Yeah, that topline number is very sketchy. My billable time is worth much, much more than $100, but it's not fungible so that I could earn more if I never stopped at the gas station, or drove in a (nonexistent here) carpool lane. Similarly, I actually (co-)operate a business with significant cash flows with tax obligations in multiple states and there is probably no way I'd mess around with a "business tax deduction" for a luxury car. The starting points for average MPG look low. The average gas price looks high.
Even with the extremely optimistic numbers Tesla comes up with, this was still a luxury; without them, it's a luxury I'd be embarrassed about.
Well, considering they're based in California, have you seen the labor rates many dealerships charge for car repairs? Try $300+/hr for "routine" maintenance.
If you're talking about the car owner's time, then perhaps, but given the price of the car, it's likely that whoever is buying it makes close to $100/hr (or possibly when combined with their financial partner).
It works out for me as near-zero cost for a Performance.
30k miles/yr driven. ~20k in the Bay Area, ~10k on road trips (where Superchargers would be nice)
$5 gas, $0 electricity cost (assume charging at work)
60 minutes/day savings on commute, which is the big thing. Most of the East Bay is HOV-3, and with 2 people in the car, still no HOV access. It easily would save 20-30 minutes twice a day. On 101/237, I'm usually 1 person when I want HOV-2 access. Opening up 5-9am and 3-7pm everyday with time savings would be a huge plus.
The cheaper solution to this is to get a 2-seat gasoline car or a Leaf, though. The even faster solution is a motorcycle, but factoring in risk of death/injury on a motorcycle in rush hour on 580/80/101 and it's not worth it.
It doesn't just assume that your time is worth $100/hour, it also assumes that you'll never make any trips in the Model S that are long enough to need the Supercharger stations. Just one or two long trips a month would be enough to wipe out the claimed time savings from not having to refill your gas tank.
More realistic numbers (and w/o exemptions and "time saved") and I get $974/mo. for the 60 kWh model. Which is, well, an expensive car; around a BMW 7-series lease cost. But BMW sells plenty of those, and so can Tesla. But telling me it's a $500/mo car? That's too much.
I hate to split hairs, but $974 is a very low lease payment for a 7-series. You could get there if you ordered a zero-option car and got the highest discount you can (around 7%). More realistically, the Tesla S payment compares favorably to a well equipped 5-series, which is the car they targeted.
I also agree that it's non-sensical to pitch this as a $500 car. The numbers required by their calculator to reach that level are absurd. For example, a 535i gets 20/24/30 mpg (city/combined/hwy). Tesla's calculator starts at 19 MPH. That's silly.
If you cut through the questionables - the cheapest model for "All other states" runs $893/mo for 10k miles per year and $4 average fuel cost per gallon. With that I think the only good thing about this offer is they will buy back the car from you after 36 months?
The time spent refueling calculations seem a little odd. Do people really spend 15 minutes per gas station fill-up? I feel like my fill-ups (including the detour to the gas station) take a lot less time than that.
And the Tesla calculation completely ignores the other side of the ledger: the time spent plugging and unplugging your car. Even if it only takes 30 seconds to plug it in and 30 seconds to unplug it, that adds up to half an hour per month, not much different than the time spent going to the gas station.
Parts are a little surprising (e.g. it assumes your time is worth $100/hour).