Neat car.
Way the fuck out of my price range though.
Never really understood this whole obsession with electric cars and how they're supposedly better for the environment when the electricity used to power them comes mostly from coal and other things that are just as bad.
There will be one in the $30k range in around 2015 or so, it's codenamed Tesla Bluestar right now I believe.
And: http://teslarumors.com/USA-Residental-Energy-Cost-2011-by-State.html
If you compare like 15-30mpg and gas prices of like $3.75/gallon; 300/15->20=$75, 300/30->10=$37.50. We did 300 miles there btw, since that's the highest estimates on the Tesla page. In my state it'd be only $9.45 for 300 miles with a Tesla car compared to $75 with a 15mpg car or $37.50 with a 30mpg car. It'd be as cheap as $8.02 for 300 miles if you lived in Utah.
It looks like a person spends on average $368 per month on gas. So anywho, if you had a 30mpg car it'd be 3.97x cheaper or 7.94x cheaper if you had a 15mpg car. $92 vs $368, or $46 vs $368. That's roughly $276-322 savings per month. Multiply that times 12 and you're looking at saving $3,312-3,864 a year. Average car ownership is about 5 years, so if you own it for 5 years you'd roughly save on gas prices alone $16,560-19,320.
With a normal car? You don't save anything. You pay that much more just to drive it. What's more, you shouldn't ever have to worry about stopping to fill your car up again. You just plug it in when you get home then in the morning every day you'd start with a full tank and I doubt most people drive over 300 miles in a day.
With that said, $30,000 car + $7,500 tax incentive + $19,320 gas savings in 5 years means that you essentially pay $3,180 for the safest car on the road, assuming it matches the Model S's safety ratings which I don't doubt it will. Hard to beat...
I'm telling you, in 5-10 years everyone's going to be doing electric. There'll be no reason not to. Check out their timeline for their supercharger stations: http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
You're kinda unlucky if you're in Europe, unless you live in Norway lol.
Bit late to the convo but eh. A 15mpg car is laughable, if that's what the average American car gets, it's shit. Unless that's euphemism for a tank.
2nd. At least in Europe, something like a 1/3rd of the price of gas is going to cover the infrastructure costs. Going electric now makes you a "freeloader" on the streets. As you don't pay anything to maintain it. In time, the laws will be changed to account for that once a larger part of the population migrates.
3rd. Tax incentives are temporary. As it is now, every single citizen is paying for the electric car to be on the road. That is not going to last.
4th. Resale value. That's a pretty darn important aspect of a cars price and electrics have yet to prove themselves there.
5th. The price of gas will drop like a bucket once you cut demand by such a huge value. Once you add that to the fact that proper modern engines that aren't put in super cars are essentially expected to get 40mpg now and that number is only going to increase in the future.
Running electric is highly advantagous now. It WILL equal out somewhat in those 5-10 years to where the advantage will become debatable, as current electric cars are more equal than others, what concerns the road.
