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Comment by pkorzeniewski | Hacker News Reader

Affordable to buy, but to maintain? It's not like you can go to the first mechanic around the corner to fix something in Tesla, and I'm quite sure original parts are ridiculously expensive. It's the same thing as with luxury, old cars - you can buy, for example, an old Porsche 911 quite cheap, but you will pay twice the price for repairs.

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Tesla has an 8 year, infinite mile warranty on the power train (not sure what the rest of the vehicle is covered by). It also requires very little, if any, maintenance (tire rotations every 5K miles, brakes every 100K miles, battery replacement every 150-200K miles). For battery replacements, they just drop the pack and lift a new one in. For motor replacements, they just lift the 80 lbs motor out and drop a new one in.

Model S has been around for 2 years, it's their first model (not counting the Roadster, which was rather exotic, not mass produced) and you assume nothing will ever brake? There are so many little things that are not covered by warranty and may be really expensive to fix - and just like any other car, things will brake with time. Let's be honest, Model S, new or used, is a luxury car for the rich - I would rather wait for a new model targeted at the middle class.

Why would their "new model targeted at the middle class" be cheaper to fix? Tesla/Elon has shown that they'll make good on vehicle upgrades/substandard parts if needed (battery shield and debris bar upgrades at no charge).

>Why would their "new model targeted at the middle class" be cheaper to fix? Tesla/Elon has shown that they'll make good on vehicle upgrades/substandard parts if needed (battery shield and debris bar upgrades at no charge).

Generally speaking, how much a car costs to fix correlates with what the car costs new. Part of this is parts cost; I mean, if you compare a 3-5 year old bmw 3 series to a new honda civic, you are getting a car of about the same size for about the same price... but the BMW rotors, for instance, are beefier to begin with, and they wear faster - even if you are just paying for the metal, you are paying more for bmw rotors. (with brakes and tires, there is usually a trade-off between performance and longevity, to some extent. Softer tires/softer rotors do the job better, but don't last as long.)

On an electric car, I would expect this to be dominated by the cost of battery replacement, which I would assume would dominate the cost of electric car maintenance. A smaller electric car is going to have a smaller (in both size and power) battery pack, and a smaller battery pack is going to cost you less to replace when it wears out.

The other part of it is price discrimination. Service and parts for the bmw are priced, you know, for people that can afford a bmw. If you have a bmw, the mechanic is going to charge you the "premium service" because it's a good indicator that you are willing to spend more on a car than the person that drives a civic.

Electric cars have far fewer moving parts than gasoline cars. Electric motors are also more or less bomb-proof, they rev to a high enough range that gears aren't needed, so pretty much the only thing that can go wrong on a Tesla is the battery/electric system.

And of course the usual tire/brake maintenance...

There's very little that can go wrong in an electric vehicle. The only thing which can go terribly wrong is the battery pack; any damage there would mean a write off anyway.

Which would be awesome if it were true.

They are mechanically far more simple. We can quibble about the electronics until the cows come home, but ICE powered cars have electronics, too; so they aren't immune from problems.

Yes I understand that. I'm not saying that. The parent to my comment made it sound like there really can't ever be any problems (not verbatim, just the tone I read it with) with the cars, and let's be honest, that just isn't exactly true. I have nothing against Tesla - shit, if I had $100k I'd have the Tesla Model S I want.

Didn't really feel like I should be downvoted for my comment up-stream either.

Firmware errors. Loose wiring. Rotor overheating + damage. Brake sensors and control units. Steering component damage (e.g. from bumping up against a curb too violently.) Fried caps, just like everyone else. Damaged charging control units from poorly behaving charging stations. Distortions in the touch screens from heat. Damage to switches and doors from de-icing fluid. Damage to the underbody from road salt. Rusted connections in tail light fixtures. Damaged and/or leaking suspension seals. Air conditioning unit leaks/damage.

Dog hair, child puke, vomit entering electrical panels, jamming seatbelt mechanisms.

Light collision damage.

Etc.

Right. Now compare that list to the list of stuff that can go wrong with an ICE or hybrid car. You'll quickly find that it is significantly shorter.

I was refuting that electric cars had nothing that could go wrong, not that the were less reliable than a hybrid car.

On a new Porsche 911 (had two of them recently) snow tires cost me $1800 [1] (it actually does a nice job in the snow with them) and the first oil change was something like $400 or so at the dealer. I sold the second one recently (got a Porsche Suv) and it actually retained a fair amount of it's value after 2 years of use. I was surprised.

On a model that I sold I was able to get $450 approx for the snow tires. That said I didn't drive it much if I did I would have hit other maintenance windows.

Personally I would never keep a luxury or high performance car past warranty.

[1] Not only that but they are so large only certain places can even change them because of the width. Since the Porsche dealer is about an hour away I had to go to the BMW dealer to swap the summer tires at the end of the season. (There was a company that had a tire changing service that comes to you but they went out of business that was the best convenience.)

You had to spend a lot on them because they are wide, which is because the 911 is a high-performance car. It would have been the same with any Corvette, Camaro, or Charger.

Complaining about expensive tires on a fast sports car is like complaining about the poor battery life on your 19" 4GHz laptop with discrete graphics.

Where did I say or why did you get the impression that I was "complaining"?

Well, you go on about tires and then you say

Personally I would never keep a luxury or high performance car past warranty.

Which suggests you mean, because of the tires which is an odd thing to say.

Now maybe you didn't mean because of the tires, but then (to me) your post reads like a jumble of unrelated thoughts.

OT, but, I have a 2001 (996) 911 which I bought used for ~$20k in 2009. It's been hassle-free since then and the largest expense has been tires.

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