> Plus, the average Tesla driver is currently probably a superior driver
I can play the conjecture game too.
The average Tesla driver is probably a worse driver than the average gas-powered car driver. Why? Because they have the disposable income to purchase a Tesla, which means they're probably less careful with their possessions (as they can presumably afford to replace them), plus the Model S is a sports car so they're probably driving faster and more carefree than your average person.
Not that I really believe this, but come on, your argument is completely made up.
100 million miles worth of driving is not a small number. After four years with a ~100 mile/workday commute, I put somewhat less than 100k miles on my car. Multiplying that out, it would take me over 40 years of driving at the same pace to reach 1 million miles and therefore well over 4,000 years of driving to reach the number of miles driven by Tesla owners.
So if I drove that 100 mile/workday commute for 4,000 years, something like this might happen approximately once.
Incidentally, I have seen, during said commute, the remains of an ordinary car that caught on fire. There was nothing left but a burnt skeleton of a car that appeared to be made of ashes. I'd rather be in the Tesla while it was still on fire than the burnt wreck I saw.
I do not understand your comment. This is the risk, as observed, measured with respect to a single person driving heavily. In other words, most people should expect less risk than this. You are correct that a larger population should expect more risk: there have certainly been more accidents than this overall, and a battery fire is not the only thing to worry about.
But risks must be compared to the relevant alternatives. Certainly, those who arrange their life such that they do not drive at all are removing a significant risk, as I can personally attest to having encountered several drivers who were, frankly, suicidal. I speak specifically of the person who pulled into a turning lane to pass (when I was already in it, stopped), and gunned it driving straight at me. By no means should you think that I am diminishing the very real risk we engage in every day while driving.
But most people measure risk by how easily they can imagine a scenario. As such, I offer this for you to contrast with the photos in the article: https://www.google.com/search?q=burnt+out+car&tbm=isch Such things are not uncommon and I have, personally, witnessed such. While measuring risk according to one's memory is a useful cognitive shortcut in many situations, but with the way our news sensationalizes things by highlighting unusual events and under-reporting common ones, it is not a useful metric.
You cant just compare fires in petrol cars driven 3 trillion miles a year with fires in tesla cars driven 100 million miles a year, its just not very representative. You can either take for example BMW and look up how many fires they had for a new 5 series in 100M miles driven and or let Tesla owners drive 3 trillion miles and see how numbers compare.
Just like Elon did it, it sounds nice but doesnt make a lot of sense.
You are correct that we have a higher confidence in the fire rate for gasoline cars. You are not correct in implying that we have little idea of the rate of fires in Tesla cars. We don't have '1 event' worth of data, we have '100 million miles' worth of data. That aside, yes, we should update our estimates based on future data as it is virtually certain that the numbers will fluctuate. Actually, they already have, based on there being more miles driven and no new reported fires. But few people remember to update their confidence based on a lack of events.
Yes and that includes all brands, used cars, old cars etc. Like i said, compare that with similar new cars like the new 5 Series or Benz E Series and i would guess numbers would be much closer.
If you have that data, feel free to share it so that we can compare the risk. I do not feel particularly threatened by a 'once in 4,000 years of heavy driving' type of event on a personal level, though if there were any evidence of systemic risk, I might be more concerned, though I do not own a Tesla. I also assume that there is some non-zero risk of a more catastrophic accident, which will then cause further hand-wringing, but I expect it to occur in a crash that was unlikely to be survivable or for it to involve someone doing something completely moronic. Or quite possibly both things at once and then some.
On an individual level, I am far more worried about identifying and avoiding the disturbingly large number of idiotically suicidal drivers I have met. And I mean that very seriously: as soon as I identify someone driving erratically, I find some way to get away from them, whether it means forcing them to pass me, taking an unplanned exit, or what have you, I will make sure I put distance between us.
But I remain unconcerned about a single report of a small car fire when there are many worse ones every single year (if not every day...)
I agree with you. My disposable income is not enough to buy a Tesla, but it is enough for a MINI Cooper. I drive it like I stole it, to quote my mechanic.
