
First Tesla Taxi in America after 100k miles - danso
https://electrek.co/2016/08/16/first-tesla-taxi-in-america-after-100000-miles-why-every-taxi-driver-should-consider-going-electric/
======
Maarten88
In the Netherlands there are many Tesla taxis, especially around Amsterdam and
Schiphol airport. Taxis drive more than regular cars so I see them all the
time, to the point that most Tesla's on the road are taxis.

I think this creates an "interesting" marketing challenge for Tesla here: taxi
drivers are not well respected and most people do not want to be mistaken for
a taxi driver. Being seen as a typical taxi brand will impact the image of
Tesla in a negative way, like it has done here with Mercedes (another typical
taxi here, if you see a Mercedes E series here it's usually a taxi, so normal
people looking for a premium car buy a BMW or Volvo)

~~~
pkulak
I'm not sure that Tesla considers it's current luxury status very important.
Ever since Musk's first master plan he's maintained that producing luxury cars
at all is just a means to an end of affordable electric cars.

Maybe we can debate weather a $35,000 car is "affordable", but at least Tesla
seems to think so. Prius's seem to have a lock on the cab market where I am,
and those things just keep flying off the lot into private hands. Personally,
when I see a car as a taxi, I can't help but think that thing has got to be
reliable as hell.

~~~
melling
$35k is about the average price of a new car.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/05/04/new-
car-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/05/04/new-car-
transaction-price-3-kbb-kelley-blue-book/26690191/)

That makes it affordable enough to make a difference.

~~~
thesimpsons1022
That doesn't mean the average person can afford it. More likely that the
average person purchases a 10,000 dollar used car.

~~~
Alterlife
In a few years, perhaps a 10,000.00$ used Tesla.

~~~
Mayzie
..with a battery that no longer holds charge!

~~~
cowardlydragon
Batteries improve or get cheaper...

Teslas are designed for quick swap service of the battery allegedly...

Tesla has treated previous generation owners, such as the sport coupe, to free
battery upgrades...

If there are enough used teslas on the market and replacement of the battery
drops to a $1000 for a new-equivalent or even better battery, then teslas will
be awesome used commodities.

------
readhn
"So sure, the car cost about $70,000. And it had to have its drive unit
(ENGINE) replaced a few times. "

That sounds like a failure to me.

If this was 70,000$ FORD that had to have its engine replaced 2-3 times then
people would be screaming LEMON. But since its Tesla - it is ok somehow.

Anyway what matters for taxi driver is the cost per mile. Tesla spending:
70,000 + 3,700 (electricity) + 7,000 (repairs) = ~ $80,000 Toyota camry
spending: 23,000 + 10,000 (gas) + 2,000 (repairs) = ~ $35,000

Tesla: 80,000$/100,000 miles = 0.8 USD/mile Toyota camry: 35,000$/100,000
miles = 0.35 USD/mile

Cost per mile driven: Tesla > Toyota by 2.3x

Total cost: if he was to sell Tesla today he would lose $35,000. If he sold
camry today he would lose $13,000

Financially Tesla still does not make sense.

~~~
andykellr
The problem of analysis like this is all of the things you leave out that many
other people consider valuable.

For example, a complete calculation for you might look like:

Driving the quickest 4 door sedan ever made: $0

Driving the safest car on the road: $0

Driving a super peaceful and quiet car: $0

Driving a car without a jerky transmission: $0

Having a ton of cargo space: $0

Reducing emissions: $0

Fitting 7 people in a car (5 adults + 2 kids): $0

Not supporting the oil industry: $0

Not ever having to stop at gas stations: $0

Supporting a company driving innovation in battery storage and automobiles: $0

\----

TOTAL value of driving a Tesla vs. Camry: $0

For me, for all of the above numbers, make the numbers large enough where the
Tesla is cheaper than the Camry.

~~~
tinalumfoil
I don't know a single person that has an extra $40,000 to spend on a car
because they want to not support the oil industry. Also, stopping at the gas
station once a week isn't a big deal, but having to send your only car into
the shop for days while it's repaired could be a huge problem.

~~~
anonbanker
I spend twice as much money on Linux laptops so I don't support Apple,
Microsoft, or much of the commercial software industry. I'm sure my
counterpart in the automobile market is out there somewhere.

