Why Toyota is not selling electric cars

Which is a problem as far as I am concerned. I was expecting that MORE stores would open in non overpopulated places like Boston and NYC as the cars sold. Instead they are closing some quantity of them.

No, I am not going to drive 4 hours to Boston to test drive a car and no I am not going to buy a car I've not driven (because my sock drawer doesn't have an extra $40K+) even with a 100% refund guarantee.

OK, checked, my local options:
Hyundai Sonata 2008 for $26/day
Lexus CT 200H 2012 for $49/day
Nissan Leaf 2017 for $38/day
Chevy Bolt 2017 for $55/day
Porsche Cayenne 2005 for $150/day
Nissan Sentra 2006 for $30/day
Toyota Prius 2011 $42/day
Mitsubishi i-miev 2012 $29/day

Nope, not seeing any Teslas there. I have seen some Teslas around but they are pretty rare. I'm sure they are much more common in big cities.

 

no doubt rural areas will be last. like prime

 

Stores closing = Tesla announcing that they've found, picked & eaten all the low-hanging fruit. Time to open the next chapter in the marketing binder. Hoping it's a good one.

 

meanwhile, ford, chrysler and gm are all cutting costs. no big deal though, right? in their cases, it's 'smart'

 

You didn't read the article. Not only was Musk's statement in response to someone who couldn't test drive a car through store because of agerequirements, but the article had a link to Tesla's page for scheduling a test drive. That page is also the first hit for a search of "tesla test drive" on Google.
Schedule a Test Drive | Tesla

With the store closing announcement, they extended the period that a return was possible, and made it the same regardless of having a test drive or not.

This is the local used dealer, that we have bought from
Used Cars Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, New Jersey - CarSense - Used Nissan, Honda, Nissan, Ford & More
They have a 5 day, no hassle return policy. They also will sell a car from their website, and trailer deliver it. Ebay and other sites have been selling cars online for over a decade now. Buyers may have arranged a test drive of the model by some means, but they skipped on test driving, or even inspecting the specific used car they bought.

Tesla is closing stores.
However, many of the service centers are also stores. With the numbers of cars they have now sold, they have to expand their service network. In a few years, they may have more stores than before these are closed.

 

no, no, they're going out of business! aren't you paying attention?

 

The Kelly Blue Book Cost To Own figures are from a Media company and looked (to me) a little fishy. Here is an article about them from the past; The Truth About Intellichoice Awards. I also question KBB CTO figures for a the Kia Niro Hybrid and plug-in when it Is so new and doesn’t have good repair/reliability data. Also, surprisingly nothing about CTO for the Prius Prime since 2017 (in the electric car category?), the year it was introduced and would have the least data about some CTO factors.

I checked out Edmonds online CTO values for 2018 (most recent year for them) and compared to 2018 on KBB site and found the Prius c and Prius hatchback were 3 to 4 thousand less to own on the Edmonds site. Edmonds also explains and brakes down the figures very well.

I would say that anybody’s personal opinion that (insert car maker here) has lowest CTO is just as valid as intellichoices’s.

 

There are too many variables in tco

 

To report back, Monday I stopped in at a local Tesla combined store & service center.
They had both a Performance Model 3 and a LR AWD Model 3 available for test drives.

That said, I do owe you an apology, as the store, for a single day last week, wasn’t offering test drives. I couldn’t believe it, but there it was.
Luckily, this was quickly remedied.
Tesla prides itself on being an extremely nimble company. Unfortunately it means sometimes making mistakes. Luckily it also means being able to correct those mistakes in a week, rather than a year, or decade.

 

Reading thread like this makes me wonder how do people get so fixated to particular brand in this case of cars but it can be any products. For me a car is a car, just another tool to be used for transportation. I am careless who makes it as long as it is reliable and affordable AND the product fulfill my needs.

That said, my last five cars have been either Toyota or Honda, but I will jump ships in a heartbeat if there is a better car at better price.

 

A car is a tool for me as well, but not “just another tool”. I love tools. For me one of life’s pleasures is having and using a well constructed and engineered tool. The longer I have it the greater my affection.

 

Not sure when this thread swerved from toy to tess,
But I read they have decided to keep most stores open, and evaluate each one over the next however many months.
I thought one analyst put it well, stating that they need to be a bit less knee jerk, and a bit more thoughtful in making some serious decisions.

 

If I were thinking of buying a Tesla, I would push pause and let a few months go by. I wouldn’t want to have a car, no matter how delightful, from a company this changeable.

 

I am doing exactly that. But mostly because they don’t have quite what I’m looking for.
How the company operates is actually quite impressive to me, considering their age, and financial constraints.
If you weed through the hater articles, there is an awful lot to like.

 

In a heartbeat? You wouldn't wait 5 or 8 years until your current car has gotten some significant number of miles on it.

Mike

 

Yeah, average years of my ownership of a car is probably ~5 years. This number includes 4 cars that were leased for only 3 years. The longest I have owned a car is 12 years. In our local, cars do not last longer than that due to rust problem from the road salt. This is true for $15K bare bone subcompact or $50K luxury sedan. I don't plan to switch PRIME yet, but I have seen some people are making money on trading in 2017 PRIME for 2018 PRIME. I might try that if I find a great deal on other cars. If 2018 Clarity was a hatchback, I probably have traded in my PRIME for it.

 

Well. if it hasn't been said yet, Toyota believes in Hybrid-to-Hydrogen. Toyota believes hybrid-to-hydrogen is the best route and all-electric has too many weaknesses. Why? Refueling time on trips. Since hydrogen can be manufactured on-site at refill stations distribution costs will go to zero, hydrogen vehicles do not pollute and actually further clean air while in use, and this results in the better long game: an environment cleaner with performance of electric power and torque, without the battery weight and without long charging cycles... takes about 5 minutes to refuel.

 

+1 This.

Tesla/Musk is very schizo lately.

 

Well, OK, but HFC is still very inefficient well-to-wheel (

) compared to BEV, and Tesla is now deploying “1000 mile-per-hour” V3 SuperChargers: 100 miles of range added in 6 minutes. VW (Electrify America), Porsche, and probably EVgo (not sure) are at various stages of deploying similar (~350KW) chargers.

As for me at least, if I had a pure BEV, I expect I’d need to rapid-charge once or twice a year at most.

Weight-compounding on passenger vehicles is pretty inconsequential, but long-haul trucking might be a good use case for HFC: Weight compounding with batteries on an 18-wheeler is likely to be an issue, as are long recharge times, and the very-high cost of the fuel-cell stack represents a much smaller percentage of the total cost of a truck run of a car.

Plus, of course, as of right now at least, there are 39 hydrogen filling stations in the US, all in CA, and I probably have that many power outlets in my house alone! Yes, I’m speaking a little facetiously here, but my point being that an extensive refueling network for BEVs, somewhere between marginally and fully adequate already exists, whereas, for now at least, hydrogen filling stations barely exist outside of Japan and California, and really only barely exist there.

 

This is a good comment. I don't need a new car. And I can't really use a BEV. Therefore, I like Toyota and my Prius. However, watching and following Tesla is like watching NASCAR. Lots of action, pit strategy changes as the race goes on, lots of wrecks and just waiting for "the big one" to happen. Desperation moves are the best. Can't look away.