I drive a Tesla. It's a much bigger car and a much more expensive car than my old prius. As such, I am terrified to drive it. I'm neither superior nor inferior of a driver as a result of purchasing and driving a tesla, but I'm certainly more afraid of loss than I used to be -- both the loss of money, and the loss of time I get to spend driving my Tesla should I be in an accident.
It's funny to hear someone say this. I just went from a Toyota Camry (a relatively big car) to Toyota Prius-C, and I have the opposite feelings. Doing a shoulder check is very hard with the Prius, because of the weird back of the car. I now as a result hesitate driving it a lot, instead opting to use my brother's Corolla.
I do use the Prius in the city though, I easily get 75+ mpg when supermiling.
I would counter with, "How dare you assume that all Tesla drivers have disposable income to throw around". I happen to be close to buying one and know a few other owners who are average middleish class people who normally would have bought a porsche or a tesla. I work in tech and as a result am paid pretty decent. Do I have disposable money (or my friends) to buy a Tesla Model S? No! However, given where I live and where I want to drive + the recharging stations, Tesla is a good option for me.
Do not assume just because someone is able to get enough money to buy something expensive,that they have tons of money. By that same logic, anyone who is able to buy a home is clearly flush with cash and able to throw it all around. Completely ridiculous.
The average yearly income in the US is $43,000. The base price of a Model S is $63,000. There is simply no way to afford a Tesla as an average, middle-class laborer without making massive tradeoffs in quality of life elsewhere. If you can afford a car that costs such an absurd amount of money, you are either living in squalor to afford it or you are not middle class. It's tiring to see people who are obviously the beneficiaries of economic privilege pretend as though they are "average." You are not, and to assert that you are demonstrates a fundamental ignorance about the difficulties that "average" people face.
As for the house argument, you and I both know that the two are totally incomparable. Putting a roof on your head is a much bigger priority than buying an electric supercar. People need to pay for shelter. They generally can't afford to pay a lot for luxury cars. If you argument is true, why isn't everyone buying $63,000 cars? (Not to mention the millions of people who can't even afford homes.)
Your posts demonstrates everything that is wrong with class stratification in America. I don't think you or your friends who elected to choose Teslas over Porches know what it means to be "average."
I know a local gardener/landscaper laborer in the SF bay area who makes $25 an hour in cash by working after hours. If a Tesla lease is $600 a month (the website says that, but it's based on some assumptions including where you live), he would have to work about five hours a week extra to afford a Model S.
That means this SF bay area laborer must give up a Saturday or Sunday afternoon every week, but it's hardly impossible "to afford" or a "massive tradeoff in quality of life." On the other hand, it's challenging to haul a few thousand pounds of mulch in a Tesla, I expect.
Ok, so if you commit tax evasion in an all-cash business, you too can work just an extra 1/2 week every month to lease a tesla, after factoring in the tax breaks EXCEPT... from my 5 minutes of research, the $7500 tax credit is not a refundable credit so in his all cash business if he's not at least paying $7500 a year in federal income taxes, he won't get the full benefit of that credit.
Oh, and the $600/mo assumes a $7100 down payment, which needless to say is far more than the average down payment on a car and is really more like what the average american puts down on a HOUSE. In other words: c'mon.
Not to mention the opportunity cost of that money. If you're making $25/hr in SF you do not have a high standard of living, especially when compared to your neighbors which, studies have shown, is exactly how we measure our own financial happiness.
In this case, the SF bay area fellow I know works five days a week for a landscape/gardening company and pays taxes on that income. ($25/hour cash is additional off-the-books income.) And, contrary to your research, California has a $10,000 incentive.
Though you're right about the down payment, so let's assume it will be a used Tesla and therefore cheaper. And you're right about the relative comparison point. But these were rough numbers, remember, and not intended to be a detailed argument as much as a refutation of the impossible "to afford" claim above.
Are you claiming that you have analyzed the Model S and found that due to money saved on gas it is financially cheaper than a conventional car over some timescale? If not, then I truly don't know what you're talking about.
I'm really confused by "average, middleish class people who normally would have bought a porsche or a tesla" - is that a typo? Did you mean "would not normally"? If not, your idea of "average middleish class people" is really oddly out of whack.
