SHHH that's how I sold my wife on me buying a 3 Performance.
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How much gas needs to cost that EV is cheaper?
- Thread starter JetFalcon
- Start date
SHHH that's how I sold my wife on me buying a 3 Performance.
While this seems like bait, I'm taking it as genuine because it's actually more common in this community than a population average (unsurprising, given the cost of the cars).
The missing piece is absolute dollars. That $1000 car may cost them $1000 in oil and gas only a few tanks later, but they've still only spent $2000. You just can't get into an EV at all at that price. Even if the EV was "only" $3000, where are they going to get that? The $1000 car was probably hard enough for them to get.
When you have the amount of money that makes $1000 car purchases difficult (or having $425 in cash difficult), yes you do need to save that cash for something else. The man probably needed to keep that cash because he needed food or gas to get through the next week. Survival. Most of us Model 3 owners don't even think of baseline costs like food, while others are acutely aware of what food costs because they need to spend every last dollar they have on it. Every week. For years.
So no, people in this situation can't save money by getting an EV. It's not even on their radar. Their $1000 car was already too much, but at least it has a range of more than 20 miles in the Winter so they can go to their job and back home. Scraping together even another $500 would mean they don't eat for a month or two, which coincidentally makes it rather difficult to survive long enough to get that crapped out low-capacity EV. Not really worth it, right?
As for pawning, of course it's not the highest return possible. However it's fast and you don't need to waste gas driving around to people who lowball you and end up not buying it, wasting your last $3 of gas and maybe you can't make it to work next week.
I know it sounds crazy, but this is life for a lot of people and it's hard to see from that perspective unless you know someone there. For that reason, it's hard to blame anyone who doesn't understand those that struggle with completely unfamiliar money-related problems like the above. You just haven't seen it before. But now, at least you've had a slight peek into what it's like and you've got a small amount more perspective.
@MrMassTransit answered brilliantly (as is his name I guess!), but good mass transit doesn't exist in most places. Where it does, it often isn't convenient. I used to live in a town of about 150,000 people, and the bus system was only good for getting between downtown, the mall, and the university. There's a lot of uncovered area, and the scheduling doesn't work for many people's jobs.
$15k currently gets you a gas vehicle in fairly good condition. Sadly restoring that Model S would probably cost you a drive unit or two some time in the future as well. Add that and the purchase price plus taxes and labour to fix things, you're looking at what, $25k? I'll go buy a 3 or 4 year old car in much better condition for that kind of money.
Not to mention $10k to restore a battery is still far outside the purchasing power of those buying $1000 gas cars right now. This is my biggest worry of EV adoption - the used market looks very bad on the $1000-$3000 end, being of extremely low utility due to degraded batteries. A similar priced gas car has far more utility.
The missing piece is absolute dollars. That $1000 car may cost them $1000 in oil and gas only a few tanks later, but they've still only spent $2000. You just can't get into an EV at all at that price. Even if the EV was "only" $3000, where are they going to get that? The $1000 car was probably hard enough for them to get.
When you have the amount of money that makes $1000 car purchases difficult (or having $425 in cash difficult), yes you do need to save that cash for something else. The man probably needed to keep that cash because he needed food or gas to get through the next week. Survival. Most of us Model 3 owners don't even think of baseline costs like food, while others are acutely aware of what food costs because they need to spend every last dollar they have on it. Every week. For years.
So no, people in this situation can't save money by getting an EV. It's not even on their radar. Their $1000 car was already too much, but at least it has a range of more than 20 miles in the Winter so they can go to their job and back home. Scraping together even another $500 would mean they don't eat for a month or two, which coincidentally makes it rather difficult to survive long enough to get that crapped out low-capacity EV. Not really worth it, right?
As for pawning, of course it's not the highest return possible. However it's fast and you don't need to waste gas driving around to people who lowball you and end up not buying it, wasting your last $3 of gas and maybe you can't make it to work next week.
I know it sounds crazy, but this is life for a lot of people and it's hard to see from that perspective unless you know someone there. For that reason, it's hard to blame anyone who doesn't understand those that struggle with completely unfamiliar money-related problems like the above. You just haven't seen it before. But now, at least you've had a slight peek into what it's like and you've got a small amount more perspective.
@MrMassTransit answered brilliantly (as is his name I guess!), but good mass transit doesn't exist in most places. Where it does, it often isn't convenient. I used to live in a town of about 150,000 people, and the bus system was only good for getting between downtown, the mall, and the university. There's a lot of uncovered area, and the scheduling doesn't work for many people's jobs.
