changes or tire rotations, there’s no standard maintenance schedule for replacing them.

I do not disagree that inspections should be done to ensure things that move between motor and road are in good repair, but all vehicles in the used car market experience this. EVs have less moving parts, less than 20 typically for propulsion, leading to higher reliability.

When was the last time you had your wheel bearings inspected? Probably never. You know when it’s time to replace them when they fail.

> they’ll last forever

> You know when it’s time to replace [bearings] when they fail.

Fail? They last forever!

Vehicles do occasionally need parts replaced. This does not diminish that these vehicles will last hundreds of thousands of miles cost effectively. The nuance is clear, or so I assumed. Replace parts as needed (either scheduled maintenance or ad hoc), but the powertrain will likely last the life of the vehicle, and that is the material cost concern of a vehicle.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2022/08/01/electric...

> “It’s the complete opposite of what people feared when we first launched EVs—that the batteries would only last a short time,” he reflected.

> It’s clear that most EV batteries will outlast the vehicles they were installed in, and even then, they have a worthwhile second life before they need to be stripped down for recycling.

> “At the end of the vehicle’s life—15 or 20 years down the road—you take the battery out of the car, and it’s still healthy, with perhaps 60 or 70% of usable charge,” said Thomas.

-- Nissan executive Nic Thomas.

(and these are early gen battery pack designs that were, frankly, not very good compared to Tesla's)

I dont know where you get this, but it's not ended up being true.

Not true.

Your car will go way out of alignment first. It will handle like crap, and if you try to align it at an alignment shop they won't be able to.

You can easily test yourself, jack the car up, see of there is slop in the wheel.

200k over three vehicles is 66k, about where this guy just started, on a car that was driving like it was a rental.

Some of these used Tesla prices are enticing, with gas at $4 a gallon a Tesla Model 3 gets just over 100mpg (equivalent obviously).

How do you assess the battery health?

If there is one thing Tesla is famous for it is their battery life expectancy...

It really depends a lot on the input electricity price too, not just the gas price

Specifically, in San Francisco and parts of Europe, the cost of electricity is high enough, or approaching it, that it's not actually cheaper to pay for electricity instead of gasoline.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of $0.70/kWh vs $5/gallon of gas, someone else can go deeper into the math.

They will probably go to Ukraine:

https://www.wired.com/story/why-teslas-totaled-in-the-us-are...

What's the cost of a new battery?

Most of them would still be in warranty:

> 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period.

https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty

In reality, an NMC battery would last 1000+ cycles. If you get 200 miles to a charge then you’re looking at 200k miles. LFP will be 2 - 3x this.

Can Tesla authorized mechanics offer pre-purchase inspections for cars that are sold by third parties?

I know Tesla themselves do it if you buy a pre-owned car from them.

If used cars will have software locks and fixing will be prohibited without cloud services their price will drop much quicker after the time of warranty

> If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high.

That is the fundamental takeaway.

These are specialized machines, with specialized parts, and specialized repairs.

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And to be fair, this isn't all that much different than other luxury cars like BMWs and Audis.

> And to be fair, this isn't all that much different than other luxury cars like BMWs and Audis.

It's different in that those have much larger and more readily available 3rd party repair shops, parts, and used parts. You can often shop around and get alternatives. With Tesla you're a lot more locked in.

I owned an Audi.

And...I'm sure it's better than Tesla in this regard, but it was still extraordinarily painful anytime something went wrong.

(Part of this was the engineering of the car itself. Like, something as basic as replacing the fan belt is basically full disassembly of the engine compartment.)

I work on my BMW all the time. Never have an issue getting a part, and no the parts are not 2-3x more expensive than an equivalent non-BMW part. People kept telling me that, they were wrong.

And by work on I mean I've done the intercooler, downpipe, brakes, rotors, calipers, plugs, injectors, and silly things like airfilters, fluids, etc.

The horror stories are always about people seeing how cheap used 7 series or similar are and not realizing that repair costs are still going to be reflective of the MSRP, not the now drastically depreciated used price.

Exactly. And those people are usually complaining about a repair bill somewhere around $2000. Sure, expensive, but relative to the new value of a top model 7-series it's not crazy.

It's no comparison to paying 13k for battery repair on an entry level Tesla, that was only 40k new.

Very different from BMW and Audi. Those have a huge third party parts market, and independent shops have full access to the car.

The official diagnostic software from BMW is available for only $2700 per year. Plug it in, click a few buttons and it tells you exactly what is wrong with any BMW, troubleshooting steps, diagrams of the parts and what parts to order etc: https://bmwtechinfo.bmwgroup.com/

If you're not an official shop and don't care about the legalities, the same can be downloaded for $10 at home...

>Unquestionably a great piece of hardware

You must watch a LOT of advertising.