Many people by homes because of a calculation that owning a home is cheaper in the long run than paying rent over that same period of time. Many people buy homes not based on such a calculation and simply because they have disposable income and owning a home is nice. Many people also buy homes based on neither financial decision-making nor disposable income, and I seem to recall this having some negative impacts on our economy a few years back, which may make it a poor analogy to why it makes sense to buy a Tesla (or a porsche?!) without disposable income.
I work in technology and would be considered by some (not myself) a Linux expert. I am most certainly not upper class, but I am by no means lower class. I have several friends who also work in tech in similar roles for financial companies (like myself). One of them drives a BMV M5, one of them drives a used porsche 911 turbo. It isn't that a porsche or bmw is more or less expensive. It is something that they save up to buy for themselves. A normal car or a tesla both solve my needs, but a tesla is sure as hell a lot cooler for the sheer amount of tech and engineering. I don't really see where you think I claimed to see any money would be saved by a model S. I never alluded to anything of the sort. But I think this is OT and isn't really productive. Lets focus on tech here at HN and leave the flames for /., where they belong.
This is why politicians use "middle class" to describe who they're fighting for; it's a term that nearly everybody thinks of themselves as belonging to.
You certainly can buy a BMW or a Porsche if you make $50,000 a year, especially if you're single and living in a cheap part of the country. A used BMW 3-series will in many cases be less than a new Honda Odyssey minivan. But you'll be shopping on the used marketplace.
You are far, far better off than you think you are.
You'll probably see the posts saying this to you as condescending, but if you can even think of purchasing a Model S you're in a very exclusive group of people.
When people talk about a Silicon Valley "bubble," part of what they're talking about is that a Tesla driver, BMW M5 driver, and Porsche 911 driver can believe that they are "average middleish class people."
When one tiny sliver of society (web engineers) simultaneously wields so much influence (as web companies do) and is so cut off from the reality of America (as you apparently are), it doesn't bode well.
This is so true. I'm currently a student and am sort of terrified to join the workforce in this industry. I really have no desire to surround myself with people who are so ignorant of and inured to the way real fucking people live. As someone who spent the majority of their childhood in poverty and was homeless for an extended period of time, this sort of hubris is profoundly saddening. It's very upsetting how abundant this form of arrogance is in the tech industry.
Luckily, there's a vast, vast array of options other than going to Silicon Valley. Any city decent sized city around the globe will have options available.
Outside of a couple critical mass areas in the US -- I'm thinking SV, greater Boston, NYC (just because everyone there is in their own little bubble ;) ) -- it's just another job.
And if you're not in the US, I wouldn't even know where this sort of SV halo exists.
If you make >100k, I can assure you, you are not middle class. You are part of the "not rich enough" class. This class has a lot of money and can reasonably do anything they want, but compare themselves to the ultra rich and think "I'm not rich". The problem is they are always looking up and forget to look down.
I grew up in a ~30k household in the 90's. Something I would call lower middle class. Upper middle class is probably ~70k-100k.
Please tell me you're taking into account cost of living here.
$100k does not go very far in San Francisco and Manhattan. Nobody making $100k in those places could reasonably afford a Tesla without severe over-spending (which they're welcome to do if they want to--whatever floats your boat). If you view the middle class as owning detached single family homes with yards, you would be lower middle class at best in those cities at $100k. If your spouse also made $100k, you could afford the crappiest single family home that was still livable.
But it's a really good salary in Denver or Houston; you could definitely find a nice house to buy and afford comfortably, though it might have a bit of a commute. If your spouse also made $100k, you could afford a nice home in any neighborhood with no commute.
And it might nearly qualify you as wealthy in a small rural town of 15k people total, where you would never need to spend more than $150k on any house.
Here in SF, housing costs are significantly higher. Other costs are somewhat higher. But you know what isn't? Mass produced consumer goods for one. An xbox (or tesla) costs the same whether you make $100k in SF or $50k in middle America.
You know what else? Travel. Domestic and international travel is a LOT more affordable when you're making $100k in SF.
And a big one: Retirement. You sock away your SF salary for 40 years and then retire in a cheaper COL area with no state income tax.
The truth is, even here, $100k is a lot of money. It really is. It's not rich by any stretch, but it's certainly not average middle class living. It is frustrating that a couple making over $200k can hardly buy 1000sq ft house while staying inside 30% (of gross income) housing budget, a metric widely seen as "affordable housing." But still, on balance, that couple making $200k is doing very, very well.
