Don’t Have $109,000 for a Tesla Roadster? Bank of America to the Rescue

In what is sure to go down as a deft marketing move to garner some publicity (and virtually nothing more), Bank of America and Tesla have teamed up and announced that the megabank will start financing purchases of the Tesla Roadster to make them “much more affordable.”

I call BS.

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Any purchase of a fine automobile requires a certain, let’s say, indifference, to what is in one’s bank account at any given moment. It is extremely unlikely that prospective Roadster buyers are creating Excel spreadsheets to see if they can squeeze a Tesla Roadster into their budgets. And even with Bank of America’s entry into the equation, those spreadsheets aren’t looking any better.

Why’s that?

As the LA Times points out, the loans require up front costs of at least $20,000 plus any registration fees and taxes — which in LA would total roughly an additional $12,000. Then, once you cough up that mula, you’ll still be paying $1,700 per month for 5 years in principal and interest. Of course, there is a bright side, you do qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit for alternative propulsion vehicles, but over 5 years you’ll be paying roughly $12,000 in interest.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that if the everyman in question had an extra $1,700 to spend a month on transportation costs and $30,000 to plunk down up front, he could also afford to wait and save up the money to actually purchase, outright, an equally cool Tesla Model S or Fisker Karma in 2 years’ time and save the $12,000 in interest.

Source: Press Release

Image Credit: Tesla Motors

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