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USED P85D Buying Experience - Canada

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The Purchase Story – My 2015 S P85D

I purchased a USED 2015 Model S P85D directly from Tesla on Sep 20th 2018 in the heat of the model 3 bump up. It was not a perfect purchase but not nearly as bad as other users have faced. I was originally going to get the Model 3D but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around buying a car that I was no longer going to get the 14K Ontario EV incentive. I even configured it and had an ETA of the beginning of October. My wife was already pushing to get something larger, so I started browsing for used Tesla’s. I started inquiring about some from individual sellers(Tesla said the would refund as long as I hadn’t got my VIN). I couldn’t find what I liked, and I felt they were not priced competitively enough against Tesla CPO’s and didn’t have an additional warranty. Over the time I was looking approximately Sep 1-14th Tesla never showed much for sale. I think I was about 4-6 cars come and go over that time. I finally inquired about one and switching my model 3 deposits to it. This actually seemed to get Tesla excited and had some reach out to me instantly, she was very nice and even sent me some listings in Montreal that I couldn’t easily see on the tesla site do to regional/provincial website restrictions.

I finally decided that one was close enough to what I wanted and clearly had a number of price drops. I found this via ev-cpo.com that I learned about by searching VIN for the cars I was interested in. The prices where also clearly a little lower in the Montreal area and my guess this was due to it still having an EV incentive in Quebec.

I bit the bullet and made the switch and in the end was about the same cost as a near fully loaded Model 3D(the D is for AWD) I was about to get. It also had heated steering wheel, Air Suspension, more storage, faster and free supercharging which I think was enough pros over the 3D I was about to get.

The delivery was very accommodating. They were happy to just deliver it to my door. Which from what I have read else where I was surprised by for a Tesla and an used car. The catch is I wouldn’t be able to inspect it before confirming the purchase. I figured that if it wasn’t as described or shown by Tesla they would make it right. So I figured this would be the easiest for all as it sounded to be in away easier for Tesla as well since they where going to have to transport it to inspect and register it for Ontario and they don’t have a service center in Ottawa.

In the end it was pretty close to as described except for some small cosmetic issues you might expect in a used car, but I also would except those to have been revelled before purchase.

The issues that Tesla ended up correcting:

-Damage to the front bumper(not visible in photos).

-Lack of a trunk light(I think they replaced the trunk liner without replacing the lights).

Things they still will make right:

-numerous unfixed rock chips. -said they will send touch up paint kit but my colour code is out of stock(still!)

- Small rock chip on the edge of the top panoramic glass(said if it ever spider cracks from that point only they will replace it under warranty)

Things I brought up they just kind of ignored that I didn’t’ push but have a feeling if I did they would have corrected:

- Curb rash to the rims. -Planning on getting cyclone wheels eventually anyways. Also got winter tires plus rims already

Since purchase I also have brought up some heavy phantom drain. I was expecting this and I knew about it before I got the car but I feel the ideal range I was losing was much higher and still continue to read about. In the end, it hasn’t bothered me to much as I have had to charge at home pretty rarely(so not much, if anything out of pocket).Due to the wealth of free destination, lvl2 and lvl3(Ikea) charges along my typical routes and the free supercharging it hasn’t been a cost issue. Regardless Tesla said they would do a full analyses of the battery etc to confirm if something was at fault. They concluded it was still running in ‘spec’. When doing this the decided from a test drive and the brakes didn’t met the used tesla program specs and should have been replaced so they did that for free! I feel more this was a way to make me happy and ignore the slightly higher then normal phantom drain in my car. The also reminded me that the battery and drive train is under warranty until June 2023. Which was a nice reminder if this is actually an underlying issue in the car. (note: this was done 2 months after ordering when I was taking a trip out of Toronto)

With the back story setup I thought I would go over the other issues since purchase:

-Driver side door failed and trunk latch failed a day apart on a trip. (was fixed within a week by a mobile tech) – Under warranty and supper friendly service

- I have had the rear air suspension act up due to I believe snow and ice getting jammed up in the wheel well. The rear driver side wasn’t raising and lowering at the same rate as the other corners. Seems to have fixed itself after sitting in the garage over night. Didn’t affect drivability and hasn’t happened again. Been watching it closely since and has been driven a few times in ice and snow since. The person I talked to thinks it might have been a sensor that got ice’d up

-Charge port light started to fail(still charges) – Replaced under warranty by a mobile tech

-12V Battery warning – Replaced under warranty by a mobile tech, same visit as the Chargeport. I was surprised by this as I would have assumed the battery would be considered a “consumable/wear item”

* Bonus -the replacement of the 12V seems to have lowered the phantom From 10-20km a/day to 5-15km/day

The big question: Would I still have bought this particular car if I could go back in time?
I’m pretty sure I would have although I might have held out a little longer and seen about looking at some of the used cars instead, but not sure if that is even possible. Do a regret the purchase. NOPE! I love the car and love how this company is changing the automotive market driving innovation and new tech from the major auto makers. Despite the faults it is easy to look past them due to all the other amazing aspects of the car and long term vision.