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Depreciation on LR RWD

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If you care about efficiency & range, the LR RWD is the best Model 3 made to date. If they never sell it in the US again, then it should be one of the more sought configurations for people who care about those things.

Buying the LR RWD has worked out great for me so far:

1. I qualify for $7500 federal credit and $3000 CT credit, neither of which is available at those levels to current buyers.
2. Color was $1000 when I bought.
3. Destination+Doc Fee was $1000 when I bought.
4. EPA range is 334 miles, which it easily exceeded in warm temps. In cold temps real-world range is more like 290... still not bad.
5. Does well in snow with winter tires (which would be needed for AWD anyway, because AWD doesn't help you stop).

I was also able to take advantage of lower doc fee, lower dual motor cost, cheaper paint charge on my car. That is offset though by them slashing the base MSRP of the car by around $4,000 to date and lowering the cost of the white interior I bought substantially.

I expect that after 3 years my car, which will only have around 30K miles on it will be worth 50-55% of what I paid for it pre-tax incentives. That means that my $62,000 car will be worth around $35,000 or so and I will have paid a true cost on it of around $50,000 after taxes so pretty good deal for me.

Anyone who is flipping their car for a slightly updated one, or dual motor one or performance version one, is really taking it in the shorts although a few people were able to minimize the pain by flipping their car at the very end of Q4.. assuming they had enough tax liability to be able to take two $7500 tax credits.
 
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Remember that at the 27,500 price point, the Model 3 demand is infinite. It won't matter new or used as long as the hardware is relatively current.

There are certain price floors built in to support value.

Two years from now when all credits have ended - if I am making a comparison:

35K for

1.) New Model 3 SR, stripped down interior, exterior and minimal range.
2.) Used Model 3 LR with premium interior, premium exterior packages and maximum range.

If i'm not an idiot, the choice is obvious.

Edit: I made my post without even checking current values. I just now did and ~45K (on lower end) for cars is pretty high resale value to me.

Think it's gonna quarter or halve from 45K? Not easily. If we applied technical + psychological analysis, 35K has strong support.

Model 3 | eBay
 
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I've used cargurus.com in the past to figure out fair selling prices with some success. They estimate my July 2018 LR with 10k miles to be ~$47k currently in private sale, which would be about 16% depreciation in 8 months.

that 16% depreciation doesn't take into account that the first owner got a tax credit and the 2nd owner won't get to claim it. I got my LR for 56k, and with the tax credit, my net out of pocket is 48.5k. If I can sell it for 47k (I'd be happy with lower), I'm only out a couple thousand.
 
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I frequently got 400 miles during the warm season. amazing car.

Friend of mine just got the MR, and I was sharing with him what to expect with efficiency, forgetting that they aren't rated the same. He was not able to hit my Wh/mi numbers...

How the F?

Do you have a very very light foot, or never do highway speeds, or do you weigh negative 180 pounds, or all three?
 
Slight changes in driving habits and terrain make a BIG difference. I have broken 400 several times (but also done a few barely over 200).
Going 40 mph on a level road using cruise ctrl (and not needing climate controls and maybe wind in your direction) with very few interruptions in motion will shock you. Compare to up over a mountain pass with zero deg temps and 40 mph headwinds with constant speed changes.
Pretty much similar with an ICE car - just till now - we didn't care !!
 
How the F?

Do you have a very very light foot, or never do highway speeds, or do you weigh negative 180 pounds, or all three?

My commute is an 80-mi round trip with traffic, with most of it on EAP. Rest of the mileage is local roads around town. This was typical during the warm season:

upload_2019-2-20_20-25-27.png
 
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We were similar during the warm season. Wife's 110 mi daily commute, most of it at 70-75 mph would clock in between 190-200. If she caught traffic (usually commutes outside of rush hours), it would be closer to novox77's numbers.

Maybe it has something to do with normalization across a long drive. my commute is only about 10 miles each way in heavy traffic, and most of my longer drives include a fair amount of elevation changes.

Or hell maybe my memory just sucks and I do get numbers like that in summer.
 
We were similar during the warm season. Wife's 110 mi daily commute, most of it at 70-75 mph would clock in between 190-200. If she caught traffic (usually commutes outside of rush hours), it would be closer to novox77's numbers.
After about 13 months of ownership and 14,000 mostly highway miles in AZ desert, I am at about 200 for the life of the car. The 157-160 displayed above isn’t anything I have often experienced, but I tend to hammer the throttle always. I have come close to those low numbers when going downhill and/or with conservative driving, but most of my driving is on flat roads and 200 seems to be typical. I can’t imagine anything but jackrabbit starts with these cars!
 
