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Tesla Model 3 Sedan Debuts Priced at $35,000, 215 Miles of Range | Edmunds.com
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Tesla Model 3 Sedan Debuts Priced at $35,000, 215 Miles of Range | Edmunds.com
Tesla pulled the wraps off its long-awaited Tesla Model 3 sedan, confirming key price and performance details.
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as a car enthusiast I approve of this message. As for the car, I'll reserve judgement until I see it in the metal. That snout is not very appealing. looks like it is hunting for truffles!
The monitor screen on the dash may be a bit much.
IMO, the smaller shorter car seems to wear the rounded egg shape better than the larger cars. It's like a generic version of a future car from a decade or two ago, and not trying so hard to be exotic to beige people. I dislike center instruments, no matter what one says, it is a cost cutting move. I suspect the base 35K car won't be as flashy as the mockups last night - probably on plastic frisbee wheelcovers and with a burlap interior.
The Fed tax gift expires when Tesla sells a certain number of cars, right? It'd be amusing if it ran out before most of these see delivery.
Yeah, the number I saw for the tax credit was 200,000.
Tesla seemed to have that many people waiting in line yesterday.
I got in trouble on another site for mocking the cult behind all this - it's the iPhone of cars, but without an actual product for delivery.
Time will tell. I await the competition, and the gradual shortage of charging stations once the hyper masses jump on board.
The WSJ is reporting that Tesla secured about 180,000 reservations on the first day of orders for the Model 3.
I wonder what the range is at 75 mph. Maybe a good city car anyway. This will be a car that is served well by autonomous features, as it will be like a magnet for many drivers who just don't care.
Maybe it's me. I'm just picturing myself having spent (with tax and a few paltry Tesla options), well north of $40K for a car that I have to stop and charge every 3 hours. I couldn't bear it.
If it were say the price of a stripped-down Chevy Spark, I might think differently about it.
The range is the killer. I can make it to Reno or to SF from here on one tank in a modern diesel MB, and would only have to stop for about 10 mins at most to refuel. At wide open highway speeds in this new thing, I'd have to stop by Salem or Tri-Cities at best for how long? But in city driving, where it is more efficient, and you have time to charge, it works.
If your commute involves more than 200 miles, then this is not the car for you. Just as the Miata is for some people, and motorcycles for others, and Mustangs for yet other others, Tesla has its own target market.
TL;DR: Add it all up and convert to gearhead terms, it takes about 23hp to cruise at 60mph and less than 1hp to do all the additional stuff you asked. So no, if the Model 3 is rated at 215 miles on a charge then turning on all that stuff probably won't affect it enough to make it get much less than 200 miles if at all.
Being a hot foot on acceleration will reduce range since proportionally more power is converted heat than motion but it's not as bad a gas powered car since a good portion of that motion will be converted back to charge when you slow down. What will kill your range more than being a hot foot on acceleration is aggressive braking. The batteries can't drink from a firehose (metaphorically speaking), so nailing the brakes wastes more charge than nailing the accelerator.
Lastly, physics says you still have full speed/acceleration at 20% charge as you do at 100% charge. However, software may say differently.
I completely understand that this type of car is only for certain people in a particular driving situation. I think I indicated that pretty clearly in my other post.
As for "not visiting gas stations", you are essentially doing the same thing when you supercharge on the road--in fact, given the 1/2 hour you have to wait for a full charge, you are visiting 5 gas stations, time-wise.
And you don't have oil changes, but you have other forms of maintenance with a Tesla, specifically $2400 over the course of 50,000 miles (data from Tesla website).
EVs are a trade-off just like most everything else you buy.
This isn't a miracle, it's very good marketing.
So the first service is $400 at 12,500 miles, $700 at 25,000 miles, $400 at 37,500 and the big one at 50k is $900 for a total over four years of $2,400.
Edmunds' True Cost to Own has maintenance for a Prius hatchback over four years/60,000 miles of $59, $474, $433, and $984 for a total of $1,950.
The Audi S6 may be more comparable, at least price wise, to the Tesla S.
Maintenance TCO for the S6 is $492, $589, $1,287 and $2,595 for years one through four for a total of $4,963.
Twice as much as the Tesla in other words.
Cars aren't cheap to maintain - Telsa should be aiming to beat Prius maintenance numbers for the Model 3 or they're going to have some irate customers.
We have 2 Escapes with over 50k miles on them. Dealer service every 5k, including several wiper changes and a cabin filter totaled about $600 each before the various kickbacks.
Tesla is touting the 3 as the "electric car for the masses", ala the Model T Ford.
But this is a false analogy on so many levels. While I'm sure it'll be a nice car (if it ever gets built before the Germans destroy Tesla), it's not "for the masses"( at $40K + by the time you're out the door(, and to get a tax credit you have to make enough to pay substantial taxes to get those credits.
Also, the Model T enabled the "masses" to do what it had not been able to do before (and thus had a liberating quality), but the Model 3 actually limits what they were able to do before, and charges them more for it.
So, yeah, there's a lot of pixie dust being thrown around in Tesla marketing. I think of it more like the Apple Watch of cars. You want it, but you probably don't need it, and how much good is it, all things considered?
And we haven't really touched on Tesla reliability issues.
I'm going to be ornery and stick to my original (and no doubt for some, tedious) mantra about the truly successful EV. It's the 3-3 Rule. It has to cost under $30,000, and it has to go 300 miles minimum, under any conditions.
THAT would be an EV "for the masses" and a home run for whoever can pull it off. Maybe it'll be Tesla someday!
Twitter: @Edmunds_Test
The same incentive mindset underpins single-occupant carpool lane access program in California. At one time a normal Prius was eligible in order to kickstart demand for hybrids, but now they're popular enough on their own and their yellow-sticker access has been allowed to expire. Plug-in hybrids got the same incentive with their green-sticker access, but that's also set to expire in a matter of months. They've stopped issuing new green stickers, and the ones in circulation will sunset sometime next year. After that only pure EVs, hydrogen and CNG cars and their white access stickers will be allowed single-occupant carpool access.
Twitter: @Edmunds_Test
Kind of bummed that the 3 isn't FWD, but it's not like I much drive in rain, much less snow, since we moved.
Twitter: @Edmunds_Test