Has the 2017 Chevy Volt Just Rendered the Tesla Model 3 Obsolete?

....or any other EV for that matter?
Let's look at the numbers together, and see if this premise holds water!
RANGE:
"Using data obtained from the Department of Transport’s 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), Garrett Fitzgerald and Rob van Haaren analyzed the travel data of survey participants, concluding that 95 percent of the 748,918 recorded single-trip journeys by car were under 30 miles." source: Green Car Reports
The Volt's range is 50 miles (tested in "real world" conditions). Therefore, it is possible that most people could run the Volt with gasoline for weeks at a time, thus rendering an EV's range of 100-200 miles a luxury that nobody needs.
MAINTENANCE:
Current estimate from Tesla state that yearly maintenance on a Tesla (while in warranty) would be about $600 a year.
Volt maintenance includes tire rotation at 7,500 miles, oil at 24 months, cabin air filter at 36 months, evap check and air filter at 75,000 miles.
PERFORMANCE:
Don't have performance specs on the Model 3, but the Volt is pretty peppy in EV mode, under 8 seconds 0-60, similar with gas engine.
ECONOMY
Most EVs cost you about 3 to 4 KwH per 100 miles.
MPG: Volt's gas engine delivers 42 mpg.
PURCHASE PRICE: About the same after tax credits, etc.
SERVICING: Any Chevy dealer or independent service station vs. Tesla Service Center
CHARGING RATES: Both vehicles charge about the same rate on home charger. Volt does not have a "supercharger" option, as GM thought this irrelevant for the Volt.
CARGO CAPACITY: Don't have dimensions on the Model 3 but the VOLT is not as spacious as a Crossover might be.
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SUMMARY: Why would someone choose a Model 3 over a VOLT?
Let's look at the numbers together, and see if this premise holds water!
RANGE:
"Using data obtained from the Department of Transport’s 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS), Garrett Fitzgerald and Rob van Haaren analyzed the travel data of survey participants, concluding that 95 percent of the 748,918 recorded single-trip journeys by car were under 30 miles." source: Green Car Reports
The Volt's range is 50 miles (tested in "real world" conditions). Therefore, it is possible that most people could run the Volt with gasoline for weeks at a time, thus rendering an EV's range of 100-200 miles a luxury that nobody needs.
MAINTENANCE:
Current estimate from Tesla state that yearly maintenance on a Tesla (while in warranty) would be about $600 a year.
Volt maintenance includes tire rotation at 7,500 miles, oil at 24 months, cabin air filter at 36 months, evap check and air filter at 75,000 miles.
PERFORMANCE:
Don't have performance specs on the Model 3, but the Volt is pretty peppy in EV mode, under 8 seconds 0-60, similar with gas engine.
ECONOMY
Most EVs cost you about 3 to 4 KwH per 100 miles.
MPG: Volt's gas engine delivers 42 mpg.
PURCHASE PRICE: About the same after tax credits, etc.
SERVICING: Any Chevy dealer or independent service station vs. Tesla Service Center
CHARGING RATES: Both vehicles charge about the same rate on home charger. Volt does not have a "supercharger" option, as GM thought this irrelevant for the Volt.
CARGO CAPACITY: Don't have dimensions on the Model 3 but the VOLT is not as spacious as a Crossover might be.
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SUMMARY: Why would someone choose a Model 3 over a VOLT?
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Comments
Model 3 base will be 0 - 60 in under 6 seconds... I'm going to bet options will allow it to accelerate like the Model S (neck snapping speed)
If the VOLT were painfully slow in either EV or gas mode, I'd be more in your camp on this, but it actually isn't that slow, and, so I'm told (still waiting for my road test), much more fun to drive than say a Prius.
Volts are pretty hard to find right now too though.
I checked on the 0-60 times, and Chevy says "under 7 seconds".
Would you buy a six year old Tesla at 50% of its original sticker price? How about if it was 20%?
