My attempt to get a free Tesla

Matt Loszak
Nov 5 · 7 min read

tl;dr: Scroll to bottom to see financials, graphs, and results.

1997 Toyota Camry — Zero to 60 in three minutes

At the start of this year, my parents’ 1997 Toyota Camry finally died.

This meant that I could no longer borrow a family car for the 3–5 times per year that I really needed one.

Having always wanted to try a Tesla, I decided to rent one on Turo (like AirBnB for cars), and instantly fell in love.

The acceleration, the minimalist interior, the autopilot functionality — everything about it made driving more fun than I’d ever experienced.

Prior to that, my plan was to delay car ownership as long as possible. I live downtown, bike everywhere, and really only need to drive for the occasional summer road trip.

But as I rented Teslas on Turo a few more times in 2019, I started to wonder if I could do better (financially) on the other side of the equation.

🤔💡

One spreadsheet and a few weeks later, I’d pretty much passed ‘the point of no return’ in my mind. Here’s how the math could work:

  • ~ $900 / month for the long-range Model 3 on 8 year loan to own
  • ~ $200 / month for parking in my condo
  • ~ $150 / month for insurance
  • = $1,250 / mo in expenses
  • + $104 / trip in earnings on Turo, at premium market rate for M3

(All figures in CAD).

To break even, I’d have to rent it out roughly 12 days / month.

Leaving me with a free Tesla Model 3 for the remaining 60% of the month!

💸

So around 11 weeks ago, I placed my order. And 3 weeks later, I went with my parents to pick up my first car at the Tesla dealership.

Shiny electric vehicles

For the first few weeks, I wanted to enjoy it for myself. I started driving more than I ever had before on weekends, to soak it all in. But as reality set-in with more and more money leaving my bank account, I decided it was time to follow through with my plan.

I took some nice photos of the car, put it on Turo, and within a week had my first booking.

He was from Brazil, visiting Toronto for a Server-Tech conference, and seemed like a great guy.

Still though, the feeling I had as I watched him drive away with my car was one I’ll never forget:

Postpartum depression

As the weeks went on, I received more and more bookings, and I slowly got over this feeling of angst as each stranger came and took my nice new thing.

The way I had to think of it was: “It’s purely a financial game, and it’s not a new possession of mine”.

Further, the question I asked myself was, “would you rather have a slightly worn-down-but-free Tesla, or no Tesla at all?”.

🗓

At this point, it’s been 5 weeks since I started the experiment in earnest.

Here are a few observations:

  • I live right downtown, where demand is high, which helps.
  • Teslas are a point of curiosity for people, so you can charge a premium.
  • Tesla fans are cultish, and seem to treat the car well.
  • By pricing the car higher, you get more business clientele, who also treat the car well.

🛡

For insurance, I had to go with a special plan that allowed me to ‘run a rental business’. I spent hours on the phone comparing quotes one Saturday morning.

The car is covered under separate insurance by the same carrier when my guests are driving. Any damage they cause is entirely covered.

🕰

One thing I haven’t mentioned so far is time.

Obviously my goal was to minimize the time involved with this whole ordeal, as I’m busy enough already around the clock with Humi.

Other than the up-front time spent on planning, which was likely just a few hours spread across evenings and weekends, I’ve been able to reduce the ongoing time-commitment by planning a fully self-serve experience for my guests.

I wrote out an emoji-filled check-list that goes something like this:

  • 🏠 They come to my condo
  • 📞 I buzz them in
  • 🚘 I unlock the car remotely and they go find it in the parking garage
  • 🎉 They enjoy the car for a few days
  • 🔋 They recharge the car
  • 🏠 They drop it off back at the condo when done

Otherwise, I bought a vacuum, tire pump, and replacement floor mats to keep the car in good shape, and spend maybe 30 minutes every 2 weeks cleaning it up a little on a Sunday.

🍎

I had one ‘bad apple’ rent the car — had an off feeling about him from the moment I met him (he picked up on a weekend, and I still try to meet the guests if I can since I’m still new to this).

I checked the Tesla app during his trip, and saw he was going 175 km / hr on the highway(!), so I remotely speed limited him when he finished his drive. This also reduces the acceleration of the car.

At that point I researched car-tracking software for Teslas, and found someone had built a great solution for $5 / mo, which taps into the car’s API and tells you everything about the car’s behaviour, including top speed for each trip, and emails you a report each day. So that will make catching bad apples easier.

📈

At this point you’re probably wondering what the result has been — did I get a free Tesla out of this!?

The answer is: Sort-of.

Here’s the graph so far:

🔻Red line = cash position if I never rented the car out, 💚 Green line = running cumulative income, 🔵 Blue line = every car-related transaction, 〽️ Yellow line = my true net cash position over time

The 〽️ Yellow line is most helpful — it shows where my bank account balance is relative to where it would’ve been if I’d never followed through with this crazy idea.

The minimum initial downpayment of $3,200 really set me back, and as I didn’t get the car until the middle of September, there were many weeks where I couldn’t monetize the car at all.

I didn’t start renting it out until after the first week of October, but things started going better than expected ever since then. As the 💚 Green line shows, I’ve earned over $1,000 so far.

Even though I blocked off 50% of the weekend days for myself, there was enough interest during weekdays to almost break even for the month, which surprised me.

It’s now November, and this month I’m not going to block off the calendar at all, to see just how well I can do. Maybe I’ll use the car if nobody else is using it (which seems to have 60% probability).

🔮

Running the numbers, we can predict how things might go in the future.

It’s nearly winter in Canada, so demand will likely go down for a few months. Also, the EV market is heating up, and demand for Teslas on Turo will likely decrease as the other automakers catch up.

But let’s just assume that October was an average month for the next year — I booked the car for myself for a handful of the days, and still brought in $1000.

Projecting forward based on $1000 in earnings per month, the graph looks like this:

So basically my cash position (〽️ Yellow line) more or less stays around $6,000 lower than where it was before I started this experiment, forever. (Looks like it slowly dips further into the negatives). Contrast that with the scenario where I never rent it out (🔻Red line), where I would have been nearly $25,000 in the hole.

So what if I just used the car less? Because as I mentioned before, I really only truly need a car a few times per year.

Here’s what it looks like if we assume ~50% utilization. This means the demand would be around 14 days per month, on average:

In this scenario, I actually do break even after roughly one year! (Again, as shown by the yellow line, which represents where my bank balance is relative to where it was prior to the Tesla).

One more just for fun: what if I had 100% utilization? I.e. somehow pulled off a miracle and rented the car every day for the next year:

In this scenario I’d have broken even by Christmas time, and by the end of 2020 would have generated nearly $25k in revenue(!).

Of course, in reality, the true results will vary month by month, and I’ll start to incur other expenses like Winter Tires, maintenance on the car, and likely other things I’m not considering.

This will mean that it’ll take longer to break even, but I do think that I’ll be able to rent it out often enough, and use it infrequently enough over the next few years, to actually make this a free Tesla Model 3.

Stay tuned for an update at the end of 2020! 😊

The ‘Mattmobile’

— — — — —

My Twitter here

My corner of the web here

Learn about Humi here

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Thanks to David Hariri and Hugh Kolias for reading my draft :)

Matt Loszak

Written by

Designer, Coder, Entrepreneur

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