That's not financing, that's extortion
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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A sane society would ban interest rates beyond 2x the Fed. 12% is plenty to make profit.
A sane society wouldn't create a currency based on debt
Our entire economy is balancing on infinite growth, because it's all made up of chains of debt that all siphon off money upwards, at every step
If this was done in the USA, a lot of airlines would struggle or even collapse if they couldn't figure out how to adapt.
The four biggest airlines in the US (United, Delta, American and Southwest) all lose money on flights. The way they make a profit is through their co-branded credit cards. The banks pay the airlines to purchase miles from them to use as points, and one of the primary ways the bank makes the money to do that is from interest payments.
I'm not saying that interest rates shouldn't be limited, just that there'd be some major impact since a lot of the financial industry is funded by interest payments.
So making money zero-sum would kill off parasitic business models. The horror!
I have one of their cards but I pay my balance off every month. They have got to hate me.
Even when you pay off your balance every time, they still make money charging merchants for every transaction. But yeah, they make shit tons more from people carrying balances.
I mean that’s credit cards in general. The alternative would be to switch to a debit card, but as a consumer there’s quite a few protections I’d lose out on like charge backs and fraud protection.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I use credit cards for everything and pay it off in full every month. I get extra benefits over using cash or debit. Gotta play the game
This is one of the reasons merchant fees are so high in the USA.
In Australia, merchant fees for a medium-sized business are an average of 0.75 to 1.5% for credit cards and 0.25% to 1% for debit cards, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia (https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/pricing/card-surcharges).
In the USA they're often over double that. Some payment processors charge 3% or more for credit card processing.
Yeah, it’s an absurd amount. A lot of restaurants add on an extra fee if you pay by card. When will the madness end?
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How will elon finance his trip to mars
Higher interest rates allow creditors to take on riskier customers. Having said that, the US sorely needs regulation in all financial matters.
Imagine buying a car and your car payments keep going up over time because the repair costs rack up faster than your payments.
from what I understand, Tesla's are fucking garbage so you're going have to finance a bunch of repairs for your expensive piece of shit
When I had mine, the back seat started rattling one time so I took it in for service. A week later, I finally got it back with a piece of electrical tape stopping the rattle and an invoice for $160.
Glad you no longer have it, but next time, regardless of manufacturer, if you have a minor issue that isn't covered by warranty, don't bother taking it to the dealer. They all scam you based on the hourly pricing (not competitive to independent shops, even specialists of the marque) and replacement policy (replace as big a part as possible because more money + less chance of customer coming back. Example for ICE based cars: Friend did his apprenticeship at a Toyota dealer. Car came in with a bad alternator voltage regulator (probably 20-30 euros for an aftermarket part, Toyota would obviously ask more for a genuine Toyota branded part), his boss told him it's going to have to be a full alternator replacement, they won't replace the regulator itself. This policy is great under warranty (you get more parts renewed, yay), but not so much when it's an out of pocket repair.
I know, I was assuming they would maybe have to replace a latch or something. Tesla doesn’t sell parts to repair shops, so getting the right one would have been difficult or impossible. Tesla’s service used to be white-glove when I first had the car, and rapidly declined to a shit-covered dumpster fire.
Fair enough. Though in such a case (zero aftermarket parts availability), you're better off getting a used part IMO, unless it's a wear item. But that's just my opinion of course.
Not understanding the alternator bit. I'm not aware of any shop of any stripe that will replace only the regulator.
EDIT: Leaving the above. Seems like back in the day you couldn't replace the regulator alone. Looked at pics and it seems easy now days.
Depends on the model. When my first car was having alternator trouble, I replaced the regulator which required me to remove a whopping two bolts. Of course it's not possible on all alternators, but it was the first example I could think of. Similarly, if you've got a bad valve body in your auto transmission, most main dealers would tell you that you need to replace the entire transmission. Etc.
god damn, lol.
Yeah. Insane. Like taking out a mortgage on a house of cards.
Much cheaper option....
This was always the case for poor individuals... We've been forced to finance our car repairs for decades now.
With Tesla, you can turn a $2,442 windshield installation into a $3,174 windshield installation through the power of interest.
Ok but 2442 is already insane. Yes it's heated, yes there's a rain sensor, plenty of cars have that, and their windshields cost half as much.
My actual pickup truck (a Toyota Tacoma) costs $275 for an installed windshield.
The Cybertruck windshield costs nearly 10 times as much for... reasons? Honestly don't even fucking know why. Because Elon knows an easy mark when he sees one, I guess
Toyota? Buddy, that’s not a “pickup truck.” That’s a street legal war machine! A technical!!! 😎
And frankly I got my eye on a government I wouldn't mind overthrowing
I broke a Ford windscreen once. Insurance paid 1100 euros to replace it. Without insurance you can bet it would have been a non-heated windscreen for a few hundred.
Fat mobster: “Where else you gonna go? Autozone? Hahahahahaha!”
"Musk needs to keep my name out his goddamned mouth!"
- Nikolai Tesla, probably
I could see battery packs and motors being financable at a sensible interest rate being a good thing for people who can't afford such expenses out of pocket - it would make it possible for slightly less well off people to buy used EVs instead of used ICE cars.
This though? Fuck everything about this.
tl;dr: financing regular maintenance parts for any vehicle is a bad idea. Avoid money pits.
