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Used Model 3 questions

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Nom3yet

Member
May 14, 2021
8
0
Kitchener
#1
Hi all, I’m brand new to this forum and apologize if this has been discussed, but I couldn’t find anything —
I’m going to buy a used Model 3 and am debating a 2018 vs a 2019 or 2020 as 1, it will be cheaper, and 2, as far as I can tell, some 2018s have enhanced AutoPilot and lifetime premium connectivity which newer models don’t have. When I spoke to Tesla, they said if I buy used from them they would cancel the lifetime premium connectivity and change the enhanced autopilot to either standard or FSD (and price accordingly). My questions is, if I was to buy from a non Tesla dealer or privately, would these changes still happen or would everything stay the same? I wasn’t sure if when I create a Tesla account or whatever I need to do so they know I own the car, would they scrap the premium connectivity etc? Sorry for the long-winded post. Appreciate any replies. Also if you have any other advise on which way to go — 2018 vs 2019 vs 2020 that would also be much appreciated.
 
#2
Seeing you are from Kitchener (assuming in Canada) some of those features are Canadian market specific FYI. Premium connectivity is like 16$ a mo CAD and there no way to know if they won’t be able to yank it at some point anyway. At 16$/mo, the price difference would have to be more than 2000$ (assuming 10 year) to make the premium connectivity meaningful.

The FSD/AP thing is different because you somewhat keep the resale value only over a private sale. Feature-wise it’s not significantly different unless you get an FSD equipped with hardware 2.5 I think. Older would have been retrofitted but I am not intimately familiar with those details. So I think the way to look at it is more from a resale perspective than a buying one with 1 exception: EAP. The enhanced autopilot is not available anymore from Tesla so the only way to get it is to buy a used car privately that has it. It's AP with line change summon and self park. Nothing guarantees it will stay as is - Tesla could discontinue it with whichever terms they feel like (and that they can legally get away with).
 
#6
Connectivity is only lifetime if the car was ordered before July 1 2018, so just being a 2018 doesn't tell you if it has lifetime or not- you'd need evidence of the original order (NOT delivery) date from the original buyer for that

AP/EAP/FSD/whichever it has should stay with the car regardless of order date so long as it never reverted back to Tesla ownership at any point since new.

And to clarify the FSD/computer thing- If it has EAP and HW2.5 you don't get a free HW3 upgrade, if it has FSD and HW2.5 you do (though one would think by this point the owner would already have gotten the upgrade- it's been available since late 2019).

You still get all the same EAP features with either computer, but HW3 has some other mostly cosmetic improvements right now to visualizations and such (can't recall if reading speed limit signs is supported in HW2.5 that might be the only functional difference if not)
 
#7
sroy said:
Seeing you are from Kitchener (assuming in Canada) some of those features are Canadian market specific FYI. Premium connectivity is like 16$ a mo CAD and there no way to know if they won’t be able to yank it at some point anyway. At 16$/mo, the price difference would have to be more than 2000$ (assuming 10 year) to make the premium connectivity meaningful.

The FSD/AP thing is different because you somewhat keep the resale value only over a private sale. Feature-wise it’s not significantly different unless you get an FSD equipped with hardware 2.5 I think. Older would have been retrofitted but I am not intimately familiar with those details. So I think the way to look at it is more from a resale perspective than a buying one with 1 exception: EAP. The enhanced autopilot is not available anymore from Tesla so the only way to get it is to buy a used car privately that has it. It's AP with line change summon and self park. Nothing guarantees it will stay as is - Tesla could discontinue it with whichever terms they feel like (and that they can legally get away with).
Click to expand...
Great points. Thanks very much
 
#8
sroy said:
Seeing you are from Kitchener (assuming in Canada) some of those features are Canadian market specific FYI. Premium connectivity is like 16$ a mo CAD and there no way to know if they won’t be able to yank it at some point anyway. At 16$/mo, the price difference would have to be more than 2000$ (assuming 10 year) to make the premium connectivity meaningful.

The FSD/AP thing is different because you somewhat keep the resale value only over a private sale. Feature-wise it’s not significantly different unless you get an FSD equipped with hardware 2.5 I think. Older would have been retrofitted but I am not intimately familiar with those details. So I think the way to look at it is more from a resale perspective than a buying one with 1 exception: EAP. The enhanced autopilot is not available anymore from Tesla so the only way to get it is to buy a used car privately that has it. It's AP with line change summon and self park. Nothing guarantees it will stay as is - Tesla could discontinue it with whichever terms they feel like (and that they can legally get away with).
Click to expand...
Great points, thanks.
 
#10
Knightshade said:
Connectivity is only lifetime if the car was ordered before July 1 2018, so just being a 2018 doesn't tell you if it has lifetime or not- you'd need evidence of the original order (NOT delivery) date from the original buyer for that

AP/EAP/FSD/whichever it has should stay with the car regardless of order date so long as it never reverted back to Tesla ownership at any point since new.

And to clarify the FSD/computer thing- If it has EAP and HW2.5 you don't get a free HW3 upgrade, if it has FSD and HW2.5 you do (though one would think by this point the owner would already have gotten the upgrade- it's been available since late 2019).

You still get all the same EAP features with either computer, but HW3 has some other mostly cosmetic improvements right now to visualizations and such (can't recall if reading speed limit signs is supported in HW2.5 that might be the only functional difference if not)
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info. To clarify, if I bought with EAP and it only had HW2.5, I could still pay for upgrade to FSD at some point and that would include upgrade to HW3.0. Is that correct?
 
