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Comment by jamesy0ung | Hacker News Reader

That is insane value for money, if you don't mind the stigma of owning a Tesla.

It seems like a used Tesla would be a better deal since most of the parts don't wear out and require maintenance like a petrol car. You can even check the status of the battery from service mode. Reddit seems to suggest high mileage Model 3's are pretty good in terms of reliability.

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tires, shocks, and other suspention parts still wear out. the body still rusts. The battery won't last forever. Mice can still chew your wires. The seats still wear. As do door parts.

I’m not sure the number of wires chewed through by mice really affects the maintenance costs of any car. While possible, it’s rare enough not to register things like oil, filters, coolant, sparkplugs, etc and the massive amount of things that require maintenance in ICE vs BEV.

It’s not they there are no costs, it’s that costs are exponentially lower.

those things you mention are cheap. you have to do them of course but a set of tires is a similar price as all of those things over the life of the tire.

More than half of the maintenance costs on my vehicle over the past decade have been components that aren't ICE-specific.

Have seen a few in Seattle where people have replaced the Tesla branding with Honda or Totoya decals.

Obviously not fooling anyone but gave me a chuckle.

I just checked consumer reports and Tesla 2023/2022/2021 model 3's didn't have very good reliability scores.

That said, it's not the powertrain that has the issues with the Teslas (battery/motors), it's build quality and steering/suspension that appears to have the biggest problems.

Tesla is notorious for a slow and difficult repair process. An older car will always be at risk of unexpectedly being out of service for weeks or months, which isn't a risk many people have the luxury of taking with their vehicle.

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