Counter Productive Tesla Canada Site

I personally agree. I hate showing the price after "savings" and I prefer to see everything as is with after savings in a smaller font below the actual price with a clear summary of breakdown.

It is the Tesla Marketing Department's way of saying that even though we have the wherewithal to manage the purchase of a $75k+ vehicle, we aren't smart enough to consider fuel savings for ourselves.

I agree, I don't like the "fine print" aspect, feels a little dishonest.

On the other hand, at 70-80,000km/yr the math should be pretty straightforward!

The wording isn't as bad as it once was, with the full real price second on the page on the right side (or at least it does in Alberta, I used to have to tell it I wasn't somewhere with a rebate every time I opened the page). I do however agree with everyone here. This is an extremely slimy tactic, reminiscent of all the sleazy dealers Tesla claims to be nothing like.

If I can't hand you a cheque for the number you list and get the car, don't list that as the price of the car.

The other sleazy tactic they've recently brought in was unbundling the "destination fee", The ONLY reason that should ever be separate is if they give you the option of going and picking the vehicle up instead of having it delivered and saving that fee. If it's not optional, just include it in the price. Don't try to scam me.

I can see where people are coming from...in fact my wife thought the car was cheaper than it was which was a good thing

However I am not sure what the big deal is....take 70,000kms divide it by the number of KMS per tank on average and a lot a per litre dollar value and you have a good estimate of the yearly savings.

But electricity will not be insignificant at 80,000 km per year. The guy will also have to be comfortable withe Superchargers. Assuming the guy works 230 days per year then 80,000km equates to 348 km per day (assuming nothing on off days). The Model S may not be the right car for him as many days he will be needing a charge to make it home, especially in the winter.

allanhof said:

However I am not sure what the big deal is....take 70,000kms divide it by the number of KMS per tank on average and a lot a per litre dollar value and you have a good estimate of the yearly savings.

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That would be a very bad idea. If you want to know the savings you also have to account for the added costs. your electricity cost will go up by 70,000km multiplied by number of wh per km multiplied by price per watt hour (and don't forget to also add the portion of all the non electricity dynamic fees on your bill, because that doubles my electric cost from the quoted rate)
Then you also have to look at how the MS compares for maintenance and insurance costs to your previous vehicle (in many cases it is much more expensive to maintain with the $600 maintenance fee plus high tire costs) and insurance is often higher as well.

When I do the math the MS will cost me dearly every year in comparison to my existing vehicle, at 70,000km/yr the math would change, but it's not as simple as calculating how much gas you buy a year and subtracting it from the price of the MS. Even using Tesla's math doesn't remotely work when I run the numbers as their guess SEVERELY underestimates the cost of electricity by going with the average electricity price but ignoring the average additional per kwh fees.

A great site with a cost model that you can adapt and plug in your own numbers to, is available at Tesla Model S Cost of Ownership vs. Honda Odyssey

That's what I used as a starting place, and then made my own changes. I'm not saying all the assumptions in that cost model are accurate but will at least let you compare vehicles using cost of electricity vs. gas, and factor in things like maintenance.

green1 said:

That would be a very bad idea. If you want to know the savings you also have to account for the added costs. your electricity cost will go up by 70,000km multiplied by number of wh per km multiplied by price per watt hour (and don't forget to also add the portion of all the non electricity dynamic fees on your bill, because that doubles my electric cost from the quoted rate)
Then you also have to look at how the MS compares for maintenance and insurance costs to your previous vehicle (in many cases it is much more expensive to maintain with the $600 maintenance fee plus high tire costs) and insurance is often higher as well.

When I do the math the MS will cost me dearly every year in comparison to my existing vehicle, at 70,000km/yr the math would change, but it's not as simple as calculating how much gas you buy a year and subtracting it from the price of the MS. Even using Tesla's math doesn't remotely work when I run the numbers as their guess SEVERELY underestimates the cost of electricity by going with the average electricity price but ignoring the average additional per kwh fees.

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All of this is the long way of saying that you have expensive electricity in Alberta.

It's less of an issue in B.C. Especially if you charge for free at public charging stations.

PoweredByRain said:

All of this is the long way of saying that you have expensive electricity in Alberta.

It's less of an issue in B.C. Especially if you charge for free at public charging stations.

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Back when our electricity was "the cheapest in the country" at 7c/kwh I looked at my girlfriend's bill in new westminster BC, she was paying either 10 or 12c and had a DRASTICALLY lower bill, the reason was that she was paying only the 10 or 12c whereas I was paying 7c plus a thousand other fees, some usage based and some fixed. Our market in Alberta is a scam.

That said, that wasn't really the point of the post, the point was that Tesla cherry picked one place you will save money, then made a few assumptions that may or may not apply, to get a dollar value for savings, while completely ignoring several other places where you could easily undo all those savings. It's a positively ridiculous thing to include in their base pricing. It's sleazy, slimy, used-car-salesman grade BS, it's morally questionable, and if we actually had any form of real consumer protection or truth in advertising laws in North America it would definitely be illegal.

green1 said:

Back when our electricity was "the cheapest in the country" at 7c/kwh I looked at my girlfriend's bill in new westminster BC, she was paying either 10 or 12c and had a DRASTICALLY lower bill, the reason was that she was paying only the 10 or 12c whereas I was paying 7c plus a thousand other fees, some usage based and some fixed. Our market in Alberta is a scam.

That said, that wasn't really the point of the post, the point was that Tesla cherry picked one place you will save money, then made a few assumptions that may or may not apply, to get a dollar value for savings, while completely ignoring several other places where you could easily undo all those savings. It's a positively ridiculous thing to include in their base pricing. It's sleazy, slimy, used-car-salesman grade BS, it's morally questionable, and if we actually had any form of real consumer protection or truth in advertising laws in North America it would definitely be illegal.

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I don't like it either, but I wouldn't go quite that far, since the web site does make it quite clear that the top figure is "after incentives & gas savings". And while it is somewhat deceptive to put that at the top, it is at least the same size font as the actual price shown below. What I take a bit more exception to is unbundling the $1300 fee, since it is not variable and not optional.

Even in a jurisdiction with expensive electricity, the gas savings estimate is not completely out of order. The CAA uses 18000 km per year as their benchmark. That's less than 4 MWh, which even in relatively expensive jurisdictions (and assuming no Supercharger use) would be less than $600, whereas gasoline costs for a similar type of large car would be definitely over $2000. So maybe only $1400 per year under not-favourable-for-EV estimates, whereas the savings could be vastly larger given other assumptions. For starters, the price of gasoline may go up significantly over the next 5 years. And if you charge at free public charging stations and/or Superchargers, your cost for energy could literally be zero.

But of course the fact that this estimated gas savings is so wildly variable suggests that they shouldn't be including any figure at all in the actual pricing page. It would be far better to have text saying "You'll probably save about $10,000 over 5 years", with a link to a page that allows you to calculate actual savings based on assumed usage.