$15k currently gets you a gas vehicle in fairly good condition. Sadly restoring that Model S would probably cost you a drive unit or two some time in the future as well. Add that and the purchase price plus taxes and labour to fix things, you're looking at what, $25k? I'll go buy a 3 or 4 year old car in much better condition for that kind of money.
Not to mention $10k to restore a battery is still far outside the purchasing power of those buying $1000 gas cars right now. This is my biggest worry of EV adoption - the used market looks very bad on the $1000-$3000 end, being of extremely low utility due to degraded batteries. A similar priced gas car has far more utility.
640k
Member
psh - that's how i sold myself on buying a new car. "i spend 300-350/mo in gas alone! THAT'S A CAR PAYMENT RIGHT THERE!"
640k
Member
CURRENTLY this is very true - but in 15-20 years, do you think it will still be the case? seems like there's a market primed for restoring EVs to near-new condition (or at least near-new-operable condition) and selling them as used for a significant margin below new. i could be grossly optimistic about the whole thing. changing technology, charging infrastructure, battery tech, etc. these early-adopter vehicles are probably likely to clutter up landfills in short-order. but there has to be something done.
Yeah. My thought process is if battery tech changes, can it even be retrofitted to these "old" cars? Maybe they need to put old chemistry in which is still just as expensive as today, maybe even more so because it's not used anymore because it's obsolete. Or maybe they can retrofit, but they need to rewire the car, change out the motors, etc. until you've now spent significantly more to the point of it being a financially unwise arrangement.
$10k-$15k is also a low price already which assumes prices have decreased. A Model 3 LR 75kWh pack, by Elon's Twitter statement, should cost about $28k to fully replace in the future ($7k per module, 4 modules). Having an even larger 85kWh pack cost "only" $15k is half the price of Elon's optimistic future, and we haven't even looked at inflation.
Of note is that people are getting replacements for cheaper right now. That's because they're returning a mostly or partly good pack in exchange. In this hypothetical future, we're assuming the pack is essentially dead and has no value outside of recycling its aluminum casing.
It will be fascinating to see how much a replacement battery would be by then. Batteries are getting cheaper as volume ramps and new chemistry gets more energy dense. ICE is getting more expensive in the sense that they get more and more expensive technologies to improve emissions and fuel economy.
Is a Model 3 battery pack/battery system going to be the equivalent of a small block Chevy or other such ubiquitous and effective ICE powerplants? In that case you may be able to get a remanufactured battery with almost new capacity for much less than a new one costed.
Exactly!
in 10+ years, there should be all kinds of remanufactured/recycled/reclaimed options out there that will be good for another 100-200K miles for WAY less than a new OEM unit.
In fact, with how quickly battery tech is evolving, it's entirely possible that a replacement pack in 10 years might be half the size or weight. Or maybe the same size but now with 750 mile range.
It wouldn't surprise me if Tesla themselves offer a drop in battery replacement of higher capacity. With all the various replacement packs they've offered on the Model S it seems likely. Keeping the car on the road over time helps their business model because they do things like sell premium connectivity and other upgrades (Acceleration boost) to monetize existing cars on the road.
Robotaxi's, well, maybe some day.
Robotaxi's, well, maybe some day.
640k
Member
honestly they have nothing to benefit by doing so. M3 owners can't even upgrade their battery (or their motor configuration) today.
I'm talking about 10 years from now and Tesla has to choose between keeping a bunch of Model 3's on the road and trying to find a way to monetize that or letting them all go to junkyards.
I would use mass transit if So Cal / LA had one good enough to be faster than waiting in traffic. But using mass transit in LA, you're still going to have to call an uber / lyft eventually.
When I was in London and Paris, I never had to use taxi / uber / cars because public transportation was way cheaper and was able to get anywhere. And used rideshare bikes / scooters like Jump or Lime. I wish So Cal could be like Europe though. I know we have a train, but Metrolink ends service at 6pm, so no rides back. And if you get to your destination, you are very likely going to still use a car since there are very limited stops on LA public transportation. There be no way you could even get to most parts of West LA by subway, the only one I know of is on Hollywood Blvd.
But I assume the guy who hit my car is considered "poor" or "struggling". Even if he was making good money, it's likey all that money is going to divorce stuff which he says is costing him alot. I'm just getting angry this guy is taking forever to pay me back when the day he hit my car, he was super optimistic and saying not to worry.
