I look at Tesla's used car program as the equivalent of a "certified pre-owned" program at a non-Tesla dealer. It jacks up the price for no real good reason other than it makes the buyer feel better about buying a used car.

As you hinted, the used value of any car (Tesla, GM, whatever) can't really be determined by the price a new car dealer would sell it for on their used lot. You need to look a private sales, and independent lot sales for what is closer to market value, in my opinion.

Which is still difficult with tesla thanks to things like this: https://jalopnik.com/tesla-remotely-...mer-1841472617

One of the reasons I won't buy a Tesla, whether they were in the right or not in this particular case, is over the air updates.

I've asked this before but haven't found an answer, does Tesla have an EOL (End of Life) statement on their car's software? For example, will they support it forever, or do they reserve the right, at some point 10, 15, 50 years down the road to shut the car down because they no longer can support the software or the hardware?

It is very obvious from their actions that Tesla does not believe you own your car, but you have a use license from them and they retain control of the vehicle and its features.

That's funny. I do so much looking for EOS/EOL stuff at work I never even thought about it being an issue with a car. :bonk:

I don’t really have a problem with this. It is up to the seller and not Tesla to make it right, but Tesla could offer a discount or something. Similar things happen all the time in used car sales. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes unintentionally. Features will be listed on an ad that aren’t there, or people might say the warranty is good for another 6 months when it expired or doesn’t transfer. I know lay people who thought they had twin turbos in their BMW because the cover said Twin Power. I know people who thought they bought a V6 when it was a 4 cylinder.

I think Tesla should or may have a way to determine if a system is paid for or if it is a trial feature. Maybe a receipt or sales sticker would work or some type of Tesla VIN lookup. A quick call to Tesla would work too. Sounds like someone either tried to defraud someone else or someone didn’t do their due diligence or both.

I’m more interested in the EOL/EOS that Dadhawk has brought up than I am concerned about OTA updates. With that said, I think all cars should be able to operate in a limp mode or basic mode or be able to revert back to an old, working software version. If I had a Twitter I would ask Elon Musk directly.

It is worth mentioning that this is limited to Tesla and a few other brands. Has BMW rolled their version of OTA updates yet? EVs don’t require this, nor is it limited to EVs.

just saw the new Mirai in person at Longo Toyota. had to confirm some suspicions about the car...

• Beautiful design
• Very long (same length as a ES sedan)
• Tiny rear seats
• Small trunk

Car overall is pretty good for the price I think. $50k is the XLE model, $66k for Limited (which is slightly overpriced for me).

But the car's price breakdown becomes the following:

• $51k MSRP after destination fee
• Less $10k cash from Toyota Financial Services
• 0% APR for 60 months
• ~$1500-5000+ for various rebates from dealer
• $4500 California FCEV rebate
• $8000 federal tax credit
• $15k fuel card

The car ends up being about ~$35k out the door, minus another $4500 in CA rebate, plus another $8k federal tax credit. Factoring in the cost of the fuel card (which translates to about 70k miles of driving) and the car basically will be about $15000 to buy.

Tempting.

If there were hydrogen stations around me as well as a few up and down the east coast, I would totally consider it.

Good info. Here, I thought EVs were given good incentives. :bonk:

The 0-60 of 9.2 seconds kills it for me, even if everything else aligned. Maybe you should wait three years, and you could buy one for $5k or less.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9fQ-eugcpw

and don't forget, a 10 year hard expiration date from the date of manufacture.

There's 2 within 10 miles of where I live. The most appealing part is that it's basically EV without the recharging time penalty. I don't care how fast you can build chargers, having to wait 30+ minutes to get to x% of charge isn't ideal.

Gotta start somewhere...

I wouldn't keep this for 10 years, but depending on my situation in 2020 I might end up getting the car just to take full advantage of the $8k federal tax credit.

I drive upwards of 40-50k miles a year so my hard expiration date is more like whatever amount of driving the fuel card can get me.

If you have a garage and a level 2 charger then you can recharge an EV each night. If you can't recharge at home then an EV wouldn't make sense with your mileage. You are also surrounded by hydrogen stations, so you're in a prime location to have a hydrogen car.

nah, I can't add any more solar to my house so EV will just cost too much. My current solar setup should be 2x the size if I were going EV but I didn't consider this route 6 years ago when I got solar.

I like the Nio design language infinitely more than Tesla's, and they do seem to have thought through alternative battery charging/swapping scenarios a little further. In practice, as mentioned in the video, the battery swapping has to be expensive to maintain, and I would want to see the lease agreement around swapped batteries (to do the swap I believe you have to participate in their lease agreement which is about $150 US).

Have they started selling in the US, or announced when they will? Their nio.com website is relatively useless, containing mostly marketing blurbs and stock photos of beautiful people doing beautiful things.