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Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

The experience of owning an 8 (or 18) year old car has a big impact on how I view quality and there are as many people in my shoes as there are in new car buyers'. But.... us old car drivers opinion isn't that commercially important. Resale-ability impacts new car sales to an extent, but a lot of manufacturers (looking at you peugot & renault!) are willing to make cars that have no value by year 8-10.

Mercedes & Tesla trade at the higher end, where just the impact on perceived quality (in addition to the quantifiable financial benefits of buying a car that will maintain value) is important. OTOH, EV are already knowingly buying a car that ranks poorly on that front. Who wants to buy a 2015 model EV in 2018? Range improvements alone would kill the price.

So... not sure it matters too much yet. Going forward.. who knows. I think tesla may already be "in for a penny, in for a pound."

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I just bought a 2015 Leaf, and it was because it was so absurdly cheap. Yes, the range isn't great (only about 90 miles), but everything else is fantastic. I paid $11k for something that feels worth $20k.

Brand New Chevy volt is ~20k new with dealer and tax rebates. Chevy offers 0 down 0% financing.

There's a fair argument that the volt is a better economical buy than the used leaf.

True, but 20k is not 11k. And that's the out-the-door price with lower than average mileage bought by someone who didn't want to haggle. You can get a 2015 Leaf with 30k miles for 9k.

Can confirm! I got a 2015 for $9600, with 24k miles. It is fantastic and has more than _twice_ the trunk space of the volt which was a deal killer for the volt. We are a two car family and the other car is gas only for long range & occasional dual usage. We're jamming the miles on to the ~free-to-operate leaf as much as we can though.

Any downsides other than range?

Stock tires are uninspired and the car doesn’t handle particularly well, but basically “no; they’re great!”

The torque is what amazes me, for something considered an econo-box.

I don't have any yet downsides yet, but if interested I'd suggest browsing the leaf owner forum https://www.mynissanleaf.com/ which has a lot of leaf hacker information & a wishlist section. Essentially my takeaway was: leaf owners love their cars by and large.

How can something that has 90 miles of range be worth 20k$ literally defies my comprehension...

Well, it depends on what you want a car for. :)

If you need a commuter car to get you to and from work every day, and errands/visiting people in town on the weekends, getting one with a fuel cost per mile of 15% of normal (or even free if your work offers charging) makes a lot of sense. The 90 mile range is rarely a limitation at all.

If you need a car for frequent long trips out of town, the 90 mile range would be a huge hindrance. In that case I would discourage you from buying a 2015 Leaf.

Bought a 2015 at 19k miles for $8,500. Definitely a good deal and a pleasure to drive.

I'm envious, it seems I got swindled! Oh well.

No, I just got very good deal. Most of what I saw for sale is about what you paid.

That $11K could put you in 2005 S600 with enough money to spare for 2 years of fuel.

You're not accounting for the difference in cost of maintenance. Which would be SIGNIFICANTLY higher for a 2005 S600. Oil changes, brakes, etc, all of which do not apply to the Leaf, plus all the things that are statistically very likely to be wrong with or break on a 2005 vehicle.

> (looking at you peugot & renault!) are willing to make cars that have no value by year 8-10

But if we're being honest the money you lose after a decade is a lot less then the money you saved when you purchased it.

Is that true, though? Here (UK) Kia and Hyundai offer seven year warranties, and most of their products are competitive against Peugeot/Renault.

They mostly offer those long warranties because they severely damaged their brands with the quality of the products they rolled out initially. So now they have to give huge warranties to offset the meme that Hyundai and Kia will not survive even a few years out of warranty without major work.

It apparently is a viable path for a company to enter the auto market though, as I think they've transitioned well over the last couple decades into respectable auto-makers with standard quality. That probably makes them a good purchase since you can still get those warranties for the time being. Honestly, I thought they would be phasing them out a decade ago.

I think the brands that did this best are Audi and Skoda, they went from pariah status to nearly best in their class. Both were classic examples of turnaround management by VW.

... and back to pariah.

Not judging by the sales numbers:

https://www.motor1.com/news/238839/vw-sales-record-q1-2018/

No, not really. More popular than ever if anything.

I was not aware that Audi had pariah status..?

Before the VW take-over they had what was probably the worst rust issues in the industry with the exception of Fiat.

Unintended acceleration…

Hyundai and Kia and now starting to challenge even the German car manufacturers with their i30N and Stinger cars.

In fact, they specifically poached a number of former executives from BMW's M division to lead those projects.

But I thought we were talking about different things. Mainly the value of the car after 8-10 years, long after any warranty expires. Low priced cars don't have much resale value after a decade because they had lower value as new. And that's a lot of money saved with the initial purchase.

But when it comes to warranty you should take care, people imagine this is like the warranty on their phone. It's not, basically it says the body won't rust. The rest is covered by dozens of other clauses that more or less just guarantee than almost nothing gets replaced under warranty.

It is an issue with resale value. But I drive about 12k miles per year, and the battery should last 500k miles. My last ICE car survived maybe 120k miles before being a write off. There's a good possibility that I'll only need to buy one Tesla for the rest of my driving days.

Or you could buy a Lexus. They seem to be good for a million plus miles.

Yes true, but a half million miles will do and I'd rather spend the time in a Tesla.

Auto makers very much care about resale value since it is pretty much the entire basis upon which a lease is priced, which is a huge deal considering ~30% of new cars are leased.

Furthermore, almost 80% of electric cars are leased [1]. When electric cars aren't being made for compliance reasons, or to lower the overall emissions of an auto maker's fleet (and thus subsidized in some way), then resale value will be of critical importance.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-03/why-most-...

that's only in the US

It's also exclusive of Tesla, who doesn't release lease vs buy numbers

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