- It's been one year since I got my Model 3,
and I thought it'd be a good time, if ever,
to go through and just see how much money
I've actually spent
on everything I've done to it,
repairs, maintenance, fuel, et cetera.
And we'll see how that compares
to a regular gas car.
Let's go.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so repairs and maintenance.
This is a big one,
a lot of people spend a lot of money on these,
on their cars,
however with Tesla's there's really not much
'cause the cars are so simple.
There's like three moving parts in the motor,
and the battery stuff lasts forever,
so it's one of those things
where you don't spend much money,
and in the first 12 months
I spent zero dollars on maintenance.
However, I did have a repair.
And so the repair I actually have
is on this side of the car.
Now you can see that my car is actually lowered.
Look at how low this is right here.
You can see that that thing is just
right butt up against there.
Now that's not what caused it,
it was my own dumb fault,
but I was in a parking lot and I pulled out,
and the curb, just like this one here,
the curb actually just kinda bit the car.
I just kinda went, almost like hydroplaned on it,
and right here you can't really see,
it's all, they did an amazing job repairing it.
It was all just torn up,
so I had to get that done.
I did a video on it,
I'll put a link to it there so you can
check it out if you wanna know more.
That I filed an insurance claim for.
It cost $750 for me out of pocket.
It cost about $6000 for the actual repair though,
because it was just a very difficult thing to repair.
Now luckily they didn't have to
order any parts,
because everything I know, everyone talks about,
parts are kind of on hold at this point.
We'll see, depending on when you're watching this video,
hopefully that's changed,
but I spent $750 in an insurance claim for the repair,
and $0 in maintenance in the first year.
And that's actually pretty common
because BMW, Mercedes, a lot of these
kinda higher end cars that you would kinda
put here with this one
have a similar plan where I think the first two,
sometimes three years you don't
have to pay anything for maintenance,
so I think so far we're kind of even Steven here.
And the next category to talk about
is depreciation,
and this typically is the one that actually
kinda costs you the most.
It really only costs you money
when you sell the car,
but you know,
most people, three, four years,
five years tops, they're gonna sell their car,
at least in the U.S.
So what I wanted to look at was my Model 3,
which I paid 60,000 for almost exactly,
and just compare that to what this same car
is selling now.
So I went to Car Gurus,
and I doubt this is gonna work
'cause this browser totally sucks.
It doesn't work at all, at all.
Tesla you really should fix that browser by the way.
It's a bad experience.
Anyways, I went to Car Gurus,
I went to Auto Trader,
and I looked the average,
I think I found 12 vehicles and the average
resale price right now was $50,000.
It was like 49,950 or something like that.
So that means I have a $10,000 loss
or depreciation cost in the first year.
Which may sound like a lot,
but some cars have all the way up to like 40 percent
the minute you drive it off the lot,
so, 16%, what it comes out to is not bad.
I compared it to BMW 3 Series, the 340i Sedan specifically
on Edmonds.com,
and that one had 26% loss on it.
So, a bigger dollar amount,
a different price point,
but overall a 10% more depreciation
on a, I guess comparable car.
You know, it varies kinda how you
categorize these things,
but you get my point.
The depreciation on it, yep, it was a lot,
but really it was better than to be determined,
and autolist.com actually recently published
a study on this,
and they are a site like Car Gurus and Auto Trader
that list cars and they do these cool studies,
and they showed again that the Model 3
and the Model X and S all do better
that their peers.
So, I feel like I came out ahead on this.
50 grand right now, if I were to sell this
with all the modifications,
I'll talk about that in a second.
I could probably do a little bit better
and maybe upgrade to Performance.
Okay, let's talk about the loan now.
So as far as the loan goes,
we were real lucky to be able to
put down $33,000 on the $60,000 it cost.
We did that by selling some Ethereum
as well as selling Jenny's old car.
So we were able to kind of pay it off
and have a low loan amount, $27,000,
which maybe doesn't sound that low,
but when you're talking about a $60,000 car,
it's pretty good.
And that gave us a $700 a month payment,
and if we had that going for all 12 months
we would have paid $8400 plus around $450 in interest.
However in November I decided that was it,
I kinda had enough of the monthly payments,
wanted that monthly cash flow,
and so I just wrote a check and paid off
the remainder which was about 20 somethin
thousand dollars, in November.
