My brief (potential) Tesla Model S ownership ends.

Last year around May I had dinner with a friend who mentioned they had put down a deposit for a Tesla Model S. Intrigued, since I had looked at this before and found ridiculously high prices for their Roadster model; I put down a $6000 AUD deposit myself.
Many things about an electric car appealed to me. The most appealing thing was the acceleration and torque from the electric motor. All accounts said it was a kidney bruising experience!

The catch was my Tesla ownership was going to be at least a year down the track and Tesla's occasional status updates continued to point to this. There were certainly big questions in my mind about ownership like -: maintenance and support, supercharger network availability, smash repairs, battery issues, range anxiety but my friend informed me that if small importers like Lamborghini etc could support their "user base" then Tesla could sort out these issues in time.

The one thing that would play the biggest role was the Australian dollar exchange rate. When I had put my deposit down it was over $1 USD and favourable, and for the purchase to be viable it needed to stay that way or close to parity.

And that's where things came undone. My friend had wisely hedged some USD on the stock market. I had simply taken the ride and as it turned out the AUD did sink to the point it was around 0.87 USD and I decided my Tesla journey was over.

I did have other ways I could use the $6000 too. But the potential cost of the car being well north of $100k because of the exchange rate was a force majeure event for me.

Now that I have my deposit back I have considered the downsides and potential problems more and it does give me some solace in my withdrawal from the purchase. Other makers are beginning to announce their own battery powered cars and it's only a matter of time we'll see these appear for sale locally.

What's more interesting is that I have even considered going completely Luddite on my future car. Instead of the latest technology, a 1990s car without a CPU, that runs on diesel and can have maintenance performed without having to plug into a computer at the service centre where they can see how you've used the car. What your top speed was, what fuel you put in the car and when, basically your entire driving habits and use of the car are stored in the memory chips of modern cars!

With the networked car - and Tesla Model S is a networked car with 4G connection; I see the day when manufacturers, to sell their cars in a country or state must include a system which reports its drivers speeding events back to the state revenue agency which then issues a fine without any involvement by law enforcement at all. Or how about your car being inoperable due to a virus getting in to its software?

I guess what's happened for me here is that my automotive aspirations have been dialled back considerably. I'll probably keep my car that I've had for 5 years and see whether I can't just stay with it for the next 38 years like a lady I know has with her Datsun Z from the 1970's.