Making the million mile club...

[SCW-Greg]

I'm just wondering what it would take for an S (or Roadster) to make the million mile club. How many battery packs? One motor? How soon?

Who has the most miles racked up already?

Fun article at showing other vehicles and owners that made it...
Million-Mile Club: The World's Longest-Lived Cars - Popular Mechanics

 

[Robert.Boston]

I believe the most-traveled Roadster driver has logged over 200,000 km. Still a long way to go to be the founding member of a Million Mile Club!

 

[TEG]

Motor might make it. Probably go through at least a few battery packs on the way...

 

[Right_Said_Fred]

Motor might make it. Probably go through at least a few battery packs on the way...

I thought a battery pack could handle at least 2000 full charges and discharges. If on every charge you drive 200 miles on average (320 km), which means not charging it every day, then one battery pack can get you to 400,000 miles (640,000 km).

 

[jerry33]

I thought a battery pack could handle at least 2000 full charges and discharges. If on every charge you drive 200 miles on average (320 km), which means not charging it every day, then one battery pack can get you to 400,000 miles (640,000 km).

But if you don't do full charge/discharge cycles, the number of cycles you get goes up exponentially. So if you did 150 miles a day you might get 5000 cycles and if you did 100 miles a day, 12,000 (made up numbers for illustration purposes only).

 

[richkae]

150 miles per day would take about 18.3 years to hit 1 million miles.

I would guess that you would go through somewhere between 3 and 8 batteries to do that.
A comparable gas car will spend somewhere between $400,000 and $700,000 on gasoline ( depending on what you believe about the future trend of gasoline prices )

 

[SCW-Greg]

150 miles per day would take about 18.3 years to hit 1 million miles.

I would guess that you would go through somewhere between 3 and 8 batteries to do that.
A comparable gas car will spend somewhere between $400,000 and $700,000 on gasoline ( depending on what you believe about the future trend of gasoline prices )

That's what I love about this forum, we're a bunch of number crunching EV (Tesla) geeks.
It's that whole cost of gas and engine maintenance thing that makes for my top reason to go EV. Not to belittle the efficiency, quiet, fast, reducing demand of foreign oil, and pollution advantages.

Somebody will do it, and with the advancements of batt tech along the way, it maybe sooner than we think.

 

[Jason S]

I hope to never drive 1 million miles in my lifetime.

I also hope to live a very long time more.

(In other words it ain't gonna be me because I just don't want to spend that amount of time in a car, no matter how nice that car is.)

 

[gocken2]

A comparable gas car will spend somewhere between $400,000 and $700,000 on gasoline ( depending on what you believe about the future trend of gasoline prices )

At 1,000,000 miles with a car that gets 50mpg will use 20,000 gallons of gas. At $4 per gallon that is only $80,000 in fuel costs.

 

[SCW-Greg]

At 1,000,000 miles with a car that gets 50mpg will use 20,000 gallons of gas. At $4 per gallon that is only $80,000 in fuel costs.

Or if you had a car at a more modest 22mpg, would run you $182,000 in gas. And some how I don't think gas will average $4 over the course of a million miles either.

 

[richkae]

At 1,000,000 miles with a car that gets 50mpg will use 20,000 gallons of gas. At $4 per gallon that is only $80,000 in fuel costs.

Yes but there is no car you can compare to a Model S that gets 50mpg. Vehicles that compare to the Model S in performance, luxury and utility get between 14 and 20 mpg and burn premium fuel.
We are talking about an 18 year span to drive 1 million miles. Gasoline is not going to be $4 a gallon over that 18 year span, it has gone up an average of 8.5% per year over the last 10 years.
That trend projects out to $18 per gallon regular gasoline in 18 years.

 

[markwj]

If it helps:

Millions of Electric Miles | Tesla Motors

Roadster owners have cumulatively driven more than 23 million miles, but there are 2,100+ of those owners

 

[SCW-Greg]

Per Richkae's excellent comment... The average driver logs 12 to 15,000 miles per year. It would take 66 years for a driver to put in a million miles at that rate. But for those who put in highway miles they cut that time in half or even quicker, as some have done in the magazine article (from this original post) with their vehicles dating from the late 70's or even 80's.

If you took today's average vehicle, with just regular 87 octane gas, and cost averaged it over a 20 year drive time, at straight-line avg of .74 cents/ yr (using Richkae's historical trend of 8.5%/yr) you conservatively have $11 gas. Taking one of today's 25 mpg highway vehicles, would consume 40,000 gallons, or $440,ooo in gas. Not to mention engine maintenance.

And then it dawns on me... just the thought of one vehicle, one person (at today's efficiency), consuming 40,000 gallons is disturbing.

 

[gocken2]

If you took today's average vehicle, with just regular 87 octane gas, and cost averaged it over a 20 year drive time, at straight-line avg of .74 cents/ yr (using Richkae's historical trend of 8.5%/yr) you conservatively have $11 gas. Taking one of today's 25 mpg highway vehicles, would consume 40,000 gallons, or $440,ooo in gas.

20 years from now $440,000 will only be about $250,000 in today's dollars assuming about a 3% inflation rate. Still a huge amount of cash.