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Originally Posted by AgentTripleX
Well I thought about that too, but then I thought about how many road trips I've taken in the Elise. 2 in 4 years. That's it. I've taken it to LA and back twice. In the past I've actually rented a car to take to LA so I wouldn't put miles on whatever my car was at the time. It's actually cheaper to fly to LA now than drive a regular car, at least for me.
They do have a mobile connector for Tesla, but you're right it takes some time to charge, not instant like gas. For my purposes this car could work. I could drive back and forth to work 2 days before needing to charge. I would probably charge it every night like I do my cell phone though. It only takes about 3 hours to charge if you are using the connector that comes with the car. Based on night time rates is $0.02 a mile to charge it. I've been spending $200/week since starting my new job on gas. If I had an extra 110k sitting around right now I'd jump right on it. Unfortunately that is not the case and I still need to be responsible and buy a house.
I disagree with you about it being a luxury car. It's no Bentley and doesn't come close, it's not meant to be. I'm not sure if the Ferrari finish is nicer, but the Lamborghini one is for sure.
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the ferrari fit and finish is excellent, no comparison to the tesla.. I drove the convertible F430 a few weeks ago and the interior was beautiful. nevertheless the tesla will be placed in the luxury car category regardless as to whether they want it to be considered a 'niche' car. Musk said this himself when defending his reasoning behind redesigning the car as opposed to just using the elise chassis; he said that people expected more luxury and refinement from a car in the 100K range and the elise did not have it. The only problem is that luxury=weight and in an electric those two characteristics are at odds with each other.
Finally, if you are spending $200/wk on gas then you are short-changing your self hugely. You should know that your most valuable resource is your *time* and to spend 12 hours per week in traffic is an emormous waste of the one thing you cant get any more of. secondly at 800/month in gas you can easily divert that money towards getting a much nicer place in the city near your work. I live 4 blocks from my office which I did on purpose; I pay alot more to live here than I would for the same sized housing in the suburbs but the gas savings largely offset that. This is something that is a general cultural issue in the US; people spend too much time and money to live further away from work and it creates a large resource drain.