#13
I wouldn't make any decision based on the premium connectivity, it's not worth that much. In the US it's $10/month, don't know what it is in Canada but it can't be much. As for EAP, it's worthless. I have FSD which does more than EAP and it's interesting but not useful. The system is Level 2 at the moment which means you have to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention to the road, that's exactly the same thing as driving the car yourself only less convenient because a failure to tweak the wheel a little, to show it that you are paying attention, or tweaking the wheel too much, to correct the car when it does something stupid which is frequently, will drop you out of FSD. With the newer cars you get regular Autopilot which has all of the useful features that FSD has minus Navigate on Autopilot and Smart Summon (which is just a useless party trick). At some point they will get real self driving working but that could be years away. Real self driving, Level 4 or 5, means that you can just be a passenger. I'm looking forward to the day when I can say take me to Maine and wake me when we get to Portland but who knows when that will happen. But suppose they really do succeed this year, you won't want to be stuck with a car that has HW2.5. They are introducing a subscription next month but that will only be available to cars with HW3. If you were to buy FSD for $10,000, probably more if they really get it to work, they'll throw in the hardware upgrade. But if you want to subscribe they will either charge you for the update or make you sign a long term subscription contract so that they can get their money back for the upgrade.

BTW check the build date on the 2019. HW3 was introduced in April or May of that year, cars built before then don't have HW3. My car was built in July of 2019 and it has it. To be safe I'd go with the 2020.
 
#14
bjrosen said:
I wouldn't make any decision based on the premium connectivity, it's not worth that much. In the US it's $10/month, don't know what it is in Canada but it can't be much. As for EAP, it's worthless. I have FSD which does more than EAP and it's interesting but not useful. The system is Level 2 at the moment which means you have to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention to the road, that's exactly the same thing as driving the car yourself only less convenient because a failure to tweak the wheel a little, to show it that you are paying attention, or tweaking the wheel too much, to correct the car when it does something stupid which is frequently, will drop you out of FSD. With the newer cars you get regular Autopilot which has all of the useful features that FSD has minus Navigate on Autopilot and Smart Summon (which is just a useless party trick). At some point they will get real self driving working but that could be years away. Real self driving, Level 4 or 5, means that you can just be a passenger. I'm looking forward to the day when I can say take me to Maine and wake me when we get to Portland but who knows when that will happen. But suppose they really do succeed this year, you won't want to be stuck with a car that has HW2.5. They are introducing a subscription next month but that will only be available to cars with HW3. If you were to buy FSD for $10,000, probably more if they really get it to work, they'll throw in the hardware upgrade. But if you want to subscribe they will either charge you for the update or make you sign a long term subscription contract so that they can get their money back for the upgrade.

BTW check the build date on the 2019. HW3 was introduced in April or May of that year, cars built before then don't have HW3. My car was built in July of 2019 and it has it. To be safe I'd go with the 2020.
Click to expand...
Thanks so much for this. It's very helpful. I certainly wouldn't make a decision based solely on premium connectivity; it was more of consideration based on overall options and pricing in the different model years. I understand your point about being stuck with HW2.5 but now I'm a bit confused on costs -- Is the upgrade cost to FSD different between if I buy a 2020 with standard AP (HW3.0) vs if I buy a 2018 with AP (HW2.5) which will need the 3.0 upgrade? My understanding is that the FSD upgrade includes the HW upgrade if needed but again, is the price different if I al ready had 3.0? Is there a link somewhere to this upgrade info? thanks again. I keep being enticed by a 2018 long range dual motor in my area for sale for $50,500, which seems like a deal as anything else similar seems to be $55kish, so maybe there's more to that story which I'll have to check out. But at that price compared with a 2020 with standard AP for more like $62k it seems like a strong consideration.
 
#15
In a nutshell, unless you buy FSD, the 2.5 vs 3 is moot. because you get the upgrade regardless (exception being the EAP). I don't think there is any reason to pass on a 2018 if the price fits your budget. It's true that for the LR, the newer the better in terms of range but I feel the range difference for the LR to not be that significant. That being said, the more range the better.

From my point of view I think it starts with budget. Then within budget, the more range the better. If that means, for instance, new SR+ vs LR, in that case I think a used LR is a better choice. But among LRs, I feel it's a toss up between more range vs best deal unless the new LR fits well within the budget.
 
#16
sroy said:
In a nutshell, unless you buy FSD, the 2.5 vs 3 is moot. because you get the upgrade regardless (exception being the EAP). I don't think there is any reason to pass on a 2018 if the price fits your budget. It's true that for the LR, the newer the better in terms of range but I feel the range difference for the LR to not be that significant. That being said, the more range the better.

From my point of view I think it starts with budget. Then within budget, the more range the better. If that means, for instance, new SR+ vs LR, in that case I think a used LR is a better choice. But among LRs, I feel it's a toss up between more range vs best deal unless the new LR fits well within the budget.
Click to expand...
Makes total sense. How much consideration would you put on warranty? The 2018 I'm looking at has 85,000 kms so it's out of the main warranty. I obviously have no experience as to how likely a 2018 Tesla is to have any major maintenance costs/problems in the next few years.
 
#17
That would be the "buy private" vs "buy used from Tesla at a premium" question. I would be hard-pressed to give an answer. On one hand, it was driven long enough so that had it been a dud, issues would have come up already. But in the few cases of warranty-covered issues I have heard of, it's certainly better to have that coverage.

EVs in general comes with the promise that having 1000 times fewer mechanical components, they are more durable on a per-mile basis than an ICE equivalent. and one advantage of being out of warranty is that you can perform some mods that would void it otherwise as you please (ex partybox, aftermarket wheels/suspension, etc).
 
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#18
I wouldn't consider a three year old car that has 85,000 miles on it. That car has been abused and chances are they did a lot of supercharging on it which is bad for the battery. The battery and drivetrain warranty is 120,000 miles, 85,000 is a big piece of that.
 
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