Buying Model S LR from private seller and driving it across the country

[AlexSD]

I am in the process of purchasing a 2022 Model S from a private seller located in Florida. The plan is to meet in person on Saturday in Florida to do the inspection and finalize the transaction. I plan to get in the car and start driving it to California on the same day.

From what I read, it may take up to a week for the car to show under my Tesla account after The original owner removes it from his account. Meanwhile, I plan to use Supercharger network to get me back to California.

Has anyone here had a similar experience? Would the car charge at Supercharger stations while the car is being transferred from the previous owners account to mine? I am struggling a bit to get a straight answer from Tesla and I don’t want to get stuck.

Any feedback or suggestions would be highly appreciated.

 

[jjrandorin]

I dont think it will supercharge once the owner removes it.

One thing that you could do (perhaps) is to buy a prepaid credit card and load it up with enough money to get you home + $100 extra or so to allow for overage, and then ask the current owner to put that card as the supercharging payment in their account.

Perhaps consider not having them remove it from their account until you get home? A bit of trust would be required with this, but they could add you as an additional driver, then do the account removal thing once you get home.

Perhaps someone else has a better suggestion though.

 

[TSteve]

When I bought my first Tesla it was transferred to me by the owner immediately. I didn't claim it myself. It was pretty smooth and the car was in my account before I drove away. I'd guess it's possible to have it all set up before you leave if they transfer it to you instead of you claiming it. Let us know how it goes!

 

[daddymalu]

As long as he removes the car from his account it should transfer right away.

 

[mswlogo]

If you have an existing account and he transfers it to your account. The transfer is more or less instant. It should work but there can be a glitch.

You could transfer the car to your account with a solid down payment before traveling out. Seller would still possess the car and legally still the sellers car and if something went sour they can get it back on their account.

If you don’t have a cooperating seller proving the car is yours and forcing it into your account takes time. And used to be the only method.

I sold a car like this before the instant transfer. Buyer bought the car and remotely inspected. Lots of trust on both parties. But the car was his, registered, on his account and in his name before he arrived.

 

[AlexSD]

Thank you all for the comments and insights. So far, the seller has been very cooperating and I don't foresee issues with removing the car from his account and transferring it under my Tesla account before I leave his place.

I'll keep you posted how everything goes. Wish me luck!

 

[EVRider-FL]

I suggest you try to supercharge before you begin your trip to make sure you can.

 

[mswlogo]

I suggest you try to supercharge before you begin your trip to make sure you can.

What difference does it make at that point. I suspect seller won’t transfer until paid. So it’s his car and he needs to get home.

But he should have a backup plan and don’t go running battery down to 10%.

Maybe buy a CCS adapter and ship it to seller.

 

[pp61]

For me, in Europe, went very smooth. As owner I had to move account to buyer. He had to confirm and I had to reconfirm in the app.
Next step was to go to car and do reset.
As the buyer had already account (it was his first car) the transfer was very easy.
I think that as his creditcard was on file supercharging worked immediately.
Private sale too.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

When we've sold cars in the past, it took a lot longer to transfer ownership. We would add the buyer as a driver on the car. That allowed them to have app access and they could Supercharge when driving home. Since the cars had unlimited Supercharging or we had referral miles on our account, we didn't mind that the Supercharging would be deducted from our balance.

Since ownership transfers are processed so quickly these days, we'll offer to do that if the buyer wants to go that route in the future.

 

[AlexSD]

Thank you everyone for additional comments. This will be my 3rd Tesla so I already have an active Tesla account and the mobile app on my phone. However, this would be the first pre-owned Tesla for me as the other two Tesla cars I own had been purchased directly from Tesla. I am not worried about seller - he's been very accommodating so far. The only concern for me is to be able to charge while taking a 2500+ mile trip back home. I plan to bring adapters alone just in case if I run into any issues with Supercharger network, Wish me luck and I'll post an update as soon as I finish my cross-country trip.

 

[kdphan]

As long as you have him remove the car and transfer it to the new owner with email them it should be instant. I did this recently since I bought another Tesla with a separate account and transferred to myself with another Tesla

 

[laakness]

Yep, I did the same but through a non-Tesla dealer that took the 22 MSLR in on trade. Once the owner removes it from their account you will see it display on the dash above the yoke something like "supercharging not available, attach to a payment method".

I brought my laptop as it was much easier to do. You login to Tesla.com and add a car. You put the VIN in and it will ask you to go rename the car to some special code. Once that is done and validated the car is transferred to you and you can use SC's as long as you put a credit card into your Tesla app on phone. It's all documented but I don't have the link/don't want to look it up right now

 

[AlexSD]

I am happy to report that everything worked out flawlessly with the car transfer. Once the previous owner removed it from his account through the mobile app and confirmed it with a security code that was sent to his Inbox, the car showed up in my account and the app almost instantaneously. The app asked me to program the card key and once I did that, I was on the way.

An interesting side note on my overall transaction related to FSD. First, I need to mention that it was my first purchase of a preowned Tesla. My other Tesla cars came from the factory and I knew exactly what I was getting.

To make the long story short -- I purchased a 2022 MSLR with 175 miles on the odometer from an elderly gentleman in FL (81 years of age). The story was that he ordered the car for his wife back in 2021, waited almost a year for it to arrive and when it was delivered in August of this year the wife didn't like it that much. I could somewhat believe his story since when I met the seller in person he barely knew how to operate the car and access basic features.

Here is the best part. The car came with a window sticker indicating that FSD was included at $12,000. Once we completed vehicle transfer between Tesla accounts, I noticed that FSD wasn't showing up as one of the car's features. I immediately called Tesla customer support and had them investigate the issue. As it turned out, although the window sticker showed FSD being part of the car package, the car never had this feature added to it when it was ordered. The seller acted totally confused but when we looked at the actual order summary document in his account, it clearly didn't list FSD as one of the options. Tesla customer service advisor told me that the window sticker is pretty much meaningless and one has to look at the actual software configuration on the car screen. Moral of the story, double check everything when buying a Tesla from a private seller. The previous owner ended up reimbursing me a nice amount to offset the difference for not having FSD, so it all worked out at the end.