"A hybrid model, a first among minivans, will arrive this fall and should go about 80 miles on a gallon of gas, Chrysler said."
Chrysler Hopes New Pacifica Can Make Minivan Cool (NY Times)
A six year old Tesla has to be in a lot bigger demand than my Grand Caravan.
Let's see, a base 2012 Model S (the intro year) had a base MSRP of $57,400. Let's mile one up like my Caravan to the tune of 23,000 miles a year - so, 92,000 miles.
Dealer retail on a blue one, no options, is $36,000.
Seems worth fixing just based on that depreciation, even if you had to pay $10k for a replacement traction battery.
One might be lured into thinking "well you can get a Prius battery rebuilt for $2100 (plus install)".
However, did you look at the rebuilt's warranty? 24 months.
You really gonna spend perhaps $1300 a year for batteries?
As for Teslas, I don't think anyone is selling rebuilds right now, as their battery design is quite different than the other EVs. I think the out of warranty replacement cost of the 85 KwH battery pack is $12,000 if you pay in advance to get that price, but, like a lot of things Tesla, it's all rather murky at the moment. Some say $15000. These are predicted costs for future batteries by the way. No one will really tell you what it costs.
The numbers would be much more with a Tesla, but a crate engine isn't going to get you zero to sixty under 4 seconds, if you have the performance mode one (a measly 5.9 otherwise).
Back in the day, the naysayers were claiming $8,000 for a Prius traction battery replacement. In the real world, dealers were doing them for $4,000 and you see the indy's doing them for your $2,100. Add the uniqueness and cache to the equation and I bet a dead Model S would still sell for relatively big bucks.
I think an 8 year old Tesla with a "bricked" battery is going to depreciate exactly like a brick, dropped off a bridge. And new batteries are not going to cost the same as a Chevy crate engine because of economies of scale. More like a Porsche engine.
How many people do you think put $20,000 engines in their 8 year old Porsche Cayenne? Not too many I'd bet.
And keep in mind that that $2100 for rebuilt Prius battery is the cost without installation, and with only a 24 month warranty.
Should find out in just a couple of years.
This shop in Houston will install a new or rebuilt battery at your house for $1,000 to $2,200 bucks. He does Toyotas and Altimas.
As Car and Driver recently pointed out, once the mainline automakers jump fully into the EV market, Tesla cars will fade away and Tesla will become an energy producer, like Exxon.
Mainstream EVs will undoubtedly have long warranties on their batteries, rendering rebuilding batteries almost irrevelant for most owners. How many people buy batteries for their ten-year-old laptops?
Of course, all this presupposes that EVs will even matter ten years from now. They may never breech the 3%-5% market share.
Tesla is going to be cranking out a lot of Panasonic batteries in the near future, assuming they don't pull a Solyndra. Someone will be refurbing them.
I keep waiting to have to take my Panasonic drill batteries to Batteries Plus for a rebuild, but the NiMH batteries are still going strong. I got that drill on November 13, 2000 from Amazon.
After 16 years, I still don't need new batteries. And who knows, those Teslas may not either. I bet there's plenty of first generation Prii out there on their original batteries. But if they do die, you can repair 'em for not an unreasonable amount of money. And I bet the Tesla batteries will be the same way.
3 year old Teslas are already at 50% of MSRP. In ten years?
You can buy a good running 2003 Prius for $3500. Would you really put $2500 worth of batteries in a car that's rolled 150K? How many owners would? Would that be enough to warrant gearing up a factory to rebuild their batteries?
You see where I'm going with this.
Not even to someone like @fintail?
>A new Tesla battery is $30,000.
And I was buying $2,000 desktop PCs in 1990. And they were outmoded in a year.
There is an obscure car data company out of Santa Monica that supports this commentator's similar opinion that the only thing that's going to save Musk and the EV is a huge surge in gas prices.