Car depreciation is a thing and those prices are insane to finance. It doesn't make sense to buy a part that's worth more than the entire vehicle. This was an issue with Prius's when they first rolled out. When the battery pack died, the car still ran, but it was in the range of 10k to the battery replaced. It did not make sense to replace it on a vehicle that was probably well into 5 or 6 years. You could also sell the Prius because it was still held value as a running vehicle. Thankfully, aftermarket products have been created to significantly reduce the cost to make it reasonable to replace a battery on a Prius; somewhere between $2k to $3k with DIY kit.
It's a stupid idea to finance parts for a vehicle when the value exceeds financing a whole new / used vehicle. If you end up totaling your vehicle, you're still out the cost for just the financed parts. You've essentially put yourself way upside down on a depreciating asset. Pretty sure insurance isn't going to cover the financed parts when they total a vehicle out. Tesla should have allowed right to repair and manuals to fix their wastes of space like Toyota did for the Prius. I know it's a hybrid, but hybrids are looking to be less of a hassle to maintain and best of both worlds. It's a trend to keep milking people for every last penny with financing every damn thing.
I just went through this type of situation. My son bought a 2013 Ford C Max PHEV and after less than 2 years, battery released the magic smoke. Since it wasn’t a popular model, there aren’t many options on replacement batteries. Green Bean Bat company said they won’t even try to fix it and Ford wants $12k! We have no choice but to donate the car and eat any value it once had. No one would even take it as a trade in just to dispose of it.
Until the cost of replacement batteries is sorted out, I will never buy an EV again and I was a strong advocate for them until I experienced the real cost.
yeah I'm not sold on EVs. you want to save the world? encourage automakers to make small vehicles. why does everything need to be a 3800 lb vehicle with at least 250 horsepower. bring back compact economical vehicles. raise the cost of fuel by taxation enough to actually pay for a fair chunk of the road maintenance. drive less.
EVs are fantastic for dense areas compared to ICE vehicles. they're still a vehicle, and they're still just a way to get you to consume.
Tl;dr: you're technically right, but BEVs aren't sustainable if you need to pay up front for the battery.
A 10-20k battery replacement on a car worth 30-40k used, for an example, is not "regular maintenance" though. And presumably it would come with a new 8 year warranty like the original battery does in every BEV, if you're paying (financing) an OEM battery at the main dealer. Once the vehicle is older and worth less, there will hopefully be cheaper solutions
If BEVs and HEVs can't easily do 20 years of service, we should just stop building them and go back to internal combustion full time. Fuck planned obsolescence.
To be clear I meant there should be government-backed low-interest credit programs for replacing expensive EV parts that would render the car scrap metal when they fail after 8 years and one month. Similar to how you can get student loans with a next-to-nothing interest rate because it's government backed and they mandate a maximum interest rate and payment term. Because otherwise I'm going to trust a 25 year old pollution machine over an 8 year old BEV and that's why there depreciating at a record rate.
You can have an Audi E-Tron for no money at all just a few years after it launched because nobody wants to be left holding the bag. I've owned ICE Audis, Mercs and BMWs with between 300k and 600k on the clock and had no issues that would leave me stranded, except for serpentine belts a couple of times because most of those were bought as poorly maintained vehicles in the first place. I have an easier time trusting a 20 year old car with 500k on it than a 5 year old BEV with 100k or even only 50k on it because I know if I can't sell the 5 year old car before the battery warranty expires, I'm cooked. I've looked at BMW i5, MB EQE, Audi E-Tron, even the Porsche Taycan because they've all nicely depreciated now and I could justify them as a company car (saves me damn near 70% in pretax income compared to buying as a private person), but instead I'm keeping my privately owned 18 year old Diesel A6 because even on a company car I don't want to be hit by a massive battery replacement cost and even if it's a company car, I don't want to buy new because fuck being hit by all that depreciation the first owner gets. But if I could get it at 4% APR for a year or 2, I'd be happy to replace an EV battery to keep it going if the rest of the car is solid and I get a good warranty.
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Oh goody. It's damn CareCredit for cars.
what a thoroughly benighted concept
get insurance that covers windshield replacement
it's money very well spent
Insurance premiums for Teslas have been skyrocketing because of this.
another reason it's not worth buying a Tesla
They would have been decent EVs had they not put all that stupid proprietary tech in it. They essentially enshitified cars.
Drive to your local LKQ distribution center with stock and an extra $100. You won't make it past the 3rd installer you see show up in a van before someone will take your $100 with a new windshield installed within 30 minutes. Never buy a car unless LKQ makes reproduction parts. That is where 90% of auto body repair parts come from in the USA. Anyone can walk in and pay cash too.
idk .. i can get the auto glass people to come to me and I don't pay anything, it's covered by insurance
I've had to replace 2 windshields in the last 5 years
Florida mandates windshield replacement from any insurance coverage, and they can't raise your rates for that repair. We sorely need more of that kinda thing.
How much of this expense is because Tesla is a small auto manufacturer? I imagine they don't have the economies of scale that others do.
And I'm not even thinking about the stupid wankpanzer with all it's custom BS...
I feel like a competent CEO would have merged with a large auto manufacturer and maintained an independent leadership.
Tesla still makes the best EVs out of the American manufacturers I believe. They make really horrible cars though.
The big 3 are no better, but if Tesla had merged with a Japanese or European manufacturer that actually knows how to build great cars, it could've been something spectacular. A ridiculous market advantage.
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You're not paying enough for out rolling trash dumpster, would you like to finance some used parts that don't work either??? Sincerely, Elon
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