Money · measured against four gas vehicles
The Ledger.
What the car costs to run, what it is worth, and what it earns. The denominator and the numerator on the same page, because separating them is how people talk themselves into vehicles they cannot afford.
Cost per mile, measured
10.9¢/mi
$159.91 of charging across 1,469.5 miles. Energy only. Insurance, payment and tires are separate lines below and are not buried in this figure.
Against the fleet it replaced
| Vehicle | Role | mpg | Per mile |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 Model Y LR AWD | Current | n/a | 10.9¢ measured |
| 2015 Chevrolet Express 2500 | Detail van, dealership runs | 13 | 28.0¢ |
| 2016 Toyota Sequoia Platinum 2WD | Stopgap, 15 days | 15 | 24.3¢ |
| 2011 Toyota Sienna Limited | Family hauler | 20 | 18.2¢ |
| Lexus ES300h | Stopgap, 5 days | 44 | 8.3¢ |
Gas figures modeled: each vehicle's measured fuel economy priced at $3.64 a gallon (AAA Tennessee, 2026-08-24). TezLab's own estimate of money saved over this window is $56.79, which is lower because it compares against a generic car of roughly 25 mpg instead of the vehicles actually replaced. Both are honest. They answer different questions.
Running cost: Model Y vs. two alternatives
This car's owner briefly owned a Lexus ES300h, five days, before switching to this Model Y with FSD. Financing terms for either vehicle stay off this page; what's comparable here is running cost alone, fuel or electricity, nothing else. Laid out side by side:
| Vehicle | Running cost, per month |
|---|---|
| Lexus ES300h (hybrid) | $260–347/mo (gas, owner-reported $60–80/wk) |
| This Model Y w/ FSD | ~$80–325/mo (this car's full driving, no home charger) |
| Lexus ES350 (gas-only reference) | ~$457–610/mo (gas, scaled from ES300h) |
The Model Y's charging range is wider than the weekly commute-only figures on the Drive page because it covers this car's full driving, roughly 24,000–28,000 mi/year: the low end assumes workplace Level 2 covers what it can, two days a week when it's available; the high end leans more heavily on Supercharging in weeks it isn't. There's no home-charging floor to narrow that range the way there would be for a buyer with a driveway.
On running cost alone, without a payment on either side to muddy it: the hybrid's gas bill holds steady at $260–347 a month regardless of driving pattern. The Model Y's electricity bill runs from $80 a month when workplace charging comes through, genuinely cheaper, up to $325 in a stretch where it doesn't, close to the hybrid's own number. The EV's advantage here depends entirely on how much of the year lands on workplace charging versus full-price Supercharging: real in a good month, closer to a wash in a bad one.
The real asymmetry still shows up after the loan. Once the Model Y loan is cleared or refinanced down, its ongoing cost drops to roughly its charging cost alone: $80–325 a month for this owner specifically, with no home-charging floor to anchor the low end. A gas or hybrid car with no loan doesn't get that same drop: the ES300h keeps costing $260–347 a month in gas indefinitely, and the ES350 keeps costing $457–610 a month, for as long as it's driven. That gap, not the monthly payment while both are still financed, is where the EV's financial case actually lives, narrower than it would be with a home charger, but still real.
Case study: insurance versus the ES300h
This car's own insurance estimate, from What this car costs to run, is $3,300–4,000/year for full coverage. Two independent sources put full-coverage insurance on a Lexus ES300h meaningfully lower: about $2,200–3,033/year, depending on trim and driver profile, using comparable driver assumptions (a driver in their 40s, clean record, full coverage, roughly 12,000–13,000 miles a year).
The one lever that can close some of that gap: Tesla Insurance, where available (13 states as of this car's own research), prices on a usage-based Safety Score rather than a flat vehicle-class rate. Tennessee is also one of six states with the newer Safety Score 3.0, which scores FSD-engaged miles a perfect 100 and showed one driver's premium drop from about $380 to about $53 a month; see What this car costs to run for the full caveats. California specifically can't use either version by state law, and Tesla doesn't publish flat numbers to compare in advance.
Case study: three jobs, one car
This case study generalizes a real, current situation: a single man in his mid-40s, starting over after a divorce, running three things at once on the same car. A day job with the same Brentwood-to-Lebanon commute covered above. A software business, built at night. And weekend gig driving on top of both. The numbers below are what a schedule like that actually asks of a vehicle, and of the person driving it.
