…and why they’re all FALSE! You may have some doubts about buying a Tesla, or maybe you’re considering grabbing yourself a Model 3 but your brother-in-law told you it’s a bad idea. This list will dispel some of the false rumors and misconceptions about this beautiful car! Don’t forget to scroll to the end and use my referral code to get 1,000 free miles of charging!
1. It’s only for the super-rich
Not anymore! Yes, the first Tesla Model S had a base price of $60,000 and didn’t have any financing options. However, a couple years ago, Elon Musk promised to produce a $35,000 Tesla in the near future. It took quite a bit longer than people expected, and many didn’t even believe him, but finally, that vision has been realized, with the base price of the Tesla Model 3 now standing at exactly $35,000. Of course, this is without all the bells and whistles, and without the coveted autopilot feature, but the reality is that you can now get a fully electric vehicle that will take you 220 miles per charge for a relatively affordable price. If you put $5,000 down, you’re looking at as little as $485 a month, according to Tesla’s estimation tool. Want to add the autopilot later? You can do that with the click of a button and $4,000 any time you want ($1,000 more than buying it initially).
2. There’s a long waiting list to get one
Also false! This was true several years ago, when the waiting times could be over a year, but now you can get your hands on the Model 3 in a matter of weeks. If you’re going with the base price, the “Standard Range,” you’re going to be waiting 6-8 weeks if you live in New York. If you spring for the “Standard Plus” for a couple thousand bucks extra, you’ll be behind the wheel in as little as a week!
3. It’ll be outdated in a few years
With high tech gadgets becoming such a large component in cars these days, especially Teslas, it’s easy to worry that the car will be outdated in a couple of years, much like a computer or a smartphone. Tesla goes out of their way to produce hardware that is capable of being upgrade though software patches and updates. Take this huge performance upgrade for example. You don’t need to be jealous of the newer model your cousin got last week, because chances are your older model will still get the same upgrades. Maybe some minor tweaks will be made to future models, but I don’t expect any that will outdate a Model 3 in less than ten years.
4. It’s unsafe
First of all, this is ridiculous. Tesla has been granted a five-star safety rating by the NHTSA, making it one of the safest cars in the world. You might also be thinking “Wait – we have all these laws that you can’t look at a phone while you’re driving. Now they’re putting a 15-inch touchscreen on the dash? One you’re supposed to operate while driving?” Well, all the information you would normally have on the dash are displayed on the screen, and changing the climate and audio controls has been on touch screens in cars for years. Once you are used to it, it won’t be difficult to adjust the radio or climate using the screen. You need to look at the knobs in a normal car anyway, so this isn’t any more distracting. For more in-depth things like plotting a route or making a playlist, we recommend pulling over or doing it ahead of your trip, us tike you would on a smartphone.
5. There’s no way the auto pilot can be accurate…
Letting the car drive itself on the highway can be scary. But after spending some time behind the wheel, it’s definitely accurate enough to trust. You should absolutely never take your eyes off the road in case something does go wrong though, and in case you need to, disengaging the autosteer and cruise control is as easy as tapping the brakes. The car even reminds you to put your hands on the wheel every few minutes, to make sure you’re paying attention.
6. Road trips are impossible
If you’re opting to at least spring for the Standard Plus on the Model 3, you’re looking at 240 miles of range per charge. That’s just enough to get from Boston to New York City. But what if you want to take it further? What about a road trip to the Keys for Spring Break? Hello, Supercharger Stations. Tesla will automatically plan your route to stop at Supercharger Stations along the way. In August 2018, there were 10,836 Superchargers in operation at 1,339 stations around the world. Tesla has announced that is plants to double this by the end of 2019. If you were to charge from 0% to 100% it would take around 75 minutes, but that isn’t the most time-efficient method since the car will slow down its charging after around 75%. The recommended way to do it is to charge up to 80% whenever you get down to 20%. This can be done in about 30 minutes, giving you just enough time to grab some food and use the bathroom every 150 miles or so. Admittedly this takes longer than filling up on gas, but it’s worth the money saved.
7. They’re tiny and have very little storage
When you first look inside the Model 3, it does seem that there isn’t much storage space. Open the trunk, and the space seems pretty small. But upon closer inspection, you’ll see that the bottom of the trunk opens up to more storage space. Added to that, in the place where an engine would be on a traditional car, there’s an additional storage compartment. You’re still looking at a bit less storage than a typical sedan, but it’s not too shabby.
8. Electricity costs the same as gas anyway
Nope. Let’s say that on a 2019 Honda Accord, you get around 26 MPG on average. That’s about 4 gallons to 100 miles, costing about $11 as of this writing. The Tesla Model 3 takes 27 kWh to go 100 miles, which currently costs $7.56 at Supercharger Stations. Rounding down, that’s a savings of around $3.50 every time you go 100 miles, or about 3.5 cents per mile. It may not sound like a lot, but after a year of driving 15,000 miles, you’ve already saved $525. And that’s just at Supercharger Stations. Charging at home can be much cheaper, depending on the price of your electricity at home.
9. It takes forever to charge the battery
This is both true and false. As previously mentioned, it would take around 75 minutes to charge from 0% to 100% at a Supercharger Station. You wouldn’t ever really do that, but that’s the maximum you’d ever wait. The car’s navigation system will automatically find the best route for you to charge along the way, including recommending how long to charge for. At home though, it can take as long as four days to charge on a standard 120 v outlet. With a “Level 2” charger, the kind many washers and dryers use, you can get 9-52 miles of range per hour of charging, which should be enough to get you to and from work the next day. Consider what kinds of plugs you have at home, and how close you live to Supercharger Station before you buy.
10. They’re just as bad for the environment as a traditional gas car
No way! There seems to be a lot of people out there who claim that the generation of electricity for electric vehicles has just big of a carbon footprint as any other car. Well, a little research is all it takes to show that gas cars produce, on average, twice as much carbon as electric vehicles, including the cost of producing the car.
There you have it! 10 Reasons Not to get a Tesla, and why they’re all just plain wrong!
Interested in getting a Tesla, and want 1,000 free miles of charging at Supercharger Stations? Use this code!
Have any of your own tips? Any other concerns about buying a Model 3? Leave them in the comments below!
