The warranty is one of the most important considerations to me, as well as the repair history. With the Model 3, we haven't seen these cars with 100k+ miles to know what the repairs could be. Apparently, Elon is coming out with a million mile battery. It would be strange to advertise it as a million miles and warranty it to 100k. I'm hoping that the warranty might expand to reflect this promise in expected battery life. I'm also wondering if reliability will improve now that common issues are known (i.e. MCU failure- yellowing and bubbling, door handles with the MS, and whatever else I'm missing that shouldn't break, like bumpers falling off of the M3 if it rains heavily).
I'm like 95% sure this "million mile battery" everyone is referring to is the LiFePo batteries from CATL in China. They have benefits in terms of lifetime, but the energy density is much less. It sounded like this will only be available in China, at least to start, and will definitely be some sort of "Standard Range" in terms of battery capacity (which is different than its expected service life). I wouldn't hold out hope for this.
Elon has said on Twitter the current LR packs should last 500,000mi. The warranty already is a fraction of that expectation (which is by design, as warranties are).
They've come a long way on some specific things (e.g. new MCU design
hopefully shouldn't yellow??), but they got themselves proudly into that mess in the first place and generally may continue to do so. There are some benefits to being a "young" manufacturer doing things "differently", but there are also reasons other brands don't take the risks Tesla does with its products. The difference is Tesla has a huge hype train behind it, willing to forgive a lot of mistakes that wouldn't be tolerated elsewhere.
They're potentially not really wrong. There's a standardized MPGe, which to some (most?) people is meaningless depending on local fuel and electricity costs. But you can also figure out your "local" MPGe.
I'll use US gallons. I'm more familiar with the imperial gallon, but I'm a minority here.
Pre-pandemic, average local costs in my area would give an MPGe of 162 in rated conditions. In winter here, it's more like 113.
In-pandemic, current costs at rated efficiency is about 105 MPGe where I live, and about 73 MPGe in winter.
The lower your local gas price (mine is very expensive), the lower the MPGe will be. That's why in the pandemic where gas prices have sunk massively, the MPGe is now lower.
The higher your electricty costs (mine is pretty low), the lower the MPGe will be. I use more electricity during the pandemic (working at home), which bumps our baseline usage into a higher tier and
also contributes to the lowered MPGe.
I looked up a random spot in Wyoming (I recall low prices driving through there). $2.15/gal and $0.10/kWh. That works out to 84 MPGe, and only 58 MPGe in winter!
MPGe is also much worse if you count DC Fast Charging costs, like on a trip, instead of home costs. Using the Wyoming case above but with Supercharging costs, it
works out to about 30MPGe (ouch) and again, worse in winter. About 30% of my driving has been this case, very roughly averaging $0.35/kWh. The lifetime MPGe of my car is therefore somewhere roughly around 103MPGe.
This is why when actually doing the honest math for our trips in the US, there is no substantial difference in "fueling" costs between taking the Model 3 or one of the gas vehicles we have (or had).
