- So this story is about a recent article
stating that the Tesla Model 3 costs more to charge
than a gasoline car.
I'm going to go through this and I'll let you
make your own conclusions.
But this was from Anton Wahlman
and I'll just go through some quotes
and I'll dig into my analysis.
First off, he states...
Basically that, there's kind of two pieces
to this.
One is he cherrypicks a lot of data
to try to make his case
and then he makes some assumptions
which are just not true.
And we'll see what the data shows
here in a second.
So the first quote from this article
I wanted to talk about is he said,
how does that compare to gasoline cars?
At 50 miles per gallon at today's
nationwide average of gasoline price of $2.65,
that's $.05 per mile.
In other words, it's cheaper
to drive a gasoline car than a Tesla Model 3.
So what he's doing there, he's taking
some of the most expensive states
wherefore supercharging assuming that you,
as a Tesla owner will, or a Model 3 owner,
will charge 100% at superchargers,
then taking that cherrypicked expensive rate
compared to a national average which is not
apples to apples and he gets a one penny difference
per mile.
And as you see when we did into the detail,
I don't know why but he wasn't able to really do
the math and figure it out.
But we were able to do that.
So, next quote from this that I thought
was funny was, he talks about an EV battery.
He says, it is understood that you should not
have to pay for a new EV battery within
the first 10 years.
If for no other reason because of the warranty
and general expectations of reliability.
However, at some point the day to day,
I'm sorry, the day to buy a new battery
will come, perhaps not, and this is the funny part,
perhaps not at the 10 year mark but otherwise,
at the 15, 20, of 25 mark, or at 25 years.
(laughing)
Who of you, watching, commenting, whatever,
have a car 25 years old?
The data I've analyzed and you can see
those videos on 'em where we have literally
hundreds of thousands of data points,
point to 25 years or more, which is why
I consider that to be forever because most people
aren't going to keep their cars that long.
If you think about 25 years ago, the internet
didn't exist, Google, Facebook, cell phones barely
existed, it's just not something that happens
here in the United States.
So while, technically, that may be true,
at some point you will need to replace the battery,
it is impractical to think that that's something
to consider right now and that that would affect
any calculation about the cost of charging
your vehicle right now.
Maybe in 25 years it would matter.
Then he goes on to talk about that further
and he says, so at $250 per kilo watt,
he's talking about the price of the battery,
we're talking $20,000 as a total price
for an 80 kilo watt battery, which is not what it has.
Perhaps including installation, disposal if necessary.
So, this assumes a couple of things.
First, he incorrectly states the size of the battery
to 75 kilo watt hour battery, not 80.
$250 is grossly overestimating the current price
of the lithium ion batteries for Tesla's.
Also that in 25 years, the price will have stayed
the exact same, which isn't how consumer electronics work.
Forbes actually did an article on this
and quoting from them, and I'll put a link in there.
"The price per kilo watt hour lithium ion
batteries has declined from an average of around $400
in 2012 when the Model S was launched,
to levels of under $150 currently.
For instance, GM says that it pays about
$145 per kilo watt hour for batteries,
it's source from LG KM for the Chevy Bolt."
So, already grossly overestimating
and basically falsifying information
to try to make a case that in 25 years
you'll have to pay this fee and at that point
you will really have lost out,
which is just, it made me laugh.
And then he had a quote here
that I just, oh, it's so nice, saying,
"the math is simply devastating."
Well Anton, unfortunately, the math is devastating.
And you know, for you, just to help you here,
I actually did the math on this
and so let's go take a look at that.
First, I'll show you where I got the data.
So, the first bit of data I got was from
fueleconomy.gov.
And I'm looking at here, the hybrid electric cars.
These are cars that actually take gas.
So what he does int he studies, he picks
the three best cars, averages them and assumes
every car is that.
As we know, that's really not how the world works
and that's not how data works either.
So, what I did was I looked at this page here
from fueleconomy.gov and averaged out,
actually just downloaded all the miles per gallon
of all these hybrid electric vehicles.
The next bit of data I got,
to do the math, was the price of electricity
per kilo watt, cents per kilo watt
by state in the United States.
