Gone Electric

Haven't written much in a while, but thought I'd throw in an off-topic post, just for the heck of it. A couple of months ago, I made a major change in my life: I traded in my old car, a 2004 BMW 530i and I went and got a Tesla Model SYep, I'm a proud member of what's been described as the "world's more expensive beta test."I've had it now for almost exactly two months, and I thought I'd share my observations.First of all: cost. Yes, it's an expensive car. No denying that. However, it's not quite as crazy expensive as the sticker price makes it seem. My default plan was to replace my old BMW with a new one, probably the 550. The Tesla actually specs out about the same in the cost department. There's 10% sales tax on the BMW, but my state has no tax on electric cars, and there's a $7500 federal tax credit, which helps narrow the gap quite a bit. Then, depending on the assumptions you make, the cost of fuel should actually make the Tesla cheaper over time than the BMW. I figure that over 100,000 miles (I put 130K on my old one), I'll spend about $22,000 on gas for the BMW. Electricity costs for the Tesla over the same time period should be about 10% of that figure, which could in theory make the Tesla substantially cheaper. A lot depends on the big unknown of the battery life. The one I got is warrantied to 100k miles, but the replacement cost and whether I should lay away costs towards a replacement at 100k miles is unclear. On the other hand, Tesla maintenance should be near z...
Source: Movin' Meat - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Source Type: blogs