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That is, unfortunately, anecdata. Everyone keeps telling me that electric cars have fewer moving parts and have such low maintenance costs that they cost 90% less to maintain, at which point I turn around and ask why Tesla doesn't offer a bumper to bumper 20 year warranty, because they can benefit from the law of large numbers. If the repair costs are so much better, this should be easy to do, right? That's the point where my interlocuter usually walks away as they have no answer. One way you can try to estimate what the real maintenance cost is in the first X years is to look at what automakers set aside for warranties. In that case, (the last I looked), Tesla seemed in the middle of the pack vis-a-vis major ICE makers. But then you have the 20-X years of service, and the dirty secret is that those years are also paid for by new owners except they pay those repairs forward as depreciation when they sell. So then you look at depreciation curves, to see if Tesla is holding up much better than ICE vehicles due to lower expected maintenance costs and there, too, Tesla appears to be right in line with other major producers. So bottom line, I can't find any evidence for the thesis that getting rid of all these components will significantly reduce lifetime maintenance costs, while the battery costs remain a big unknown. Now part of this is just not having enough data. In 20 years, we'll have a lot more data, and then maybe the warranty policies and depreciation curves will look very different. But this goes back to my point which is why isn't Tesla insuring the buyers against this risk by selling massive 20 year waranties to stand behind these claims of long service life and very low maintenance costs? Why leave people searching for anecdata in a new car whose service costs they don't have the data to estimate? For most people a car is a major portion of their net-worth and they tend to be conservative in making this purchase. Sure, for high income buyers, they can afford to take risks but most buyers can't. So why doesn't Tesla do more to insure prospective buyers against this risk? It seems like such a no brainer, and yet many companies insist on pushing risk onto the customer. This isn't just an issue with Tesla, but I see it in many industries, where the producer is the one who has the survivorship data, they benefit from the law of large numbers, and they have financial backing, they are in a position to sell insurance, and people would buy the insurance, but the insurance just isn't being offerred, and if it is offered, it's on absolutely terrible terms, rather than as something to remove purchase frictions. |