Because see, in his analysis,
he assumes that you will charge
100% at the supercharger, which is not really possible
because, first off, it's far more expensive
than charging at home.
And also, data I've analyzed shows that
at 91% of the time, Tesla owners are charging at home,
not at superchargers.
Yes, so it'll be a bit different with Model 3,
but to assume that 100% of them charge there
is lying or making a gross assumption
that is not based in reality.
So I don't know if you want to call that a lie,
a falsehood, whatever term you want to use.
The next one is the price of gas and he used
a national average, but of course, we don't pay
national averages, you pay whatever it is
in your state.
So I downloaded the data from GasBuddy
for every state.
So I put all the links in there
and I pulled this together into a Google sheet.
So in the Google sheet, I have all the data here.
So I have the average price of gas
for every state.
I have the, I'm sorry, this is the fuel economy here
for every different car and this actually
took a little while to parse.
The electricity costs, the average retail.
This comes directly form that website
as you can see there.
And the supercharger costs.
Now, supercharger costs have multiple tiers
in a lot of states and so in those cases
I averaged them.
They're kind of complex about what you'll
actually pay depending on where you're at
with your battery, how fast the charge
you're getting, et cetera.
It's really impossible to calculate
in a general sense.
So the best way to do it is to average those two.
So that's what I do there.
And then in other states like California,
it's just a flat rate, so it's the same.
So that's all my source data.
And what I did is I actually pulled that together
into some analysis here.
So, let me switch over and we can kind of run
through that now.
Here we go.
Okay, so this is a story that,
it's called a story in Tableau
which is the software I'm using.
And I put this together.
This would be online at teslanomics.co shortly.
It starts out with a story here, the kind of background.
So, I looked up Anton's background and he currently
lists himself as an unemployed gambler.
He published that report, as I mentioned,
and in this story here we did the devastating math,
as he calls it.
So the article is here, for folks that haven't
done it and here's his LinkedIn.
I matched up his seeking alpha profile
which lists this managing, director, ThinkEquity Partners
as well, you know, it matches even though
you don't see his photo here.
When I searched for that name this came up
and all the job experience seemed to match,
so I believe this is his profile.
So I'm not making it up when I call him
an unemployed gambler.
Okay, so the first thing to do
was to look at the monthly gas cost by state.
So I took all the data as I mentioned,
and I parsed it, and here you go.
So we're driving 1300 miles per month
and we get 45 miles per gallon is what I'm putting.
He put 54, it's kind of crazy, the actual
average of all those vehicles,
the hybrid electric vehicles is 32, so if we
wanted to do true apples to apples,
this miles per gallon here should be 32.
And again, when I put this online,
you can actually play with these numbers yourself.
So you can kind of check my math
or check my work.
You can even download the entire thing
and do all that, if you guys wanna dig in deeper.
So if we assume that that's 32, here is the cost
by state.
So this is how many gallons of gas you'll need
to drive 1300 miles based on this miles per gallon.
Here's the cost of gas, the average in that state
and so multiplying those two numbers
gives you the monthly gas cost.
So you can see like in California we're at $142, etc.
And this kind of goes all the way down.
But you know, because we wanna be nice,
I'm a nice guy, let's give him the benefit
of the doubt and call it 45, closer to
what he's stating, but he's completely
cherrypicking those results there.
So then let's do that same math for Tesla's
or for the Model 3's specifically.
So here you have every state broken down again.
You have the kilo watt hours necessary per month.
So at 1300 miles and the watt hours per mile
of 260, which is what I've got in my real world Tes
and was kind of what is advertised out there
and a 15% usage of the supercharger.
Remember that, 91% of the time, people are charging
at home based on the current analysis and data
we have of thousands of Tesla owners.
Now, assuming Model 3 owners are a little bit
more than that, I bumped it up 5%.
We can play with these numbers
and you can see kind of, as I do that here,
it kind of shifts the cost and goes between them.
But there's really very little chance
that anyone will be charging 100% and in fact,
if you do, it could damage your battery and things
will change and all that, so it's really not
feasible for somebody to do that.
So it's unrealistic is kinda what I'm saying.