~~~
vaishaksuresh
Why? Can you not buy the Microsoft laptop at half the price, wipe out windows
and install Linux?

~~~
yacn
My understanding is that yes, he could, but then Microsoft is paid for the
Windows license which he does not want and will not use, so they lose out on
the profit from that license by him paying more for an exclusively Linux
laptop.

~~~
vaishaksuresh
AFAIK, you can buy the same laptop without windows installed from
manufacturers like Dell. They actually reduce the cost if you choose to not
have the OS. I don't know who sells linux only laptop for twice the price,
given that linux is free. How is twice the price justified if you're actually
not paying for the OS?

~~~
timtadh
Twice the price was an exaggeration. However, as some one driving a XPS 13 dev
edition (the original) right now they are definitely not priced as "cheap"
notebooks. Someone has to write the drivers (or source components with good
drivers) and make sure they work properly _as configured_. In the case of the
XPS 13 dev edition Dell absolutely puts resources into at least trying to get
that right. The laptop runs really well on Linux and many many laptops today
do not because of driver issues. This is not news to anyone who has been using
Linux longer than 5 minutes on real consumer PC hardware. In the old days, if
you complained about hardware compat people would tell you to hack on the
driver!

~~~
BoorishBears
I'll say Linux handles the XPS 13 well when dragging a window from a hidpi
screen to a 3440x1440 screen isn't completely broken (so far even Gnome on
Wayland can't do that right)

Edit: and 3440x1440 is just my case, it's broken for dragging windows onto
anything except another hidpi monitor that uses the same scale factor as the
main one.

~~~
mixedCase
Wayland should allow for that to work well. Give it some time, it's not early
stages but it's still not a production-ready environment unless you're living
on the extreme bleeding edge, with a knife sticking out your head and all.

------
djaychela
While clearly this is a taxi driver, 50k / year is not a lot of mileage for a
taxi - I know some people who do more in a company car (I managed similar on a
couple of years), and some taxis are team driven, with three drivers sharing
cost and shifts - indeed one I knew of years ago did about 120k a year, having
several engine rebuilds, and getting over 800k before being sold. The odometer
was only a 5 digit one, and I met the guy who bought it, thinking it had 125k
on it, when it was actually 825k (long before the UK MOT history database was
available)!

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how they hold up to these sort of
starship mileages...

~~~
busterarm
Three!? Lucky.

New York yellow cab drivers split 12 hour shifts and pay ~$150/driver/day just
to lease a medallion.

~~~
chillydawg
Less meddling in taxi regulations almost anywhere not-NYC. Medallions are a
huge scam and are a very powerful market manipulation by the govt.

~~~
gsnedders
For example, in the UK (even in London!), there's no limit to how many taxi
licenses can be granted, and indeed there is currently a statutory obligation
to grant one to any applicant provided they meet the requirements.

~~~
peteretep
It's worth pointing out that for what most people would think of as a taxi the
requirements are exceptionally onerous in the UK.

------
rkangel
There's no mention of battery degradation. That's what I'd be curious about.
Has anyone got a Tesla with a load of miles on the clock?

~~~
andykellr
I got my car in March 2013 and have 75K miles on it. I haven't noticed any
degradation.

I'm sure if I were really careful to measure, there's been a few % of
degradation, but nothing on the level of what you might experience from a 3
year old mobile phone and I never look back longingly on the days when my car
could go further. There's no trip I took 3 years ago that I wouldn't take now.

There's an 8 year, infinite mile warranty on the battery, but there have been
differing reports on when it gets replaced. I have heard numbers ranging from
15-30% capacity loss, but I plan to drive it for another 5 years, so I'm sure
I'll find out.

~~~
azhenley
This is amazing sounding. Laptop and phone batteries degrade so fast it seems!

Does anyone have any thoughts on why the Tesla battery isn't like this?

~~~
jsight
The enemy of batteries is heat. Most laptop batteries that I have had degraded
prematurely due to poor heat management.

Phones are kind of a different case. The phones that I have had with bad
batteries to begin with (Galaxy S2, Nexus One, etc) were often recharged
multiple times per day. 1000+ cycles per year for two or more years will
degrade the battery a lot, as the degradation is largely based on the number
of cycles.

The Tesla P85D has a ~300 mile battery. Unless you are driving 300 miles per
day, you are unlikely to see 1000 cycles in a year. If you do cycle it 1000
times, you've put 300,000 miles on it.