If your vehicle is in a cold state such as BC, it could be worse because of the deeper electric cycles.

The problem with EVs and degradation results mainly from the lack of thermal cooling, heat and fast charging -- a lethal combination to lithium ion batteries -- and one that I need to consciously avoid with our Leaf but not with our Teslas. The fist time you supercharge after driving for three hours on a scorching summer day, you will immediately hear what I am talking about because the compressor is worked to the max -- but there's just silence with a Chademo and Leaf on that same summer day-- oh, the poor battery! Of course, the Nissan battery class action was successful, and there's also posts over at the Leaf forum about how to heat and fast charge to induce degradation to get a new replacement battery under warranty by getting bars to drop off. Yet I still have the original battery in my 2012 Leaf, that has only dropped one bar -- because BC has an ideal climate for EV batteries. It's high heat States like Texas, California and Florida that kill EV batteries -- not BC's climate.

With my S85 and LR3, even with the coldest of cold snaps -- like -30C at my cabin -- the deeper cycles required are not even noticeable when it comes to degradation. More here on how to make your battery last. In a nutshell, cycle around 50%:

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

As to the subject of this thread, no vehicle, whether EV or otherwise, should be looked at as an investment. Look to your investments for appreciation and to your vehicles to depreciate, and significantly, right when you drive them off the lot. If you need to be concerned about the value of your vehicles, then you shouldn't be buying an expensive vehicle, which all new Teslas are. You need to buy TSLA (well, too late now) but look to your investment portfolio to make money, and to your vehicles to lose it for you -- and fast! Then you will be happy financially. All vehicles drop like a rock in value and our LR Model 3s will drop in value much the same as this curve:

New cars depreciate faster than any other asset. The steepest drop is when you first purchase your car and drive it off of the lot – its value drops to about 90% of what you paid for it. Within a year, a new car will have depreciated even more, and will be worth around 80% of the money you paid for it. This process will continue in a non-linear fashion – by year 3, a new car is worth only 58% of its original purchase. By year 4, 49%. By year 5, 40%.
 
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As a person that drives 45k++ a year (drove 16k in 4 months) (even more now since new job!). I feel like my LR rwd EAP will be near worthless in 2022 (red sticker expires) it's when I plan to buy a new model 3 (awd/p3) just for HOV sticker.
 
After about 13 months of ownership and 14,000 mostly highway miles in AZ desert, I am at about 200 for the life of the car. The 157-160 displayed above isn’t anything I have often experienced, but I tend to hammer the throttle always. I have come close to those low numbers when going downhill and/or with conservative driving, but most of my driving is on flat roads and 200 seems to be typical. I can’t imagine anything but jackrabbit starts with these cars!

My lifetime numbers are similar. 13.5k miles at around 200Wh/mi. Warm season was below 200Wh/mi and winter is above. I wasn't suggesting that the 150-160Wh/mi numbers were year round averages. And correct, those efficient numbers reflect rush hour traffic on the highways, which is much better conditions than full-on aero drag of 70+ mph.
 
As a person that drives 45k++ a year (drove 16k in 4 months) (even more now since new job!). I feel like my LR rwd EAP will be near worthless in 2022 (red sticker expires) it's when I plan to buy a new model 3 (awd/p3) just for HOV sticker.

It will be far from worthless. Even if battery degrades to 80%, it will still have 250 miles of range. That would be likely be either greater than or equal to the range of a then-current 3SR (if it ever comes out) and already have the Premium Upgrade Package. I'd venture a guess and say worth at least $15-20k. I'm anticipating the floor for EVs with >200 miles range (taking into account degradation) to be pretty high.

Alternatively, throw a new battery in at reduced 2022-prices and, depending on how you treated the car inside and out, it will feel close to brand new!
 
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I think Tesla will up the SR range when it comes out. It will probably be 265 by the time it comes out and MR will be 310. LR will be 350 haha

They are so constrained on cell production in so many areas of their business (not just automotive but power products) and they have such a range lead over competition that it's hard to see them doing this anytime soon in my opinion.

2021 at the very earliest for range bumps.
 
They are so constrained on cell production in so many areas of their business (not just automotive but power products) and they have such a range lead over competition that it's hard to see them doing this anytime soon in my opinion.

2021 at the very earliest for range bumps.


Yup- in fact they mentioned on the earning that they lost a lot of sales in power products because of how much battery MFG capacity they had to shift over to cars.