Can Tesla's Name Overcome Electric Vehicles' Inability To Compete With Cheap Gasoline? (seekingalpha.com)
I have 6 Makita drills with 7.2V and 9.6V Nicad batteries. They were all bought in the 1980s and 90s. Most batteries still work. Don't all hold a charge for long. I have bought after market batteries that were not as good as the Makita OEM. Not all batteries are created equal.
About 1984 I spent $2000 to get the engine and transmission rebuilt in my 1974 Dodge van. Drove it from the shop in Albuquerque to my home in Lake Havasu. After several months of trying to sell it I traded it in and got a lousy $1500 trade. A very good lesson for me. The van only had 107k miles on it. Most 10 year old vehicles are not worth fixing.
The market is driven by the Boomers retiring and buying that last vehicle. No one is building the right EV. An EV CUV like the Rav4 or Escape would sell decent. Of course the price has to be right. Only a fool would pay a $10,000 premium for an EV. That will buy enough gas for at least 10 years for the average retiree. And how many Boomers retiring have a Federal tax burden of $7500 and can use that credit? Now if the Feds were put a 100% tax on all IC vehicles as progressives have suggested, it would change the market dynamic.
Cheap/mainstream EVs might be helped by gas prices, but not Tesla specifically, at least with the current lineup. Those dropping 85K++ on a car aren't as sensitive to fuel prices (but will no doubt argue they are entitled to the tax break). I suspect it won't be too much different for someone wanting a loaded Model 3, which will end up stickering well over 50K.
Sounds like you were able to move in the van for $500 out of pocket. Seems like a better use of resources than junking an otherwise running rig and paying a lot of money for a newer one.
If gas prices go up, chances are KwH prices will go up as well. This is because most utility companies, which are monopolies, require gov't approval to raise rates. These days they have a loophole called "fuel surcharge" to get a higher rate increase than they have historically.
Right now, the cost per mile for a Tesla in California is roughly 4 cents. The cost per mile for a new Honda Civic getting 50 mpg is roughly 6 cents. In Washington (one of the lowest for electricity), it's roughly 2.5 or so per mile.
So in California, the savings to the EV owner is not all that significant, presuming the non EV owner is driving a very economical ICE. And even in Washington, what are we talking about here--an extra $425 for the ICE owner? Whoopie.
If you were driving a Dodge Viper at 12 mpg you'd be spending .25 cents a mile, and so spending $1000 more per year on fuel than an EV owner.
Best scenario---a solar powered charging station in a state with highest electrical costs--that would be Hawaii, Alaska, most of New England.
The longer you own the vehicle, the higher the cost per mile per year. You put a $5000 engine in a $2000 car, and you have.....a $2000 car.
Put a $5,000 traction battery in that one and you still have a $10,000 car for the price of ten car payments.
A 16 year old Tesla?
Well, would have to muse on that one.
I test drove the 2017 Volt and found it to be more than enough acceleration for me. I think 7.5 is all most folks really need. That said, I drove my friend's Model S (I know the 3 won't be the same when sold in base config) but the speed difference in not comparable. That was my only point.
Cars that run in the sub 6 second range feel completely different than the plus 7 sec range.
Also the torque that never seems to end in the Tesla is frankly awe inspiring.
I thought long and hard about the Model 3 and still cannot picture myself feeling 100% confident that I won't be stuck somewhere waiting for a tow.
So the Volt has everything I need other than bragging rights. And those aren't worth 2 cents in my book.
Most reviewers are posting 7.8 to 8 seconds to 60 mph. Still plenty fast.
Would I buy a 6 year old EV? Only if the battery were still warrantied for an additional 2 to 4 years.
Would I buy a used Tesla? Not until I'm more certain that Tesla will be around in 5 years.
I wish I could convince my wife to sell her 27 year old Lexus LS400. Still runs very well. Drive it to church if we have to pick someone up. All the way up to 108k miles. Mostly sits in garage with the trickle charger attached. I don't like getting in and out of it.
Would you really gear up to completely service and repair your own 10 year old Tesla? I don't think so.