So there's your electricity cost, the cents
per kilo watt hour, the supercharger cost
in that same state, the cents per kilo watt hour
and again, that's an average if it's somewhere
that has a tiered pricing.
And then you just multiply those out
so this is how much in electricity you'll be paying
and the total monthly cost for your Tesla there.
So then you have your gas cost versus your Tesla cost.
So you can see that you have Alabama $70
and the Tesla cost would be $35.
And you can see that there's the price
difference there.
So these kind of all just go down
and again, we can adjust the watt hours per mile,
the miles per month, the percent of supercharge,
the miles per gallon, kind of all the parameters here.
Then if you want to see the same graph
broken down in a graphical format,
you can see that from low to high, the actual
comparison here, this is the percent savings
is what the bar represents,
Hawaii has the least electricity, super expensive,
gas is insanely expensive, so those things
make it kind of the worst case scenario
of 14% savings.
And the further down you go you have an average
of 47%, overall.
But notice there are none here,
no cases here where it goes negative.
Now, if you were to bump this up
to I think it was 55...
55, 60% so, if you live in Hawaii
and you charge at a supercharger 60%
of the time, for your Model 3 then you will be about...
You'll be losing about 2% compared to having a gas car
with 45 miles per gallon.
So, if you look down though, the average
is still 31% savings.
Now if you bump this up all the way to 100,
you're still on average, across all 50 states,
saving 17%.
Some states, yes, it is true,
you would be spending more money.
And again, that is not reasonable.
It's not practical and in fact,
Tesla won't let you do it because,
at a certain point, the supercharger
will damage your vehicle's battery
so they will limit how fast that charges
and how much you can charge.
So this isn't reality.
And even if you take it down to 50%,
you're still, on average, saving 35%
over a gas car.
A very big chunk.
Especially if you drive a lot.
So back in the real world where we're maybe
15%, you're saving almost 50% over a gas car.
So, Anton's analysis was based,
cherrypicking data based on false assumptions
and using incorrect values as well as
things like assuming that in 25 years
you'll still have your car and have to pay
for the battery and that the battery
technology will have remained at the constant
price which is just not true.
So, all in all, I don't know what he was thinking,
maybe, you know, he does, as he states,
have a short position on Tesla
so perhaps his article succeeded
in providing some kind of negative
press writeup which may have
hurt the stock a little bit more
and so he could make more money.
So always take that into consideration.
To be clear, I do not have any positions
on Tesla, I'm a fan of them, obviously
I'm an owner, but I do not have any actual
investment in Tesla stocks.
So I have nothing to gain by seeing them
succeed there, other than, you know,
the chance to buy a cool car.
So just to wrap up the analysis here,
he chose these six states.
And to quote the article, because those
would be the ones where most EV buyers
are anyways.
Hmm, I wonder how he figured that up.
You know, just finger to the wind
kind of thing.
He also used the dollars per kilo watt
from the Tesla superchargers in the states,
however a national average of dollars per gallon,
which again, is not apples to apples,
but just to amuse him, I filtered these data
down to those six states to see what they show.
Again, we're looking at an average
of 44% savings.
The average price per gallon, remember
what he used was $2.64 but the actual average
of price per gallon for these six states was $2.86,
so quite a bit more.
And the supercharger rate of 23.5, not 24.
Again, make falsifying information,
making false claims, however you guys
want to word it.
Then when you compare those graphically,
there you have it.
You know, Massachusetts is the worst one here,
saving 21%.
And then the highest one being Washington,
upwards of 62% savings compared to a gas car.
So, the findings here that in a real world scenario
as I've explained there, you'll save on average
47% on monthly fuel costs by owning a Tesla Model 3
over a high-mpg hybrid.
I'll be posting this online.
You guys can download the data,
work with these numbers,
play with them, whatever you wanna do,
twist and turn it, however you feel is fit.
Leave me a comment, let me know
what you think because these things
bother me when people try to use data
and skew it towards their financial benefit.
It's human nature, that's what a lot of people do,
I completely understand why they do it.
But that is also why I feel the need to respond
to these things, with the data I've done here,
with the analysis.
So, let me know what you guys think.
And we will continue on our journey here.