I feel horrible. Like I have been scammed or something. What can I do if anything? I still owe $130,000 on the car and can't even sell it because I would then owe around $60,000 to pay off the loan compared to what I can sell it for.
I love the car, I really do but having a hard time getting over this horrible feeling of being taken advantage of.
and the punchline:
Hol up, you bought a $155k car a year ago, and you still owe $130k on it? How small was your down payment? You are what's called "upside down" on your own loan: you owe more than the value of the thing you took out the loan on.
If you're asking what financially you can do, the answer is nothing; you took out a very large loan with a very small down payment on a depreciating asset. Take this as a lesson about why you don't do that, particularly when said asset can be crashed. All cars depreciate in value. Electric luxury sports cars from a relatively small company depreciate very, very quickly. Never trick yourself into thinking that your agreement to buy that car was ever anything but an agreement to light $155k on fire. In the future, if that's not something you can afford to do, do not buy the car.
If you're asking what you can do to make yourself feel better about your choice, my suggestion would be to try to focus on why you made the decision in the first place. You didn't buy a $155k luxury car with a zillion horsepower because it was a sound financial decision; you bought it because it was fun. Nothing has changed about the car between now and a year ago; it's still just as comfy, and it still rips your dick off when you hit the skinny pedal. The value of the car to you was never momentary, and that value hasn't changed. What can you do? The same thing you were going to do before; out make your payments, and you keep enjoying your car. Don't think about the financial value of the car; think about the value it has to you.
If you are in a situation where you can't afford the loan payments anymore, you're in a much tougher spot. I would talk to a financial planner, cuz you're gonna need to do some clever maneuvering to dig yourself out of that hole. I'm guessing your best bet would be to sell the car for whatever you can get for it, pay off as much of the loan as you can with that lump sum, and try to refinance the remaining $60k or so at a better interest rate. You'd basically be making payments on a $60k loan rather than a $155k loan, which should at least be an easier hit to take each month. If you need a car, buy a reliable used one in cash, and pay off that $60k loan as fast as you can. Swallow your pride and buy an older Prius or something for $10k.
And for the love of god, don't crash the Tesla; the max you're going to get out of your insurance is the cost to replace the vehicle (unless you have gap insurance, which I really, really hope you do). If you total the car tomorrow, the max you're going to get is $86k, and you'll still owe $60k.
if you have a place to charge at home, and you're mostly just using the car as a commuter box, something like a chevy bolt or nissan leaf can work quite well and save you a ton of gas money (but make sure to not buy new)
i still hold the opinion that you should not buy an EV if you do not have a place to charge at home.
I'd be worried about battery degredation on a used electric car. Hybrids you can deal with because the battery is less costly to replace since it's smaller, and usually isn't critical to the operation of the car.
I'd rather buy an even older electric car and get the battery replaced so you're 100% sure of the lifespan than a medium-old one with a worn battery.
Yeah, the issue with old Nissan Leafs is that they always have fucked batteries that only have like 30 miles of range.
Yeah, the cheaper EV's make sense if you're stuck in the suburbs and still need a car sometimes. Get a BYD or Tesla model 3, plug it in the garage (preferably with excess solar), and you get to drive around essentially for free (excluding taxes and insurance).
In many cities it is illegal to directly connect solar power to your house. For example, in San Francisco, you must sell your solar-generated electricity to PG&E and then buy it back for twice what you sold it for.
That's so stupid wtf.
Where I live you can sell it back to the grid and only pay/get paid for the net difference. That way you don't have to buy an expensive home-battery system.
I thought California would be better than my Conservative-run Canadian province but I guess not.
It’s because San Francisco is owned and operated by a corporate cartel.
Are you sure? Does this apply to house batteries as well?
My family has had personal experience with setting up solar a few years back. It used to be only 1.25 times what you were buying for vs selling for. PG&E has been jacking up the uneven exchange rate to try and kill solar. You can’t charge anything directly from your solar panels, it has to be from the grid.
So now their solar panels are just the world’s most expensive roof ornaments.
it's actually crazy how you can find model 3s in the mid 20ks now. these things depreciate like crazy
I'm assuming those have issues? I think I'd probably get a BYD over a Tesla, although I'm not buying a new car anytime soon.
I just checked a bunch of listings on AutoTrader for Tesla Model 3 under US$30,000 and none of them mention any significant issues.
Besides the significant issue of being an off-warranty car with notoriously shitty build quality?
I know that Teslas still have suspension issues that start appearing around 100k miles so keep that in mind
The Tesla battery issues are limited to the pre-2015 Model S so that's not really an issue. For battery longevity, you should expect to replace the battery at around 200k miles, going by real-world examples of high mileage Model S.
And obviously, Teslas all have misaligned body panels, but I don't know if I'd really care about that on a mid $20k Model 3
The mid $20k Model 3s I looked at have around 50k miles