
Tesla improves financial product and lowers monthly payment - Pasanpr
http://www.teslamotors.com/about/press/releases/tesla-improves-financing-product-best-resale-value-guarantee-and-lower-monthly-
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TamDenholm
FTA: "Those who buy the Model S electric car for personal use will now pay a
monthly rate of $580 taking only gasoline savings into account."

What does "taking only gasoline savings into account" mean? Does that mean its
not $580, its some other price but if you had a normal car you'd be spending X
on gas and so our monthly payment is Y - X = $580?

Just tell me what the hell the monthly price is!!

~~~
avelis
Model S

Auto loan amount: $62400 (Cheapest option not including tax)

Auto loan term: 5 yrs

Interest rate: 8%

Monthly auto loan payments: $1265.25

Now this is a basic auto loan calculator. I am not factoring in tax
incentivized discounts or overall savings per month on gas payments and no
down payment. For now it's a number to start with.

Tool I used: [http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/auto/auto-loan-
calculato...](http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/auto/auto-loan-
calculator.aspx)

~~~
_lex
Apparently, one of their innovations is a longer loan term - it might be 7 or
9 years.

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codex
The improvement in the monthly payment is achieved by stretching out the loan
period to be greater than five years. How much greater than five years, they
don't say. Seven years? Ten years? How much extra interest does one pay on
such a loan?

As I've written elsewhere, they can't offer a real lease because they don't
have the money to finance their customers, and no bank is willing to place a
bet on the resale value of the car in three years (the end of typical lease
periods). Tesla and Elon's guaranteed resale value is apparently not good
enough for the bankers, leaving no choice but to offer more expensive
financing options--real loans. For a variety of reasons, a loan is less risky
for a bank than a lease.

~~~
cma
they don't do a lease because they would lose the tax incentives

~~~
codex
Not at all--the leasing company (a separate shell entity or a bank) takes the
tax credit because they bought the car. This is how both of my electric
vechicle leases have worked. The leasing company then passes on the savings in
the form of lower lease rates.

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msandford
I'm impressed that Tesla has admitted that they were a bit misleading with the
first announcement/offering.

EDIT: From the article '“We appreciate the feedback from a number of
journalists and customers that the first version of our financing product
wasn’t quite right,” said Tesla Co-founder & CEO Elon Musk.' Sure sounds like
they're admitting it in a "we didn't really do anything wrong" kind of way.

Even though it's not an outright admission, it's still admirable.

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songzme
I love Tesla and I love Elon Musk. I'm going all in on TSLA stocks ahead of
their quarterly earnings. Financial YOLO.

~~~
pyoung
Kicking myself for not grabbing it while it was in the $30's. Still probably a
good buy, but I would recommend at least leaving some money aside for Ramen
noodles and rent, just in case it blows up.

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gcb0
hahaha "[for high paying jobs] Tesla financial calculator makes it easy to
factor in the value of time saved by being able to use the carpool lane or
avoid trips to the gas station"

So, if you make lots of $ per hour, they will claim that having a model S will
save you time and so they added the money you would be making into the
price?!?! that's just crazy!

specially when a gasoline/hybrid car you can get:

\- 300miles per refil

\- each refil takes 5min

with the Model S

\- 200 miles (250 if you buy the expensive one)

\- 4h refil / 1 hour refil (if you buy the expensive superCharger)

~~~
spullara
You never have to "refill" a Tesla in the conventional sense if you charge it
overnight like your phone. Also, HOV lane is awesome. It is the future. Also,
if you switch to an E-9 plan (in CA) your overnight charge costs $0.03/kwH so
that is essentially 1 gallon of gas in cost = 500 miles of travel.

~~~
laureny
> Also, HOV lane is awesome. It is the future.

It's the future as long as the car you're driving is marginal.

Hybrids used to be allowed to use the HOV lane, then they became popular and
got kicked out. If electric cars become mainstream enough, they, too, will be
prohibited from the using HOV lane.

Being able to use the carpool lane is the main selling point for an electric
car to me right now, but be aware that it might not last for more than a few
years.

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nick2021
It looks like a great car, has plenty of power, range etc, but I still think
its too expensive to be a no brainer.