That is really a completely different situation from the typical mobile phone
or laptop usage scenario.

~~~
raihansaputra
Really interesting point.

Out of topic, but is it possible that is this why phone manufacturers are
shying away from putting bigger batteries in their flagships? They want the
batteries to degrade in the 2 or 3 years of daily power cycle, and most people
choose to upgrade instead of replacing their non-user-replaceable battery.
Does this make sense?

~~~
jsight
I have often wondered the same thing. It seems like batteries in phones
sometimes actually get smaller for no reason that makes sense to me.

It might just be that the manufacturers think everyone wants a thinner device,
though.

------
emcrazyone
"Christian’s old Subaru had to have its engine rebuilt two or three times over
the course of about 330,000 miles."

Which is it? An engine rebuild is a significant cost and down time and he's
not sure how many times it has been rebuilt? Makes me question the validity of
the rest of the article's data when you don't know your own basic
facts/history especially for is a major repair item.

~~~
honkhonkpants
"Rebuilt" is also pretty vague. Bottom end? Top end? Rings? Whole engine out
of the vehicle?

It does seem like this gentleman simply assigns some value to driving around
in a Tesla all day, which is fine with me but the article should not try to
make it seem economically rational.

~~~
JoelBennett
Knowing Subaru, it would likely be a head gasket issue. They will continue to
run with bad head gaskets for a while, but it's a pain to keep topping up the
oil and coolant.

~~~
smnscu
I have the exact same problem on my car. Thanks! Now to translate this for my
(quasi-incompetent) German mechanic...

------
semi-extrinsic
"Christian admitted that Tesla’s regular maintenance repairs like brakes and
bearings cost more than those on his old car, a Subaru Legacy"

And the "drive unit" (electric motor?) has been replaced. Twice.

As I've said before, electric cars won't mean a significant decrease in
maintenance costs.

But, he has managed to save $43 a month on gas!

Edit: reading comprehension failed me, as pointed out below, he saves $293 a
month on gas.

~~~
3princip
Two engine replacements, in a little over two years? Yikes.

How expensive is the drive train compared to a combustion engine? maybe I'm
missing something.

~~~
jpgvm
You are missing that the drive train design was entirely new when Model S was
released and had some design problems that needed fixing, hence the free
replacements.

~~~
3princip
Yes, but twice? The whole drive train. Maybe it's simpler to replace it and
refurbish it later, so they just take out the old and give you a new one.

~~~
NickM
> Maybe it's simpler to replace it and refurbish it later, so they just take
> out the old and give you a new one.

That's exactly right. The whole drive unit can drop right out of the bottom of
the car, so when there are any issues, Tesla will just replace the whole thing
so that you don't have to wait for the unit to be repaired. They can then
refurbish the broken drivetrain on their own time and then use it to replace
someone else's failed unit in the future.

------
larrik
Wow, as someone who's never even seen a true electric car up close, I'm
curious how you can keep it going for a full day of work. Charging it takes
hours, right? Unlike gasoline which you can just pull in and be back on the
road in a couple of minutes.

~~~
bluGill
50,000 miles a year is only 200 miles a day (assuming 2 weeks of vacation),
the tesla can do that range without any charges, he just needs to have enough
charge an usually long trip at the end of the day. At the rates taxies charge,
someone who goes for farther than the charge of a Tesla is going to make the
news just for their bill - even if the trip is in a normal gas car.

I expect that he plugs in over lunch hour, and at bathroom brakes. This won't
get him to full charge, but it is enough to ensure that he can handle a long
trip. If he is ever at less than half charge he has made enough money that he
can afford to take an hour off to charge.

~~~
Grishnakh
Not only that, but he'll save time by not having to go to a gas station like
regular taxis do.

------
cloudjacker
Thats really interesting, thanks for breaking down the numbers!

Ultimately it looks like it is nice consumer friendly option, but the repair
costs are being subsidized by Tesla at great expense to Tesla, and even then
the total cost compared to the gas car is only marginally better.

The primary takeaway here is that the more expensive car has better resale
value, from name and build quality. Which is the only saving grace in this
equation.

After Elon's crowdsale cars come out at the lower price, its game over though!

------
cpr
Some years back, when taking a local taxi in the Shoreline Connecticut area
(Old Saybrook, Westbrook, Clinton, etc.), the taxi company owner told me she
would buy only certain years of Audio 5000's at 200-300K for not much at
auction, and then, with normal maintenance, they'd go to 700-900-1000K without
problems. I'm afraid I've forgotten the years involved.

