I purchased Tesla S P26351 in December, 2013 and have driven it 134,230 miles since. I am somewhat skeptical about the existence of a malevolent “plot” to cap battery performance given my experience over the years, and I’d buy the car again in a heartbeat.
Rather than the battery, there are other things you should ask about if you buy the older Tesla. Please skip to the last paragraph. Re the battery:
Initially my range was 265 mi. I rarely charge to 100%, though I’ve travelled from IN to TX, OK, KS, eastern PA, northern MI, and northeastern NY on many occasions. Sometime about 2017, I was returning from TX. In southern IL, my car informed me that if turned off it may not restart and to proceed to the nearest service center which was in Chicago. They sent me home in a new vehicle “loaner” and subsequently replaced my battery because of something they had “never seen before” and wanted to disassemble the battery for diagnosis. Sometime before that, my range had declined gradually to 244 at full charge, and the new battery exactly matched the range I was experiencing in the old. Service told me the decline in my old battery was in part due to changes in range calculation or programming.
Fast forward to 2.11.2020: travelling to Austin, TX, the car hesitated to start supercharging several times, responding to unplugging and replugging, wiggling the charger, or moving to different chargers. Except in Austin, where it simply refused to charge at about 6 stalls. Repair tech analyzed for 24 hours and concluded that Supercharger is detecting a high voltage short in the charge port, which they will replace. (probably coincidentally, the charge port was replaced under warranty once when < 1 year old, this one’s on me).
At the moment we are driving a nearly identical loaner, number about P16000 with 52,000 miles which makes it about a year older than mine. Max charge with 6Kw charger? 245 miles.
Over the years I’ve not seen a trend towards less efficiency; on my car and this loaner it is quite easy to keep efficiency at about 300 Wh/mi driving with autopilot set at 65-72 mph. I’m just seeing gradually degraded performance (or maybe not since the range Im seeing is about at what others have supposedly been “capped”).
WHAT SHOULD YOU WATCH FOR IN A USED Model S 85?
-Both mine and the loaner are single motor. More efficient but slower.
-Car about SN P16000 has no air suspension, which was optional on my car SN P26000. It doesn’t lower its height at speed and rides with more road noise and slightly less smoothly.
-It doesnt have traction control. when I stomped on it at a stop light to get the lane I preferred I got a wheelspin without the acceleration I have come to expect.
-The mirrors don’t retract, or tilt downward.
-The trim inside the rear trunk is slightly different.
But like my car at 134,000 miles, it handles and drives beautifully. And no, I don’t want to sell mine. I’m going for 250,000 miles of free supercharging (included in all the early cars—transferable to the new owners, at least when I last checked. )
Good luck. These cars last much better than the many ICE cars I’ve owned. And people still approach to complement my 6 year old high mileage car.