And the truth is, there are a lot of engineers here that, with liquidity events (which might just mean vesting your RSU's in an already public company), are earning $200k a year. That literally puts you in the top 1% of wage earners. (But not in THE "1%" of course which is usually a term referring to net worth and not gross income. But still.)
Edit:
The math is different of course if/when you add children to the mix. But I deliberately left them out, because in reality, it's just not a common lifestyle choice in San Francisco.
I wasn't talking about people making $200k, though. I was talking about people making $100k, because that's the number cherry picked by the person I was replying to.
And, yes, of course I'm aware that a Model S is the same price no matter where you buy it, to a first approximation. The point is that housing is so expensive in the Bay Area that you can actually end up having less disposable income left over for your car than someone making $20k less than you on paper in a much cheaper city and in a state with lower (or no) income taxes (Washington, Texas, maybe a few others?). If you don't believe me, you need to just sit down with a calculator that will do taxes and everything, look up comparable rents, and do the math. You sound like you might be surprised.
"You sock away your SF salary for 40 years and then retire in a cheaper COL area with no state income tax."
Small correction -- state income tax in CA is a big deal even if you're saving for retirement. And once you retire, you presumably won't care what the state income tax is.
Retirement savings goes into tax advantaged accounts like 401ks and iras. This is pre tax income. You pay the taxes at the end, when you're drawing from your accounts during retirement.
Not necessarily; you might have chosen a Roth for individual retirement savings. The contribution limit on that type of account is effectively higher than a traditional IRA, since it's expressed in post-tax dollars - very useful for someone trying to stash away as much as possible. Once the money is in the account, it grows tax-free.
But for those people, taxes are immediate rather than deferred.
Honestly, from the sound of it, you just googled retirement plans. :)
Actually, Roth IRAs are limited to $5000 a year per person, and once your income reaches ~$110k you can't deposit into a Roth at all. The vast majority of private retirement dollars are saved in 401k accounts that have have a cap much higher than in a Roth. Three times higher.
And actually, if you do the math (or just go read the math) you'll see that there is very little difference in your total retirement funds whether you use a pre-tax or post-tax account. This is because in a pre tax account you have the advantage of earning capital gains on the IRS's dime. The wisest choice is of course to use both if you can. Though many many people living in this area, due to income restrictions, cannot.
Anyway, I intended my reply to you as just honestly informative. I'm happy that you now are informed, but there was no reason to say "uhh, i mean a roth. yeah. a roth."
You couldn't be further off the mark. I've contributed to a Roth IRA for years, so I know you're incorrect about the individual contribution limit (it's $5,500 now). I live in the Bay Area. I replied to your comment because I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about this exact situation, and you responded in a rude and patronizing manner. That's not why I come to HN.
My reply was in the context of the $100k earner mentioned earlier, who would not be restricted from contributing to a Roth. Our hypothetical young tech worker is going to expect his or her real salary (and tax rate) to go nowhere but up as the years roll on. It's not bizarre to imagine this person might choose Roth rather than traditional for individual savings, independent of any 401k they might be contributing to.
There is only one way to read your comment:
"Small correction -- state income tax in CA is a big deal even if you're saving for retirement. And once you retire, you presumably won't care what the state income tax is."
You didn't qualify that! You added a "small correction" that was anything but. And yes, you got me, I didn't realize that for 2013 (possibly 2012?) the Roth limit was increased to $5500. Still not much stacked against the $24,000 I saved in my tax deferred accounts last year.
Listen man, i'm not one for silly debates on the internet, so go ahead and have the last word. But If you're going to add a "small correction" that is not really a correction, you should expect some disagreement.
Perhaps what you really meant was "That's true, unless you chose a Roth IRA as your only form of retirement savings. In that case, current tax rates matter and future tax rates don't."
That still glosses over the fact that I'm talking generally and you're talking about a specific, somewhat rare scenario. But at least it's accurate. As it was, had I not replied to you, a casual reader would've read my post, then yours, and walked away assuming that retirement savings is taxed at your current tax rate, in your current state of residence, when in reality it's just not so.