Weekdays: the job by day, the business by night
The weekday commute itself, 82 miles round trip to Lebanon, is already covered in full in the daily commute case study above; the cost, the charging pattern, and the FSD numbers there are this same schedule's foundation. What changes here is what happens after the drive home: the day doesn't end, a second job starts. Evenings go to running a real software business: Paddock20 (paddock20.com), an agentic engineering studio doing custom development and AI automation for other companies, which closed about $2,000 in new business in a single recent week. The FSD "true experience" finding from the commute case study, reduced micro-fatigue rather than reduced responsibility, matters more on a day like this than on an average one: less of the drive's mental load carried into a night of work that needs its own full attention.
What changed: a work van, then a five-day Lexus, then this car
This exact commute has run in three different vehicles. Before this car, the same 41-mile-each-way drive was done in a 2015 Chevrolet Express 2500 cargo van, 4.8L V8, EPA-rated at 11 city / 17 highway mpg. On a mostly-highway commute like this one, real-world economy for a loaded work van in that range typically lands around 13 to 15 mpg, short of the full highway number. A Lexus ES300h briefly followed, owned five days before switching to this Model Y; the financial comparison against the ES300h elsewhere in this document (see What this car costs to run) uses that car's real numbers regardless of how briefly it was actually owned. Five days is a short window, but it's enough to anchor the real numbers used here.
| Vehicle | Fuel | Weekly cost, this commute | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before | 2015 Chevrolet Express 2500 (4.8L V8) | Gasoline | ~$102–129 |
| Now | 2024 Tesla Model Y | Electricity | ~$14–49 |
Weekends: more coding, plus Instacart
Weekends carry the heaviest load: more software development time, plus Instacart shifts fit around it, about nine hours a week of gig driving on top of everything else. The specific days, times and area are deliberately not published: a standing weekly schedule says where someone is and when their home is empty. Platform pay rates are widely documented elsewhere, and per-shift mileage for these particular runs is not, so this page invents neither. What's real: those nine hours are additional driving on top of the commute, most likely already folded into this car's own established 24,000–28,000 mile annual plan (see What this car costs to run) rather than an uncounted cost this section is missing.
Looking ahead: resale at the two-year mark
This isn't a full case study yet, because the numbers don't exist yet. This car sits at 20,953.8 miles against a 2-year, 50,000–56,000-added-mile target, meaning it's still early in that window. The Resale value & warranty section already projects $14,000–20,000 at that mileage, based on today's depreciation curves. When this car actually reaches that point, this section is where a real, not projected, resale case study belongs.
Cost per mile: the honest comparison
| Fuel source | Low | Central estimate | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home charging | 2.4¢ | ~3.7¢ | 4.4¢ |
| Supercharging | 8¢ | ~13¢ | 20¢ |
| Comparable gas SUV (RAV4-class) | 11¢ (normal gas prices) | ~13–14¢ | 15¢ (today's spike) |
This car's real-world efficiency runs higher than its EPA rating once you factor in highway speed and heat: call it 300–360 Wh/mile rather than the EPA-test 288. Home charging above now reflects Middle Tennessee Electric's actual residential rate schedule (effective July 2026), the utility serving Brentwood and Cool Springs: 8.1¢/kWh on the NITEFLEX off-peak plan up to 12.1¢/kWh on standard on-peak pricing. That's a real, local rate rather than a national average, and it runs meaningfully lower than an earlier national-average-based estimate did.
Your own charging history backs this up, and then some: your first Supercharging session (10 minutes in Brentwood, TN on August 23, 2026, 20.02 kWh at $0.56/kWh, $11.21 total) actually came in above the Tesla app's own gas-equivalent estimate for that same energy: $11 spent vs. a $10 gas equivalent, per the app's own charging stats. One session isn't a trend, and $1 isn't a crisis, but it's real, dated proof the "Supercharging is always way cheaper than gas" story doesn't hold up every time. Exactly the caveat above, borne out on your own car.
Gas benchmark note: the national average sat at $4.10/gallon in late August 2026, the first time over $4 in four years, tied to a crude-oil supply shock earlier in the year. The 2026 year-to-date average is closer to $3.75. Both are reflected in the range above rather than picking one number.
Insurance
Full coverage on a Model Y runs an estimated $3,300–$4,000/year: two reputable sources landed about 20% apart, most likely reflecting state and driver-profile differences rather than a real disagreement about the car. EVs generally run 18–42% above a comparable gas SUV, mostly because of repair cost: EV collision claims average about 24% more than gas-vehicle claims, driven by proprietary body panels and the fact that almost any body work triggers an ADAS recalibration.