But even though he paid part of his debt back, it was only through a $265 Target gift card, which I would rather have accepted at 10-20% off, but felt I had no choice because this guy is broke AF so I accepted its full value. So that way I could put less stress on his finances so he can pay off his other debts.
But last time I texted him, he got angry at me, saying it's not Februrary yet (we agreed on February to pay the rest back). I wasn't angry at him, but he wasn't texting me back, which got me worried that he may hit harder times and thus is contemplating to avoid me. I mean I already cut him a break, let him pay me back in a gift card at full value. Now he only owes $160, which I feel is nothing to most adults, especially 40 yr old adults. And he has two kids, like how is he even surviving on saving $160. I load my arcade card $60-80 week, to profit off ticket redemption games, to resell for profit or keep prizes.
With these numbers, are we assuming the Tesla is at low battery like under 5%?
I haven't had any friends crash at my place. But I have a few friends who possibly could, but likely not. I guess its something to think about in the future, if I ever come across a situation where a friend needs to charge. Most likely my car wouldn't really need to charge because
That just side money from selling arcade prizes. Since I play arcade ticket games for profit and sell some the prizes.
He wouldn't give me his insurance. He was nice enough to stay, but not give his insurance, because I did ask he just wouldn't do it. I felt trying to hound him down for identity, or insurance, would just make him run off and not wanna work with me. He is already poor and having higher insurance is likely something he doesn't want.
He already paid over half of it, which is much better than running off. But I'm just annoyed he can't just get $160 out the ATM and call it a day. It's not like he's asking for $10k in cash.
When my motorcycle got totaled, I got the other guy's insurance to pay me $6000-7000 for the value of the bike.
FFS.... Look on your electric bill for your per-kWh rate. Then multiply that number by the capacity of your car:
LR: ~75 kWh
SR+: ~55 kWh
That's approximately how much it costs to go from 0% to 100%. Maybe add 10% to cover charging inefficiencies.
This is precisely what I was trying to inform you of. $160 is a lot of money to some people, actually a large number of people. Especially if they suddenly fall on hard times (e.g. a divorce). I don't want to bring up too many personal anecdotes, but there are people close in my life right now that there's no way they could come up with $160 for anything on short notice. Whether that be medical need, repairs to someone else's car, a concert they really want to see... $160 is an amount a lot of people I know save for over the course of a year. It's not an insignificant disposable amount.
I have never been so aware of those so unaware of "poorer" folk than after I got a Tesla.
...
I know right? How unlucky am I to have a guy with mass transit in his name browsing the forums?
I’d argue “does good mass transit exist?” is almost irrelevant, to “should poor people use mass transit?”...
sperkin
Active Member
I also had a scrape on the freeway where the drive couldn't speak English and didn't have insurance. CHP couldn't do anything so sent me home. California is not a deportation state so they were sent home too. I also buffed that out. It was just some white paint transferred.
At least he was nice and tried to give you what he had.
Ya, I know trying to get police involved won't do much, so I guess technically I can hit whatever car in the parking lot and not get in trouble for it.
Ya at least he gave me that gift card. He still owes me $160, and I told him I'll take his electronics if that helps him. He considered, but wanted more time, likely because he wanted to pawn off his stuff for gas money. At this point, I rather him just him apologize and tell me he hit hard times, and I'll just accept the shitty situation and move on. My parents already transferred a lot of money into a Fidelity account. If he found out how much I had, he probably hate me.
I just wish he was more careful with his truck, which is not ideal for driving in parking structures. He could have taken more time to wait for cars to pass, so he could have had the clearance for making a right turn. Because I see giant trucks that stick out so much, or barely fit, I just wonder why people must drive those things?
Just sucks when my parents always nag so much about parking farthest away from the other car. I did that, having my tires border half the line, to instead get dinged by a passing car, as my parking space was at the end, next to driving cars.
Yeah, this guy does have a divorce which he tells me is the biggest financial burden. If I get married, is there a way I can not be obligated to do divorce payments? If someone truly loved you, then they should marry you even if you're not obligated to pay them after divorce. I want a marriage to be like, if my spouse wants to get divorced, they just leave and let me decide how much money I will like to support them with, if I choose to.
Thing is, I paid $1200-1300 for rent before my parents bought my home. And even then, I have to pay property tax, which my mom did on autopay on my bank account, so I will suddenly see $7-8 grand disappear each year for no reason and have to call my mom make sure that it was authorized.
I wish his ex-wife would just stop being so greedy, taking money away from a broke person. Or she should have considered marrying someone richer.
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