> You can't buy a brand new 2007 Toyota Camry this year, and the 2022 Toyota Camry is a very different car than the 2007 Toyota Camry.
That is not how TCO over 15 years is calculated.
You need data for the same fleet of cars over 15 years, you don't buy the same car over and over for 15 years. It's not relevant that the 2022 model is different, the TCO is for the 2007 model year cars (using 2007 as the example).
So for a 2007 Camry, we could poll all owners of Camrys built in 2007 to get data about their TCO over the past 15 years. We can't do that for a Tesla Model 3 since nobody has owned one for 15 years so there is nobody to poll yet.
A 2022 Camry is not going to have the same reliability as a 2007 Camry. It might be better, it might be worse but you don't know because they are two very different cars.
The TCO for cars is based on projected reliability, whether it's a Tesla or a Toyota. It's a mathematical model based on incomplete data in both cases.
That is not how TCO over 15 years is calculated.
You need data for the same fleet of cars over 15 years, you don't buy the same car over and over for 15 years. It's not relevant that the 2022 model is different, the TCO is for the 2007 model year cars (using 2007 as the example).
So for a 2007 Camry, we could poll all owners of Camrys built in 2007 to get data about their TCO over the past 15 years. We can't do that for a Tesla Model 3 since nobody has owned one for 15 years so there is nobody to poll yet.