If you're in one of the 13 states where Tesla Insurance is offered, its usage-based Safety Score model (starts at 80, recalibrates over ~30 days of real driving) can meaningfully undercut that range for a disciplined driver, though Tesla doesn't publish flat rates, and California specifically can't use the Safety Score by state law. A newer version, Safety Score 3.0, scores every FSD-engaged mile a perfect 100 and currently operates in six of those states, Tennessee included alongside Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Texas, and Virginia. One cited example for a driver maximizing FSD-engaged miles under that program showed a premium drop from about $380/month to about $53/month, an 86% reduction. That's one driver's result, not a guarantee, and it requires switching to Tesla Insurance plus an active FSD subscription; a standalone FSD discount without full Safety Score 3.0 participation is capped at 10%.
Monthly software subscriptions
| Subscription | Cost | Adds |
|---|---|---|
| FSD (Supervised) | $99.00/mo | Active on your account (see FSD, software & connectivity) |
| Premium Connectivity | $9.99/mo | Satellite maps, live traffic, in-car streaming & browser, live Sentry viewing |
| Total | $108.99/mo | ~$1,308/year at current pricing |
Both are billed month-to-month with no contract. Cancel either anytime in the app if priorities change. These figures reflect Tesla's current published pricing; like everything software-related here, treat it as today's rate, not a locked-in one.
Rough two-year cost sketch (your plan: ~50,000–56,000 added miles)
| Line item | Modeled estimate | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Charging (no home charger: workplace Level 2 + Supercharging, assumed) | $1,900–7,800 | Free workplace L2 when available (~2 days/wk) + Supercharging for the rest |
| Tires (1–2 replacements at your mileage) | $900–3,200 | EVs wear tires ~30–40% faster than gas cars |
| Insurance (2 years) | $6,600–8,000 | National full-coverage range × 2 |
| FSD + Premium Connectivity (24 months) | ~$2,616 | $108.99/mo × 24, at current pricing |
| Modeled cash total | ~$12,000–21,600 | Excludes registration fees, routine maintenance & loan payments |
Not modeled: state EV registration surcharges (most states that charge one land $100–200/year), routine non-tire maintenance, and loan payments. All are real costs, but too specific to your own terms and situation to responsibly estimate here.
The federal tax credit: why it never applied to this purchase
Worth stating plainly since it comes up a lot: a used federal EV tax credit could never have applied to this car, on two independent grounds. The Used Clean Vehicle Credit required the vehicle to be at least two model years old at the time of purchase and capped the sale price at $25,000, and it stopped applying entirely to any purchase after September 30, 2025. A 2024 model-year car couldn't satisfy the "two years old" rule until 2026, by which point the credit no longer existed for any vehicle. Even setting timing aside, a used 2024 Model Y selling anywhere near real market value (currently averaging around $36,000) blows past the $25,000 cap on its own. This isn't a "credit that expired on you" story. It was never in play for this specific car, regardless of exactly when the purchase happened.
Depreciation: a real weak point, not a scare story
Three independent studies converge on 58–61% five-year depreciation for Model Y, against roughly 45% for the broader SUV segment and 42% for all vehicles. That's a genuine, well-documented gap, not a one-off data artifact.
- Why: Tesla has cut new Model Y pricing by roughly 27% since mid-2022, and used prices follow those cuts fast: one documented event saw used Tesla values drop at roughly 3x the rate of the broader used market within weeks of a single new-price cut.
- Specific to your car: ahead of the 2025 Juniper refresh, Tesla marked down outgoing pre-refresh inventory by $8,000–9,200 to clear stock: your car's generation is now competing on the used market against a newer design, which is an added headwind beyond generic "EV depreciation."
- Current snapshot: the average used 2024 Model Y listing is around $36,378 as of August 2026, actually up 6.4% year-over-year, a live-market tick that sits in some tension with the longer depreciation curve above. Likely measuring different things (a 12-month price move vs. a 5-year age curve); we're flagging both rather than picking the one that tells a cleaner story.
Warranty: the good news
| Basic vehicle | 4 yr / 50,000 mi |
| Battery & drive unit (Long Range AWD tier) | 8 yr / 120,000 mi, min. 70% capacity retained |
| Restraint system (airbags, belts) | 5 yr / 60,000 mi |
Both the basic and battery warranties transfer automatically with the sale, to whoever buys the car: they're tied to the VIN, not the original owner, standard across the industry. No formal Tesla "re-registration" is legally required to keep the coverage valid.