Exactly. Also, California is the highest-taxed state in the republic, so adjust that pre-tax salary of $100K downward a bit more in real terms.
Consumer goods like cars and laptops and TVs will cost the same, to a first approximation, anywhere in the continental U.S. But in some coastal areas, you have real estate costs that are 20x that of cheaper areas with salaries/compensation packages that are generally not 20x higher. In central Pennsylvania towns the median household income, for instance, tends to be around $26K and the median house cost is $64K, meaning houses are 2.5X median income.
In Palo Alto, on the other hand, the median house cost is around $2.25M, and the median family income is around $160K, meaning houses are 13.75X median income. Part of this are older PA families who bought when land was cheap many decades ago and are grandfathered in with lower tax rates, but part of this is also people who are stretching their finances dangerously to be able to afford there. (Even though those $2.25M median homes are often smaller than the national average, measured by square footage.)
It's possible to make $100K in the SF bay area and be, in real terms, poorer than someone making half that in central Pennsylvania.
He was referring to the Hacker News demographic, where these places are not such an outlier, and whether or not living in a place like San Francisco puts you in an elite class you still could not reasonably afford both a nice place to live and a Tesla there on $100k, which was my original point.
But I don't really understand why living in an expensive urban area automatically puts one in an elite class. The standard of living is not much better than other places for one thing--what you gain in diversity is lost in housing conditions. Also, it's not like $100k wages there are super rare. You don't need to be a 4.0 Ivy League graduate to score a livable wage in San Francisco. That's the starting salary for a lot of professions in cities like that, not just software developers. Police officers in the SFPD can make as much as a Twitter engineer fresh out of Stanford: http://www.sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1655
Cost of living is always a factor. I live in the bay area. The salary of a programmer is usually 6 figures here. Granted it's almost impossible to buy a home but if you are frugal with your rent ( for instance getting roommates or living further from your job or in a less hip neighborhood) you have a pretty large amount of disposable income. Teslas don't cost less in South Dakota than northern California. I think cost if living is sometimes overstated because besides housing I don't find other critical staples like food, insurance, utilities to differ appreciably by state. If you want to own THEN the situation changes dramatically.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Having to move far out and getting several roommates just to swing the payments on your Model S is not exactly my idea of comfortably affording the car.
I wouldn't buy a Tesla on $100k in North Dakota either. Maybe, if I felt like blowing through money, I'd get a BMW 3 series or Audi A4, both of which are still considerably cheaper than a Model S.
I'm not disagreeing with you re: the Tesla S is way out of reach of someone "only" making $100k.
I was just pointing out that besides housing (especially owning) the cost of almost everything in CA is the same if you move somewhere where the cost of living is lower yet the salaries elsewhere are significantly less. So there is an opportunity to save a lot of money if you are willing to compromise somewhat on your living conditions.
I suppose it depends on whether you think it's important to own your home and/or you mind having roommates. When I first moved to CA I had severe sticker shock re: the rents so I rented a room in nice houses with other young professionals for the first 5 or so years I lived here.
Wha? A low-end Prius is ~$20k. A low-end Tesla is ~$65k. The US median household income is ~$45k.
If you can afford to spend the average household's entire annual income on a car coolness upgrade, then yes, you have disposable income to throw around, and no, you're not middle class.
You're missing the point - he's not actually making that argument, he's showing how easy it is to make any argument if you back it up with anecdotal conjecture rather than data.
Exactly. I rather suspect that Tesla drivers are actually comparable to other drivers, rather than being demonstrably better or worse, but the only way to know would be to actually conduct a study on the subject.
They will be demographically better if they're older, simply due to experience. If you look at insurance, the ridiculously expensive demographic is the male <25-year-old segment. If tesla drivers are underrepresented here - likely, since they're a luxury car at the moment - then yes, it's pretty safe to say that tesla drivers are more experienced, safer drivers.
I can play the conjecture game too.
The average Tesla driver is probably a worse driver than the average gas-powered car driver. Why? Because they have the disposable income to purchase a Tesla, which means they're probably less careful with their possessions (as they can presumably afford to replace them), plus the Model S is a sports car so they're probably driving faster and more carefree than your average person.
Not that I really believe this, but come on, your argument is completely made up.