- The owner of this six-year-old Tesla Model 3 Long Range rear-wheel drive notes the good and the bad after 150,000 miles.
- The review covers warranty repairs, out-of-pocket repairs, reliability, range loss and battery degradation.
Driving an electric car for hundreds of thousands of miles will inevitably lead to some degradation of the high-voltage battery. There’s no way to escape it, but the rate of degradation–and the range loss that comes with it–might not be quite the boogeyman expected by some.
Take YouTuber Andy Slye’s 2018 Tesla Model 3 Long Range rear-wheel drive. He bought the car new six years ago and recently drove it past the 150,000-mile mark, so he has plenty of experience with the car.
During his ownership, he had a couple of issues, some of which were fixed for free when the car was still under warranty, while others, like replacing the front suspension control arms and lateral links, were paid out of pocket.
The car looks surprisingly good for such high mileage, with minimal signs of wear and tear on the driver’s headrest and the driver’s side B pillar. All in all, Slye said he doesn’t regret buying the car in the first place–which was a $50,000+ affair back in 2018–and that over the course of his six-year ownership, he saved over $20,000 just from not having to constantly fill up a gas car.
His charging stats show an average cost of just $40 per month for home charging when taking into account an annual mileage of roughly 20,000 miles. The way he sees it, even after paying for out-of-warranty repairs, the Model 3 still saved him over $10,000 in gas bills.
But what about the range loss and battery degradation? When new, the pre-facelift Tesla Model 3 Long Range RWD had an EPA-estimated range of 310 miles on a full charge. Now, the guess-o-meter on Slye’s EV shows 280 miles, so a 30-mile or nearly 10% reduction.
The battery health test showed a result of 83%, while the data extracted from Recurrent (an app that’s used by tens of thousands of EV owners in the United States) showed a range score of 98 with a predicted range of about 296 miles on a full charge.
In other words, after six years and 150,000 miles, this particular Tesla Model 3 has had minimal range loss and battery degradation and will probably continue to offer many more miles. If the high-voltage pack fails–which is a possibility–Slye said that he’s not to concerned about it because there are companies out there that offer refurbished batteries for around $7,000 to $8,000, while a replacement from Tesla will set you back $13,000–still less than the $20,000 savings.
