Buying A Used Tesla Model 3 Performance For Under $25,000: It’s Complicated

Name: Buying A Used Tesla Model 3 Performance For Under $25,000: It’s Complicated
Uploaded: 2024-08-24T14:00:38Z
Description: Navigating sketchy dealers who want to cash the used EV tax credit for themselves and discovering coolant leaks. It’s all there.

Navigating sketchy dealers who want to cash the used EV tax credit for themselves and discovering coolant leaks. It’s all there.

Used Tesla Model 3 Performance buying experience (Source: Out of Spec Reviews / YouTube)

Photo by: Out of Spec Reviews (YouTube)

Iulian Dnistran

By: Iulian Dnistran

Aug 24, 2024 at 10:00am ET

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Eligible buyers can benefit from a $4,000 used EV tax credit at the point of sale.
The car must cost less than $25,000 and the credit can only be applied once per vehicle.

With used EV prices falling a whopping 20% last quarter compared to the same period last year, it’s safe to say that it’s a good time to be a buyer and not a great time to be a seller.

But what can you actually buy if you’re on a limited budget? One of the safest bets out there is the pre-facelift Tesla Model 3, which was (and still is) one of the best-selling battery-powered cars on the market.

There are a lot of them on the road and just about every issue is already known and fixes are relatively easy and expensive. Whether you want to go down the Tesla Service route or the do-it-yourself path, chances are you’ll be able to get away with relatively low repair bills–except if you’re unlucky enough to need a replacement high-voltage battery.

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But what if you were to dream big and seek out the highest-spec Model 3, the Performance? With all-wheel drive and a zero to 60 miles per hour sprint in just 3.1 seconds, it’s no slouch. Prices for a well-maintained one with less than 100,000 miles on the odometer usually go for over $25,000 on the interwebs, but as luck would have it, our friend Kyle Conner managed to find one that ended up costing much less thanks to the $4,000 used EV tax credit applied to the point of sale and some haggling.

The whole buying process is described at length in the one-hour Out of Spec Reviews video embedded at the top of this page, starting with finding the car and continuing with driving many hours to the Ford dealership that listed it for sale, inspecting it at 10 pm under the street lights and discovering a few faults, including a low coolant error.

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This particular EV is a 2018 Tesla Model 3 Performance with less than 40,000 miles on the odometer, white interior and exterior. When new, it had an EPA-estimated range of 310 miles, but with the battery degradation that’s inherent to lithium-ion-powered EVs, that figure is lower now. But that’s fine because the person who’s looking to buy the car (spoiler alert: he purchased it in the middle of the night, kudos to the Ford dealership for staying open so late) only drives about 60 miles every day.

As with any used car purchase, not everything is perfect. But it’s important to see the car in person, take it out for a spin and look over the documents before signing anything.

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