[lafar6502]

- How do you service your Tesla? Do you have to go to Tesla-authorized shop or can you do it in any workshop? How does it affect repair and maintenance costs if you have no alternatives?

- What about the 'guaranteed' buyback option? I'd be afraid that a buyback will be the only option to sell your old Tesla, because they won't be re-sellable on a free market without a costly hw/sw upgrade that can be done ONLY by Tesla.

- There's no way to reduce your costs by using third party replacement parts or batteries.

- A single failure can ruin your ROI calculations because the repair costs are hard to predict.

- The market for used Teslas is limited to areas where the charging network is available

[dangrossman]

Regarding the market for resale, look at Roadsters and Model S on eBay. The market for 5 year old EVs seems pretty healthy. The batteries lose ~0.15% capacity per 1000 miles driven; nearly all 5-year-old Roadsters have over 85% of thir original range. Why would that change 5 years from now? Tesla would be shooting itself in the foot to do anything to purposely damage the resale market for their cars; that'd lower the value for new ones.

Why do you think you need to live in an area with a charging network to buy a Tesla car? Its range, equivalent to most gas cars, gives you many days of typical driving between charges. Unlike gas cars, you can "fill up" at home, there are no external dependencies. You'll also never suffer in a fuel shortage, which my area had several times before winter storms this season.

[bri3d]

Keep in mind that the Roadster is an extremely limited-production, high-end niche car that is no longer manufactured.

Its value/depreciation curve will look very different from a still-manufactured luxury sedan of a previous generation, which is what the Model S will be in 3-5 years when Tesla release a new style.

[takeda]

> How do you service your Tesla? Do you have to go to Tesla-authorized shop or can you do it in any workshop? How does it affect repair and maintenance costs if you have no alternatives?

There's not much to service, and normally you should do it once a year. The mechanics currently don't have schematics for Model S so it probably feels better to have it fixed at the company. I would imagine that you could get brakes replaced at your local mechanic, but I can't think of anything else they could do with it.

For example Tesla doesn't even have ODB-II port for diagnostics (it was recently revealed that instead of CanBus they use Ethernet). Things like that make the car is very different and the mechanic might know less about the car than yourself.

[manacit]

    It was recently revealed that instead of CanBus they use Ethernet

If you're referring to the thread on teslamotorsclub.com[1], they are not using Ethernet for any sort of communication aside from infotainment and there is definitely a CAN bus[2].

There's been speculation that UDP broadcasts from the CAN bus are carried over that network as well, but it's almost certainly used for displaying information and informing various non-essential systems.

[1]: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/28185-Successf...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7535589

[fps]

Modern japanese made internal-combustion engines are pretty much zero maintenance at this point; in my case, over 8 years and a combined 200K miles on a Nissan and a Toyota, the engines have gotten oil and timing belt changes and that's it. Zero mechanical engine problems at all. The Subaru and Acura I had for 5 years before that were the same. However, I've had to deal with brakes, suspension, tires, climate control, airbag, electronics, etc problems much more frequently, and those issues would happen just as often on a Tesla. Possibly more often because all of those systems are much more complex on a Tesla than the systems I have. Can I get the tesla air suspension serviced at my local mechanic? How about the computerized heater controls?