~~~
readhn
Yes certain Audi models were bullet proof! Also Mercedes certain models were
known to go well over 500,000miles. They were used widely as cabs in europe.
Saab, volvo another honorable mentions... but boy did the things change...
SAAB is gone RIP. Volvo became a complete POS as well. Try doing this in an
Audi or Mercedes or Volvo today and see how fast your bank account depletes to
keep it running.

------
honkhonkpants
I would wonder about the tire costs. Tesla is big and heavy with large blingy
wheels and high performance rubber. I guess you can get cheaper than original
tired but not a lot cheaper in that size.

Also curious about insurance costs.

~~~
vvanders
Insurance is actually pretty cheap relatively. They're the safest car on the
road which really brings down medical and injury costs. I want to say it was
~$30/mo more than our Subaru.

Tire costs: yeah. I'm at 35k right now and about to replace my first set of
19" tires for around ~$900. I ran the numbers and I actually pay more per-mile
in tire cost(0.023) than electricity(0.02).

That said my gas costs still more than make up for it. I was spending ~$300/mo
in gas where I now spend ~$40.

~~~
honkhonkpants
Source for safest car on the road? I don't see it on this list

[http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/small-overlap-
cras...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/small-overlap-crash-
protection-front-crash-prevention-key-to-2016-awards-48-models-earn-top-
safety-pick-award-13-earn-top-safety-pick)

~~~
vvanders
[http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-tesla-model-s-
achieves-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-tesla-model-s-achieves-
best-safety-rating-of-any-car-ever-tested-2013-8)

------
blinkingled
>brakes, bearings, and parts of the suspension, which was considered normal
wear after 100,000 miles.

Wtf? I don't know of any regular car that's needed all of that changed and it
was deemed normal. What's so different about brakes, bearing and suspension in
a Tesla? I know 250k Priuses that haven't needed any of these.

~~~
ianferrel
Are those regular cars in service as taxis? Most cars do the majority of their
driving on freeways, where breaks and suspension have it pretty easy.

Taxis, not so much.

~~~
blinkingled
Good point but neither the article nor any Tesla documents seem to make the
taxi distinction - making it sound like it's normal wear for any Tesla.

~~~
haylem
Well, actually I think you quoted it yourself:

> [...] which was considered normal wear after 100,000 miles.

It's not really clear, but I think the "considered normal" applies to the
point of view of the interviewed taxi driver.

------
mars4rp
the problem is he is comparing a brand new maintenance cost to a car with 300K
miles on it!! any brand new car is going to cost less in repair compare to a
car with 300K Miles!

------
gsmethells
They need a Tesla taxi near where I live. I need a ride in one!

------
caiob
Canada ≄ America

------
dang
Url changed from [http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-
after-100...](http://jalopnik.com/heres-how-a-tesla-taxi-held-up-
after-100-000-miles-1785360286), which points to this.

------
post_break
I don't understand how his warranty isn't void for operating the vehicle as a
taxi.

~~~
gambiting
Why would it be? When you buy a vehicle, you get a warranty that covers you
for either X years or Y miles(or both). What difference does it make if you do
those Y miles driving for pleasure or for work? It's the same to the car. I
would be really really surprised if they refused to honour his warranty
because he was using it as a taxi.

~~~
post_break
Most vehicle warranties specifically state using a vehicle for work or fleet
is not included in the original warranty. Same thing for insurance.

~~~
gambiting
Insurance, sure. But show me one vehicle warranty that varies between
personal/commercial use. I've had Peugeots, Land Rover, Nissan, Citroen and
most recently a Mercedes(some of those I've purchased under business contracts
and used for work) - none of their warranty booklets made any distinction
between personal and commercial use, and frankly - I don't think that by law
they can. The only thing that maybe applies if you are using the car
commercially is the "heavy use" servicing schedule, so instead of changing the
oil every 16 thousand miles you have to do it every 10.

~~~
post_break
Chrysler has a specific fleet warranty that calls out using vehicles for work.

~~~
giarc
Fleet vehicles and work vehicles are different things.

Fleet generally refers to the purchase process. Fleet sales are when a company
is buying greater than X number of cars, and they likely purchase a separate
warranty. They go through a separate department (fleet sales). If someone
walks into a lot and purchases a vehicle, the warranty likely covers them if
they use it as a work truck (for example).

------
mungoman2
This article reads like a paid ad... is it?

