- Recently I had an issue with the windshield wiper
on my Tesla where the motor actually went out
and the arm broke, and this is the only issue
I've had with my Tesla in the past year.
This time what I had to do is actually have
a Tesla Ranger, this is a service person
that comes out to your house and fixes your car
right there in your garage or in your driveway.
This all cost me zero dollars because I'm under
the four year warranty where basically everything
for the Tesla is covered.
And being the data geek that I am
it got me to thinking what is the cost of maintaining
this car, my Tesla Model S, compared to
a similar gas powered car.
Now first I should just clarify that when I do
my comparison it has to be to a similar gas powered car,
I've seen a lot of comments there
well my Honda this, or my KIA that,
yes of course, those are cheap economical cars,
they do not compare to these luxury high end sedans.
So for this analysis I'm going to use
a Mercedes Benz S-Class, an Audi A7,
and a BMW 7 Series, and I'm gonna look
at the cost of ownership, the actually maintenance cost
of those cars compared to what I pay for my Tesla.
So first I should mention that Tesla has had
some reliability issues, in fact just recently
Reuters reported that they're spending
about 1,000 dollars per vehicle on warranty repairs
compared to Ford and GM which are spending
about 400 to 700 dollars per vehicle.
So Tesla's actually having to repair these a lot more
and spending a lot more money.
All I care about though is how much it actually
is gonna cost me and kind of what the experience
is gonna be like.
So let's take a look at the data now
and see what it actually tells us.
First off Tesla offers a prepaid service plan
which spans three, four, and eight years
depending on which one you choose.
This will reduce your overall cost,
but we'll compare those alongside not having
any prepaid plan as well, so I'll have
all three examples here.
So looking at the total maintenance cost here
over five years you can see that all three Tesla options
are a lot cheaper than all the other options,
the Mercedes, the BMW, and the Audi even
are just many times over more expensive
than owning a Tesla in terms of maintenance.
So if you take a look at the total maintenance cost
over five years what you can see is that
the most expensive is the Mercedes Benz S-Class
clocking in at around 18,000 dollars in maintenance,
the BMW 7 Series clocking in around 17,000 dollars
just behind it, the Audi is significantly cheaper,
around 10,000 dollars, or 9,500,
and then all of the Tesla options
are just significantly cheaper than all of those.
In fact, the most expensive one is 2,800 bucks.
There isn't really saving much in terms of
the agony of dealing with a car dealership here,
but you are gonna be saving a ton of money
over the cost over those five years.
But what if we look at the actual details year by year?
So on the left here I have each car
and then year by year I have the actual cost of maintenance,
and you can see that as time goes on,
at least for the BMW and the Mercedes,
the costs just tend to go up and up,
where as the Audi and the Tesla are all pretty flat.
In fact Audi actually looks like it decreases over time
which is kind of nice.
So I guess when you think about it
there aren't gonna be any big surprises here
with the Tesla or the Audi for that matter.
Now if we wanna compare on a percentage basis
and we wanna look at let's take the most expensive Tesla
model, the Tesla service, the non-prepaid one,
remember it's about 2,800 bucks,
compare that to the Audi A7, the BMW, and the Mercedes,
you can see that with the Audi
you're actually still saving about 241 percent,
close to 7,000 dollars over the cheapest car,
the similar gas powered car.
Compare that to the BMW and you're at 500 percent savings
and the Mercedes-Benz S-Class you're near
550 percent savings, almost 15,000 dollars
or North of 15,000 dollars that you're saving
in maintenance costs alone.
That's a big deal and that really adds up,
and this is only a five year comparison.
Now I know a lot of you are out there thinking
well what about the replacement of the battery,
I've even had people comment saying,
you know you have to replace the battery every year
which I'm yet to find data on.
But the way it works is there is a eight year warranty
on your Tesla battery, and it's an infinite mile warranty
up to eight years, so any problems you have before that
they're gonna replace it for you.
But after that the cost that we're looking at
is about 12,000 dollars to replace it,
that's based on current standards,
exactly how they're producing them now.
So if we were to forecast out let's say eight years
from when you bought your Tesla
so that we're eight years from now,
the price of producing the batteries
is gonna continue to drop.
So if we were to take the 12,000 dollars now
and reduce it down to say 8,000 dollars,
and then add that in to the cost here of our maintenance
and let's just assume that we absorbed
all of those 8,000 dollars within the first five years,
again it's a little wonky but I'm trying
to appease anybody that has concerns
about replacing the batteries here.
If you wanted to do that you would be a little bit
over on the Audi, you'd be saving a little bit on money,
the 1.3 thousand or 12 percent over the Audi A7,
but then you're still saving close to 60 percent
on the BMW and nearly 70 percent
over the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
So you're still saving six to 7,000 dollars
compared to these other cars,
that's with the assumption that you would be
replacing the battery on your own within five years,
which really isn't gonna happen.
Now I'll put a caveat out there
that of course owning a Tesla is not a way to save money,
that's not a good plan, but if you are in the market
for one of these high end luxury sedans
and you look at this, you're gonna see
that you're gonna have a much better experience
and save a decent amount of money there.
In addition to saving money on amenities
you're also no longer gonna have to worry
about spending time getting gas at the pump,
no more oil changes, no more filters every couple of months,
all of that coupled with the fact
that the car seats five people comfortably
and has more storage space than any of these other sedans,
in fact it has more than my wife's midsize SUV,
and it has the highest safety rating of any car ever tested.
I think what you'll find is that when you compare
the Tesla to any of these other luxury sedans in this class
it comes out ahead in almost
every category that you look at.
All right, so there it is, the cost
or the savings that you're gonna have
of a Tesla compared to a similar gas powered vehicle.
I hope you like this video, if you have any other thoughts,
comments, things I missed, please put them
in the comments below, subscribe,
and I'll see you back here next time.