I am seeing 2020 M3 with 3,000 miles listed as “Used” on Tesla existing inventory website. The price appears to be $3,000 less than “new” vehicles. Are these demo cars? Returns?
At first I thought the higher loan rate (4% v. 2.5%) for a “used” vehicle would not be worth it, but calculated a $500 interest cost increase over the term of the loan. With $3,000 off the purchase price and $500 more in interest, it seems worth it. You lose the one year connectivity. What am I missing? Pro’s and Con’s?
"new" vs "used" are legal definitions that have nothing to do with how many miles are on a car. For the definition of new vs used, what matters was, was the car sold to an end customer previously? If yes, car = used, even if it has 20 miles on it. If no car = new even if it has 4000 miles on it.
Filed under "what you may be missing" is that "new" cars generally qualify for all new EV rebate programs offered, while in many cases, used cars may not quallify. This can be substantial, depending on what your state / local governments etc offer for rebates for EVs ,and if it applies only to new (which can be "new car with miles".
Another thing filed under "what you may be missing" is that a "used" car with low miles on it in teslas inventory was absolutely returned to them for "some reason" from someone who owned it previously. If it was a demo car used by tesla, it would be being sold as "new" even if it had miles on it. So, a car thats "used" and has low miles was returned to them. What you DONT know is, WHY it was returned.
What you DO know is, if its being sold as USED, it WAS RETURNED by someone. As to "why" it might have been returned, since we dont know, I usually go by occams razor on something like this, which is "the simplest answer is generally correct" (paraphrasing). There are all sorts of reasons a tesla could be returned by someone and then being sold with low miles, but the "most likely" one is that the person bought it, and had "some issue" that they were not comfortable having tesla fix, or that tesla was taking too long to fix, so they returned it.
Thus, any car being sold as USED by tesla with low miles should be investigated thoroughly, because you KNOW it was returned, you just dont know why. Any car with low miles sold as NEW, was likely a demo car, and would qualify for new car programs / rebates / interest rates etc. Still could have issues, but the low miles would make sense.
Personally, I would steer clear of any low mileage car being sold from tesla itself as USED, for the reason above. Sold as new, those cars could be a good deal. Its something you absolutely need to verify before putting any money down. Dont assume used = miles.