I imagine you are fans of Disney and Nintendo too? Maybe throw in some Samsung if you arent too infatuated with Apple.

Model S does 0-60 in 1.99s.

A Lamborghini is 3s+.

I'll call that an amazing piece of hardware.

Yes electric motor go vroom. Why are you comparing different hardware?

They're still selling these beat up cars at around $27,000 each. Seems criminal to me

There are better reasons for spending $30,000.

For example, a down payment for a home :)

I'm in Denmark, the country with a 150% tax on new cars. I think there's still a discount on electrics though.

$30.000 is a lot, I know it's a luxury car, but a new model 3 is still "only" 50.000USD. The discount simply isn't high enough and $30.000 is more than I would want to spend on a new car anyway. I can get a Hyundai i10 for $20.000 which functionally does the exact same thing for me. Sadly it's not electric.

Not sure how it is today, but when I bought my first home in 1996, I needed to come up with 20% down in order to avoid wasting my money on PMI. PMI only benefits the lender, and the cost cannot be deducted as part of your mortgage interest tax credit. So if the same requirement still exists today, you can get a $150k house with 20% down for your $30k. Depending upon where you live and what you want, this may or may not be a realistic plan.

https://www.investopedia.com/mortgage/insurance

You can live in a car, but you can't drive a house :)

*looks at downpayment for average home in local area

Yeah, that's not going to do it. By, like, an order of magnitude.

I couldn't even put a down payment on an apartment/condo for that amount in my area.

lol. The 1bd house I'm renting in SF is on Zillow for $1M. I wish $30k was a down payment.

for a standard 20% downpayment so you aren't screwing yourself over so badly on your mortage, $30,000 only works if your house somehow magically only costs $150,000. Good luck finding that in this market. These days your downpayment needs to be closer to $100k.

>your house somehow magically only costs $150,000

The rest of the world outside the US exists? 150K gets you a very nice studio/loft in a brick building in central Budapest/Krakow/Belgrade.

Are you able to run FSD on these used Teslas? I currently do not own one.

But FSD 12.3.6 looks amazing.

I'm not sure why Waymo or Mercedes gets ranked ahead of Tesla - clearly, Tesla is a few years ahead of them in terms of self-driving technology.

FSD is on major version 12 and still doesn't work as advertised?

This article is biased in my opinion. Colleague bought BMW with broken gearbox. Warranty covered 2/3 of repair costs. That’s typical mistake when buying nice car and not checking it thoroughly.

For electric vehicle it is even more important. I would lift the car during test drive in random repair shop, go by myself under it and check the bottom. Battery is most expensive part there. And most fragile too. And also easy to check without special tooling.

I also wouldn’t buy a car with 70000 miles on it. That’s the mileage when things start to fail. It is also out of warranty. Battery might be still under warranty, but that’s not very useful. Tesla solved these issues in the past. Other thing is that these were rental cars. So they were treated extremely poor for years. The buyer of Herz Tesla should be well prepared for all possible expensive surprises.

Edit: I wouldn’t buy a car made after 2005 with 70000+ miles on it. The family cars made before outlived the ones made after 2015. 7 data points at the moment.

Edit2: CAN-Bluetooth dongle with an app isn’t really a tool. Not having it while buying a car for 25k is a gamble. Add also tool for paint thickness measurement. Everything else is naive. Nobody sells very good car for a very good price.

> I also wouldn’t buy a car with 70000 miles on it. That’s the mileage when things start to fail.

In an ICE sure (and that is even questionable, had a '96 Honda Civic go 300+k) but what wears on an EV aside from batteries? Bearings? There's so much less mechanical crap that an EV should really outlast a gas bunner by decades. Then again all the plastic crap and junk electronics have crippled automobiles.

I have a 4runner with 260k miles,an F250 with 250k, and a Chevy Volt with 188k. Not a single one has ever left me stranded, and I wouldn't hesitate to take any of them on a cross country trip.

To be honest, I really think a newer car will be in the shop sooner than my vehicles will have a hiccup. My friends that buy Audi, BMW, jag, are usually in the shop soon after purchase for something random.

> (batteries are) easy to check without special tooling.

What on earth are you taking about?

Physical damage to the case, maybe. But physical damage to the cells, no way. Water damage from the cooling system will only be inside. And battery capacity is only visible in the battery management system. Which is only available from CAN with vendor-specific software.

>I also wouldn’t buy a car with 70000 miles on it. That’s the mileage when things start to fail.

California, the state with the highest EV sales especially for Tesla, mandates that batteries be warrantied for 10y/150k miles. 70k leaves most of the warranty intact.

70k? I had a Toyota at 115k and I felt like the things was just getting broken in. I was sorry when I sold it because I needed something with 4 doors.

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