[alexb_]

>I owned 6 Teslas over the last several years.

??????? Why on earth would you need this many Teslas? Maybe if you are buying so many teslas then it makes sense why you don't need them serviced - you barely give them enough time to wear themselves out!

[lancesells]

>I owned 6 Teslas over the last several years.

Isn't this also terrible for the environment? The resources it takes to make one car is a lot.

[joncrane]

I don't think the poster buys a Tesla, drives it for a few months, and sends it to a junkyard. I'm pretty sure that just because the other person stops owning it, the Tesla does not stop being useful to SOMEbody.

[lancesells]

Well clearly I understand that but I would think the less new cars being produced the better. There are a lot of cars sitting in used car lots.

[bombcar]

If you buy the latest and greatest and continuously upgrade to the next greatest it’s not that expensive; often cheaper than leasing.

[pc86]

Sorry there's just no way this is true. It doesn't even make sense. For this to be possible the loan payment would have to be less than the lease payment after depreciation. Even before depreciation this almost never happens without a huge down payment (which negates the point entirely).

[Thorrez]

Do you have data on that? I thought cars lose a lot of their value as soon as they drive off the lot.

And how long of leases are you talking about?

[bluGill]

Finance companies have a good idea of what a car will be worth after you are done with it. That is why they limit miles: they know the loss of value from miles and don't want to know lose money. Their goal is when the lease ends and you turn the car in the dealer pays the entire remaining balance and sells it as a used car. Dealers make more money from selling used cars than new (everyone knows what they pay for cars and won't allow any profit, but for used you don't know what they really paid for it).

When you trade in your car the dealer will give you an offer for your car. Depending on demand this may be higher or lower than what the lease company wants. When it is higher you win. When it is lower leasing would be better. Either way though, the dealer is pricing in a profit margin from selling your car, so if you don't trade in your car but sell it yourself you can get this profit margin in exchange for your time.

In the end it is about risk management. What will the car be worth in 3 years when you are ready for a new one? Nobody knows for sure 3 years in advance. Sometimes it will be worth a lot more than the lease company expects and so you win, sometimes it will be worth less and so you lose. If you don't trade your car in you probably will always win in monetary terms, though I'm not sure if it is worth the time.

[Thorrez]

How does sales tax fit in? If you buy the car, you have to pay sales tax on the whole thing right? I don't think that happens on a lease. And when you sell it, that buyer has to pay sales tax too right? And if that buyer is a dealer, then the next real customer has to pay sales tax again right? So sales tax reduces the liquidity and efficiency of selling cars, with no negative effect on leasing. This gets worse and worse the shorter the period of time. skolos owned 6 Teslas in several years, so this would be a big factor.

If you live in a state with no sales tax, then you avoid this problem.

[bluGill]

different in each state, but in general a lease is a sale for tax purposes. Check with a tax accountant in your state for details if you care.

[skolos]

Last two years used Tesla prices were higher than new ones. You need to wait up to a year to get new Tesla though. So you could actually make some money while driving newest versions of cars.

[Thorrez]

I guess it makes sense for cars that there's a shortage of but you're still able to get. In a normal market I don't think it makes sense.

Still, it probably would have been more profitable to keep driving just 1 Tesla, and sell the other Teslas as essentially new as soon as you got them.

[elif]

I did the math before buying in 2021, and leasing didnt make any sense.

the reason is that tesla price increases and backlog creates added value for aftermarket teslas.

As it happens, I can sell the used car i purchased over a year ago for more than i originally paid.

[alexb_]

Maybe it's cheaper than leasing the latest and greatest, but not everyone has an unlimited pool of money all the time, and the assumption that this type of purchasing behavior is in any way typical or representative of anything is absurd and out of touch at best, and purposefully misleading for the benefit of Tesla at worst.

[Dylan16807]

It looks like you knee-jerked pretty hard at that line, because they didn't say anything at all about their purchasing behavior being typical. They just said the QC was good on the cars they got.

And in general the issues I heard about were from-the-factory issues, so only having the cars for 1-2 years each wouldn't matter much.