One thing I haven't seen yet is a really high mileage Model S hit the resale market - have you? Curious to know what a 100K, 3 year old Model S would go for - it's out of bumper-to-bumper warranty but still within the 8 year unlimited mileage battery/motor warranty. Surely many people with huge commutes bought these back in 2012/2013, but I don't see them for sale. Hypothetically what if some traveling regional sales manager type put 50K per year on their Model S and now want to unload it for one with autopilot - say it has 150K miles on it but it's only 3 years old. This oddball must have a weird depreciation curve - the worn out parts would be suspension related (shocks, bushings, ball joints etc.) and easily replaceable. Battery and motor would still have 5 years of warranty left. What would it be worth? I wonder if the market will set some kind of floor for extremely high mileage Teslas still under the battery/motor warranty. On the other hand, increasing levels of autonomy will keep making older Model S's less desirable, so that effect would push in the opposite direction. Anybody have a data point?
No data points but I suspect that people putting on excess miles simply plan on keeping the car until the wheels fall off. I would imagine you concede right out of the gate that resale value is going to be terrible and if I'm rocking an S85 with 100k miles on it that's worth say $40,000 I'm going to think long and hard about selling it since it's a) worth so little and b) it's under warranty for another 5 years... At least for the important bits.
Makes sense - and that's my plan. Leasing now until AP 2.0 hardware comes out, then plan to purchase new and keep for my usual 10 years, 200K+ miles routine (well, perhaps 7 years, 11 months). Only this time paying almost nothing for "gas." :Calisnow does the Snoopy dance:
Just crossed 75K miles at the 30 month mark and I do plan driving it until the wheels fall off. AP is cool and all, but not enough for me to want to upgrade.
Exactly. I just crossed the 110k KM on my S and I am not selling it either. I NL I see one P85+ with 112k km for sale. EUR 88k. New it was probably 110k or something.
You're too optimistic, unless resale value as it pertains to mileage plateaus after 40Kmiles - My experience is 40Kmiles = $40K value.
^^^^ this. i'll cross 100k miles next week. i plan on driving it at least until the 8yr warranty is up, if not more (until it dies). sure I wish I had autopilot, but it's not worth getting $30-40k as a trade in for my P85 just to turn around and spend another $100k on a new model with autopilot. that feature is not worth $60-70k for me, especailly given all the complaints I see about it. besides, in another 5-7 yrs there might not be autopilot anymore, as they might all be fully autonomous by then.
Me too, I expect to hold on to the car at least until the powertrain warranty expires then we will see. I'd expect to see the Model S 2.0 make an appearance about then, so the timing should be good.
I was told by a Tesla sales person that back in December of 2015 there was an 85 or P85 with 100,000 miles that was sold as is (not CPO) for about $30,000.
wonder if the power train/battery warranty is still good on those non-CPO. If one doesn't care too much about the looks and high mileage, It would be a steal if the warranty is still there.
As long as the driving integrity of my P85 remains intact I can't imagine selling it. I'll likely pass it down to one of my kids around 150k miles or so.
Time will tell.... but my hypothesis is there we're going to see a new price floor with EVs that didn't really exist with ICE. There are a lot of components on an ICE where the labour alone makes refurbishment cost prohibitive.... it's cheaper just to buy another used ICE instead of fixing one. ANY Tesla in working order for <$30k won't last long on the market... wether it has 100k or 500k miles. Unless it gets in an accident... or drowned... I can't imagine anything on a Tesla breaking or wearing out where it would be cost prohibitive to fix. I've got ~80k miles on mine and it's still going strong.
Agree that there will eventually be a new, much shallower depreciation curve for BEVs, probably tied more closely to pack life since there is little to break with the rest of the drivetrain. I think cars like our with easily swappable pack will have an advantage of cars that use pouch-style batteries where they are more integrated into the frame (because its a recycled ICE body). I think PHEVs will fall somewhere in the middle--there ICE-drivetrain will see degradation over time as usual, but with a shallower slope depending on number of electric miles driven.
With an infinity mile warranty, why ever sell? What could you possibly buy that would be a lower cost of ownership, once it's depreciated some?
It's infinite miles but not infinite time - 8 years. Still, I agree with you - there's almost never a financial argument for upgrading into a new car. Even in the case of repairs which exceed the value of the car it's usually better to make the repairs and keep on driving - what matters is the cost of capital and depreciation on a new car - which is almost always far greater than repairing the old one.
