How Young is too Young for a Model S?

[engle]

Engle - Thanks for the thorough explanation.

How far do you live from the Tesla Factory?

I live 4.9 miles from the Tesla factory according to Google Maps, the closest reservation holder I know of. My home is in the hills to the ESE of the factory at about 600 ft. elevation approx. 2 miles as the bird flies, so I have an excellent view of their property from mine. It's in a 24/7 guarded & gated community called "Avalon" consisting of "Avalon Estates", "Avalon Summit", and custom homes:

http://g.co/maps/zgur7

There are 275 homes here in the $1.5 to $2.5M price range, and most homeowners drive either Mercedes, BMWs, Lexuses (Lexi?), Porsches & Audi's, etc. Quite a few homes already have solar panels. (We just sold a 4,210 sf home to our buyer that had an expensive 2008 SolarCity lease that I got the seller to buy-out.) After we receive our S later this year, I plan to use it to give test rides and drives to a lot of my friends here to try to drum-up some more sales for TSLA.

BART is building a new South Fremont station that will be only 1.2 miles from the factory, scheduled to open Fall, 2015:

http://g.co/maps/srxy3

If they do factory delivery, customers will be able to fly into SFO, and BART to the factory to pick-up their new Model S, X or future Bluestar and new Roadster. By then, the Tesla rapid-charging network should be fully-deployed.

P.S. Selling Avalon homes (like this one) is what has made the Model S Performance affordable for us:

 

[AustinPowers]

Wow, at under 3 million bucks that's a real bargain ;-)
I wonder what the estate agents get as a fee if that house is sold...but I guess knowing that would confirm my suspicion that I'm in the wrong line of work

But irony aside, now that I come to think about it, that price converts to less than 2 million Euro. Which - although way out of my league - seems quite a bargain for such a large mansion and grounds. Compared with some of the upmarket residential areas around Frankfurt, you wouldn't get a house of that size and quality for under 2 million Euro! Not that there would be many houses of comparable size in the whole of Germany anyway. Even having been to "posh" residential areas in and around Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich, I have never seen homes anywhere near those huge dimensions. But then again that's the US, everything bigger than anywhere else, eh? Apart from the Middle East or China perhaps ;-)

 

[de704]

BART is building a new South Fremont station that will be only 1.2 miles from the factory, scheduled to open Fall, 2015:

For the 75%+ of people on this forum that don't live in California B.A.R.T. is an acronym for Bay Area Rapid Transit. It's the train (or monorail type thing) that runs from San Francisco to Oakland and some other places. I can't remember. I lived out there in 1992 with my Dad.

In Atlanta, Were I live now it's called the MARTA. So you see I think it need the be explained, or most people wouldn't know what your talking about.

 

[Robert.Boston]

But irony aside, now that I come to think about it, that price converts to less than 2 million Euro. Which - although way out of my league - seems quite a bargain for such a large mansion and grounds. Compared with some of the upmarket residential areas around Frankfurt, you wouldn't get a house of that size and quality for under 2 million Euro!

I can't speak to the build quality of the particular estates shown above, but the general build quality in U.S. residences is far below the build quality in Germany. Building a large property up to German specs would probably add another 40% or so to its cost.

 

[AustinPowers]

Well ok, that might be true. From what I have seen on my trips to friends in the US (who all live in upmarket homes) you are right. The build quality tended to not quite match German standards. Wood-frame construction vs. brick by brick for a start.

At least I hope the Model S won't be in the spirit of the rather lower build-quality of many American cars.
For example I was always wondering why the US VW Passat was so much cheaper than the German VW Passat (actually a completely different car - same name not withstanding), even though it is larger and has more tech as standard than our counterpart, until I read a comment in a German car magazine by some VW manager who said (as quite a few people in Germany thought about importing the US Passat) that the Americans love big cars with a lot of comfort, but tend to not be so obsessed with finickiy tech gimmicks and perfect build quality like us Germans.

 

[neroden]

Even when you get a good deal on premium items, if you choose to replace them frequently, the older items hold no value and have become a sunk cost.

So true.

If you plan to get a model S, plan to keep it for over a decade.

To the original poster:
You're planing to be in San Diego, an environment with a very short commute where "everything is really close by". Do you actually need the 160 mile range of the Model S? Or would you be happy with a Nissan Leaf, which is a perfectly decent electric-from-the-ground-up car? Because you could probably buy a Leaf outright for cash, and if you're never going to use the range of the Model S, that would probably be a wiser choice.

You can also ask whether San Diego is walkable enough and has good enough public transportation to just not get a car at all. From what I remember you probably will need a car, though. Perhaps a carshare program is sufficient for your needs though; much cheaper than owning a car.

And if you already have access to a car, through sharing with your parents or something, and that's working, keep doing that.

Putting off a car purchase a few years will save you a fortune, particularly if you're going to get an electric car; they're going to get cheaper fairly quickly.

If you are going to need a car at all, I absolutely believe you should NOT buy a gas car; making the extra effort to get an all-electric is worth it, even if you will have to evangelize to apartment managers repeatedly in order to find places to plug in. But (1)do you actually need to get a car at this time, and (2) do you need more range than a Leaf?

If both are true, it may be worth sinking the money into the Model S. I'm currently driving cars over 10 years old and have been postponing replacement until I can get an all-electric -- I've *already* put off getting a car for several years -- and where I live we absolutely need 230 miles of range.

But it sounds like you may have less "car need" than I. If you genuinely need to get a car with 160 miles range and you need to get it in 2013, go ahead and get the Model S. If you don't need a car or don't need one with that range or don't need it until 2014, save your money!

EDIT: looking at your situation again, it does look like you're going to need to buy or lease a car when you move back to San Diego (though, as I say, if you can find a way to not do so, it'll save you a lot). Given that, and my belief that gas cars are not worth buying any more, I'd say that your choice is between a Leaf and a Model S (all the other electric cars have... reported problems, and I wouldn't trust them). The range is going to be key here, with the Leaf having a 50-mile reliable real-world range according to many people.