Are Tesla Cars Worth The Price?

I think it depends.

In my opinion, when looking for a luxury car, Tesla is worth the price. Despite their quality control issues, they are still far more reliable and cheaper to maintain than many petrol-fueled luxury cars and they can more cost-effectively achieve performance and handling that actually surpass many fancy petrol-fueled engines with a much bigger price tag. Building a charging station (if feasible) and waiting a lot longer to recharge is definitely a hassle, but as a luxury car very doable as you’re not necessarily relying on this car for efficient everyday commute anyway. And let’s not kid around: Tesla is EXPENSIVE to maintain and its quality control is still not where it should be, especially now that they are mass-producing for the first time with model 3. There’s a saying, the hybrid is cheap to maintain until something goes wrong. Regular maintenance is cheap sure, but if you have to change the battery? Or maybe other unforeseen mechanical issues? Electric work is generally a lot more expensive and can take a while to find them which adds up hours for expensive mechanics. Not to mention you MUST get it repaired from Tesla who are never gonna be able to compete with average-competent but honest mechanic shops any day.

This leads to another aspect of the question — that is, is Tesla model 3 practical for average joes, not people who want it as a luxury vehicle and have other more reliable vehicles to use if Tesla goes bad? When compared to other econboxes (particularly like Prius, Civic, Corolla, Mazda3, etc), then it gets a bit iffier. Not only Tesla has a much bigger price tag cliff to overcome (harder actually as Tesla used market is far more limited and has more horror stories than buying new), reg folks are expected to buy additional infrastructure such as a charging station at home. They would need a garage (for many people this isn’t feasible due to the housing bubble in Canada for example), hiring a third party electrician to install which will also expensive along with a city permit, need to wait half an hour to charge (more since limited charging station will mean lineups), etc just makes it too impractical for reg folks to rely on as their primary means of transportation. I feel the range isn’t that much of an issue for most reg people unless they do a lot of highway driving between cities, but improving range would certainly help for people with this need and perhaps less frequent requirement of recharging.

Ultimately Tesla needs to make batteries far more affordable and easier to recharge for their cars to be worth the price. When they gain greater market share and there are more choices for Tesla’s used car market, even better for bargain hunters. For some of us, if Tesla becomes more like Apple in terms of repair capability then it’d be a big turnoff for many of the audience.

All in all, I want to say that tesla cars are worth buying them, for certain reasons which I've listed up, but more importantly, because of the economics of owning one of them leads to fewer expenses to the owner.