So at this point, 2019, January,
car's paid off,
and we're kinda free and clear.
Back to the depreciation number,
if we did want to sell for 50K,
we would legit get 50K and throw that
towards another car if we wanted to.
So, something to think about there,
but regardless of what car I bought,
that would have been the same,
so I can't really compare it to anything else
other than what interest rate I would have
got with a different car,
which should have been the same.
I just went to my credit union,
got the loan, and I was done with it.
So, there you have it.
Now insurance is a different story.
So as far as insurance goes,
it was just over a hundred bucks a month.
We spent just north of 1200 bucks in the past 12 months.
That's a little bit less than our Model S,
which I think is around 120 a month
last time I checked,
and this was pretty common.
Now we have three cars in there,
and we have the homeowners insurance,
and life insurance.
We're AAA members, we have good credit scores,
et cetera, et cetera,
so we get a lot of deals and a lot of discounts.
So if you're paying a lot more than that,
maybe check and see,
other insurance providers out there.
This isn't a plug, I use Farmers,
just for reference.
This is not a plug for them,
but if you want to check them out,
they might be a good option for you.
Tell them I sent ya.
As far as insurance goes I think it
would have been pretty much the same
with a similar car.
Again, so many factors go into that,
it's really hard to say what it would've been otherwise.
A lot easier getting in here
than it is getting out.
My new ride (laughs)
and so that brings is to fuel,
and that means charging of course
with the Tesla.
Most people, myself included,
charge the vast majority at home,
like I have set up here.
So for charging, I have the NEMA 1450 outlet,
which I installed previously
for my Model S, a while ago.
Now that was pretty expensive,
but I basically assumed that cost already
with my Model S, which I've had now
for three full years.
Per month I pay only about 26 bucks
in electricity for this vehicle.
That's because I have solar.
So I've got 16 panels up here.
They generate about 5 kilowatts
at peak sunlight,
which we get a lot of in San Diego,
so that covers all my electricity needs,
including the Model S and Model 3.
So calculating it out how much I drive,
et cetera, et cetera,
it comes out to be about 26 bucks a month,
and so that is extremely cheap.
Add that up over 12 months and I paid $312.
Now I also did some road trips,
in which case I had to pay for supercharging
which just pains me a little bit.
And that came out to 170 bucks,
so all in I'm about $482 for the
13,000 miles I drove for the past
12 months my Model 3.
So I pulled in some average gas prices
for my area here in San Diego,
and looked at what it would be
for a car that gets 30 miles per gallon,
and it comes officially to $1,543.
1,543, and that's probably not that bad honestly
for most people,
but that's 68% more than what I paid
for my Model 3.
So when you think about it,
68% in savings.
I don't drive a lot.
13,000 miles in a year I think is
right on average or just below average for the U.S.
So imagine you drive a lot,
saving almost 70% on fuel.
Of course that's predicated on having solar and all that,
but this is what I paid,
and that's kinda the point of this video,
to show you how much money I spent.
So overall, I'm pretty happy with this car.
My wife loves it.
She's driving it on a daily basis now,
and really enjoying it.
She loves parking it and all these things,
and we did a whole video on that
if you want to check out her thoughts
on owning it.
Cost wise, all that, I think it was a
pretty good deal.
There are a couple features I wish it had,
like the trunk being automatic,
or not being automatic, kinda lame.
You know little things like that.
For the price of the car I think
there could have been a few more
bells and whistles,
but I'm also a bit biased
because I'm coming from a Model S,
which has a lot more bells and whistles to it.
When you come from that, you come here,
you definitely feel like it's a step down,
but it's also better in other ways.
Like the driving experience is fantastic and all that.
Curious what you guys think.
Hope this was educational for you.
Hope you got something out of it.
If you're paying a lot for this,
and you were paying just barely anything
for a previous car,
I'm curious to know how that feels.
I know when you have these big kinda
monthly expenses,
for me personally it puts like a weight on me,
and that's why I ended up paying it off,
'cause I had the resources to do that,
and I just like having that,
I don't like having a lot of debt,
so I liked having that weight lifted off me.
Let me know what you guys think.
I'm curious and so I'll chat with you there
in the comments pretty soon.
And until then, don't forget,
when you free the data, your mind will follow.
See you back here in the next one.
(upbeat music)
Gas prices here in San Diego
- Where's Mama?