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Comment by cobri | Hacker News Reader

As of 11/13/2024, Consumer Reports rates Tesla as the lowest maintenance and repair costs over the first 10 years of ownership, not factoring in insurance or collision repair.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-maintenance/the-cos...

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They didn't ask me about my $15k battery replacement that occurred the day after my warranty expired

Doesn't much matter how good the cells are when the wires in the pack just magically corrode

outliers always exist, you were dealt bad hands. I think also if you pushed hard you could have gotten this covered, just needs a whole lot of yelling and if that doesn’t work going social and trying to get some publicity behind it, especially if it was 1 DAY after warranty expired.

I personally thinks it makes financial sense to get extended warranty for things like this, $15k used to be a price of a new car, getting a warranty to cover that past Tesla’s warranty I think makes financial sense.

My wife recently bought pre-owned eTron and I made her get extended warranty after doing research online about maintenance costs on them

Arguing got it down to $7.5k and beyond that I needed a lawyer. I paid it, and kinda regret it, because not only is it a refurbished battery, it's basically useless on a trip/supercharger now as they cap the speed to absurdly low levels. Like 10%/h. Car only had 70k miles on it, too.

I appreciate that you didn't call me a liar, which has been my past experience anytime I mention something negative about that company

I have a colleague at work that had the same experience as you - it was close to 9 months after warranty! For sure this is a thing - can’t believe someone called you a liar! There are other people on various Tesla forums with issues like yours.

Is the supecharger capping a thing? Like for any refurbished battery? I didn’t know about this!!

I'd only seen it mentioned with regards to salvage titled cars before my own experience. They certainly didn't tell/warn me that this would happen. They actually did the opposite (of course), insisting it would be warranted and as-good-as-the-battery-it-replaced. They said I could buy a new one for like $30k....... the car was worth about $20k, assuming it was working, which it wasn't.

It stings. Can't even write it off in my head as supporting the EV movement with how soured that's all become.

But that's not factoring in the exact things I'm talking about: insurance and collision repair, which are both higher on this make

insurance and collision repair works out not much different from other luxury cars. if you think tesla’s repairs are high see about owning a mercedes or audi…

again, even if this was true, you are shitty driver and have to pay premium for tesla insurance, given virtually $0 in maintenance you’d still come out on top

I agree that if you pay $0 in maintenance you come out on top. But since you will have to pay high insurance and potentially high repair costs (and those repair costs get closer the older the car is), the price of the car tanks on the used market.

> insurance and collision repair works out not much different from other luxury cars

No, it does work out differently than other cars of a same retail value, that's very well documented. See my other comment

This is poor documentation... again I'll say if you are a shitty driver you will be paying high insurance and you will be having issues fixing the car and whatnot not matter what the car is. I have been a driver since 1993 and have had one claim where I was at fault (slippery road, rear-ended a car in front of me). my insurance on the Tesla is as cheap as it gets, like $68/month. have several friends that drive Teslas too (mostly 3 and Y) and no one is paying high insurance.

if you know you are going to F sh*t up with the car and have bunch of claims on it and have it at the shop all the time - I agree with you Tesla is not for you. But if you are a good driver insurance and maintenance is not a thing you need to worry about at all...

Did you look at one of the many links I posted at all? They have pretty detailed comparisons of avg insurance cost for various Tesla models vs similarly priced non-EV alternatives.

You also ignored repair costs.

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