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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

You can have a model S in the UK for 395 pounds(¬500USD) /month. That's a 7-year contract, but given the 8 year warranty on the car, I don't really see a problem here. And 395/month is very affordable if you have a job in IT, even outside london(I make waaaaaay less than any of the figures in the article above and my monthly payments for the car are larger than this).

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Where do you see a 7 year contract in the UK? The longest financing term offered by Tesla is 48 months, you can get a Tesla Model S 60D/70 for about 350-400 GBP a month (after a down payment (of about 20K + another similar payment at the end), but I haven't seen a 7 year contract any where.

NVM I found the 7 year leasing program.

After a down payment of ~16,000 pound, you get to a monthly payment of 622 GBP for 71 months for a Tesla Model S 60 (not D). http://imgur.com/a/1Asgz

This isn't "affordable" by any means, and this is the most basic Model S, without AWD, autopilot or any other upgrade package.

Yes, you're right, I mixed those two up - you can have the car for 395/month on a 4-year long Purchase Hire Contract, or for about 600 on a 7-year old lease. My mistake.

The autopilot option changes the monthly payments in almost negligible way though.

That's really stupid. If you need to pay for a car for 7 years, you can't afford the car. Buy a used Civic and save your money.

>That's a 7-year contract, but given the 8 year warranty on the car

How do you account for the implied risk that Tesla doesn't exist in 8 years? That's a long ways away, and there's no guarantee they make it.

You could buy additional insurance if you're actually worried about this.

Or you could short their stock as a hedge, and buy some options to cover the upside risk.

Or you could buy the car using a title-backed no-recourse loan, pushing this risk onto the lender.

Or you could lease the car rather than buy it.

If you lease the car, the monthly price doubles.

There's got to be an arbitrage opportunity here.

47,208 a year if you lease your car out 30 days a month on Turo.

7 or 8 years is an extremely long time to finance a car. Do we know how much battery life will be left after 8 years?

> Do we know how much battery life will be left after 8 years?

That is the warranty period so I don't think you'll have any trouble:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/infinite-mile-warranty

> the 85 kWh Model S, our most popular model by far, now has an 8 year, infinite mile warranty on both the battery pack and drive unit. There is also no limit on the number of owners during the warranty period.

There's a difference between having a warranty, and getting work paid for by a warranty.

I'm sure that in UK "warranty" means that all work and the unit itself is paid for by the manufacturer in case of a fault. If only parts were covered, but not labour, it would have to be described as such,

Tesla is really good about warranty work. You don't pay for a thing--labor and parts are included.

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