Tesla Chronicles #31 - First 30k Miles

After 1 year, 5 months of ownership, I am about to get to 30,000 Miles in my 2021 Model Y Long Range. I have to admit that it has been, by far, one of the best cars I have ever owned, hands down. Although I wish there were a few things on it that were slightly better quality, it is, in my opinion, the best EV company on the planet. Not only are their cars fantastic, its all about the Tesla Charging network. I have read many social media posts and YouTube videos where other EV owners have just struggled with the CCS network of chargers, and I just don't need that stress in my life. Road-tripping in the Tesla continues to be way better than in any other EV from what I can tell. I will only buy EVs from this point forward. Hopefully the CCS charging network improves significantly in the next 5 years, but for now, I am a Tesla only buyer (until the Aptera comes out).

Here are some of the stats so far:

29,119 miles driven

10,759 kwh added to the battery, 11,771 kwh used from wall/charger (91.7% efficiency)

Note that I have installed Solar Panels at the house that have produced about 50% more electricity than my car has needed to drive this distance.

Total Cost of electricity: $1230 (cost of travel charging = $610, cost of home charging $620, but I could argue a lower overall cost for the home charging with the solar panel offset)

Equivalent Gas (assumes Tesla replaced a 20 mpg vehicle...I replaced an 18mpg vehicle, so savings actually higher than this): $5758

Gas Savings: ~$4550

Maintenance relative to ICE: Assume both needed air filters and wipers...

I would have needed a set of Brake Pads by now on all 4 wheels - $400-600 savings

I would have needed 5 oil changes - $250 savings ($50 each)

Service Visit to maintain warranty every 5k - $1500 savings (not sure about you, but these are almost always $300 a visit no matter what).

Tires: 20k miles on the summer tires. I just took them off and have at least another 5-10k of life left in them... not all that much different in my other vehicles with the OEM tires. The winter tires still look new.

So, the following is subjective, but at the time I purchased the Tesla, I determined that its cost (including setting up home charging) was about $20,000 more than I would have paid for an equivalent ICE vehicle. One could argue the difference is higher or lower, but I think it is fair to say that an equivalent mid-sized SUV in the US easily costs about $45,000 (the Tesla was low $60k + other misc costs = ~$65,000). With the analysis above, I have already saved about $7000, which means by the time I reach 100,000 miles, this car will have easily paid for itself. Considering most ICE cars have additional maintenance scheduled from 60-100k (rotors, fluids, belts, etc.), the break even point might come much sooner.

I was just watching this video about the Rivian R1S. One of the things I think no one is really talking about right now is that the modern EVs we are seeing right now have the potential of lasting "forever". Now, we know they won't last forever, but they are going to last much longer than the ICE vehicles you can buy at this time. This is a factor that is hard to incorporate into your car purchase considerations of today. Sure, these vehicles are now north of $70,000, which is alot of money, but if you have a very high probability that it will last 300, 500k, how many of them will you actually need to buy in your lifetime.... probably 2 or 3 times fewer number of vehicles if you take care of them inside and out.

I want to make a few statements about EVs and those that continue to be skeptical about EVs:

- Range Anxiety - There was a study in Australia done recently, and it was surprising to see that most EV owners have zero range anxiety. Also, EV owners drive more miles a year than ICE vehicle owners, suggesting that range anxiety is only something that non-EV owners think about. I was worried about my ability to get to the next charger ONLY 2 times in 30,000 miles. The first time was early in my ownership, and we rerouted to a charger earlier than the one we had planned.... we should have just stayed on the course we were on but slowed down just a little and got behind a truck. I found that you can quickly reduce your consumption significantly by doing this. We would have arrived at the charger 5 minutes later, but it would have saved us 15-20 minutes we had to drive off our intended route. The second, it was really cold and the % I was hoping to get overnight on a 110V outlet was way less than I was able to actually get. We arrived at the charger with 4%. The biggest worry was how cold it was, and how that was going to impact our range to get to the Supercharger. I was confident we had nothing to worry about, but Susan wasn't so convinced.

- Can't Road Trip in and EV - stop believing this baloney. It just isn't true. There are some amazing road tripping EVs out there, cars that are highly efficient and charge really quickly. Examples includes all Teslas (Model 3 and Model S being the best), Lucid Air, EV6, and Porche models. There are many examples of good, not great road trip vehicles including the VW ID.4, F-150, Mustang Mach E, and many others. The problem is that the media and anti-EV crowd will gravitate to examples of people taking EVs which are primarily designed to be a daily commuter vehicles our on a major road trip, and failing or it being a ridiculously long journey. You are smarter than that. Stop believing this junk. Vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, Kia Niro just to name a few. These vehicles generally only have 150-200 miles of EPA range (100-150 miles of real range) and are really slow charging rates (like 50kw).

- EV motors and batteries fail - more baloney. I just saw an unscientific study that showed that this is just not a concern. Electronic components have a unique failure mechanism. The majority of their failures are early in the life of the product, infantile failures, mostly due to a part or manufacturing defect or mistake. If they don't fail early, then they typically last a very long time. So, just to recap, very few motors or batteries fail, but when they do, they fail before the 100k warranty is up (most of the time). It is a rare occasion that an owner would be stuck with a big repair cost for one of these items.

- EVs don't work in the Cold Weather - false. Some of the countries adopting EVs the fastest are cold climate countries (Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Finland are all in the top 5). They are certainly less efficient in cold weather because there is no "waste" heat generated by a gas engine, they must use energy from the battery to produce heat for the cabin, but from my experience you won't notice this until the temps get below 30-35 degrees. Once temps get below 20 degrees, you'll see the biggest impact, but how often are you on a road trip of significant duration or distance when the temps remain below 20 degrees for the entire drive? I think this was an issue for me on only two road trips (4 total drives) in the past 17 months. When this happens, it is possible that the vehicle's range is going to be reduced as much as 20-25%. This is not a show stopper for most people, particularly during daily drives or for those people that just plug in every night. For me, this is an issue about once or twice a year when we do a road trip of some significance during the coldest part of the winter. Where the cold temps are an issue is during fast charging. Tesla and a few other EVs preconditions the battery before arrival at a charger so this is never an issue. There are a few EVs that do not have any battery temperature management features, which means that charging the battery at a DCFC will be a little slow at first until the batteries warm up.

- Nearly Zero Maintenance - wipers (ordered from Amazon) and air filters (also from Amazon)... that's it. Tesla doesn't require ANY periodic check ups to keep the warranty in place. NONE. It is actually a shame I have to get it inspected yearly as that is the ONLY time I have had to take it in to get some sort of maintenance done (other than the one repair I had that was fault).