Here's a page on their website that lets you figure out what goes into the $500/month figure: http://www.teslamotors.com/true-cost-of-ownership
Parts are a little surprising (e.g. it assumes your time is worth $100/hour).
Parts are a little surprising (e.g. it assumes your time is worth $100/hour).
Even with the extremely optimistic numbers Tesla comes up with, this was still a luxury; without them, it's a luxury I'd be embarrassed about.
Kinda funky numbers for sure, but it is basically marketing. This is as honest as any car commercial.
If you're talking about the car owner's time, then perhaps, but given the price of the car, it's likely that whoever is buying it makes close to $100/hr (or possibly when combined with their financial partner).
30k miles/yr driven. ~20k in the Bay Area, ~10k on road trips (where Superchargers would be nice)
$5 gas, $0 electricity cost (assume charging at work) 60 minutes/day savings on commute, which is the big thing. Most of the East Bay is HOV-3, and with 2 people in the car, still no HOV access. It easily would save 20-30 minutes twice a day. On 101/237, I'm usually 1 person when I want HOV-2 access. Opening up 5-9am and 3-7pm everyday with time savings would be a huge plus.
The cheaper solution to this is to get a 2-seat gasoline car or a Leaf, though. The even faster solution is a motorcycle, but factoring in risk of death/injury on a motorcycle in rush hour on 580/80/101 and it's not worth it.
I also agree that it's non-sensical to pitch this as a $500 car. The numbers required by their calculator to reach that level are absurd. For example, a 535i gets 20/24/30 mpg (city/combined/hwy). Tesla's calculator starts at 19 MPH. That's silly.
And the Tesla calculation completely ignores the other side of the ledger: the time spent plugging and unplugging your car. Even if it only takes 30 seconds to plug it in and 30 seconds to unplug it, that adds up to half an hour per month, not much different than the time spent going to the gas station.