- Auto Trader’s Rory Reid, recently took a used 2016 Tesla Model S 90D, used as an airport taxi, with a whopping 430,000 miles on the clock – still running on the original motors and batteries.
- For perspective, this is the equivalent of the Tesla travelling around the world approximately 17 times.
- Testing out its real world range, the 430,000 mile EV still had a significantly usable amount of range.
Time to buy a used Tesla?
Even before getting to the question of battery degradation, the fact that this Model S is still running reliably at 430,000 miles is impressive in itself, particularly when you consider that the majority of internal combustion engines give up the ghost around the 200,000 mile mark without major repairs. It’s not just a fluke, either, with the original owner also having a similarly high 375,000 mile Model S also on his driveway. With both cars also purchased when Tesla was still running its free Supercharging for life offer, both EVs have given the owner a significant number of cost-free miles.
As part of an ongoing series of tests on this high mileage hero, Rory Reid put the Model S through its paces with a real world range test. With an original quoted range on the 90D model in question of 294 miles, Rory found the display to say he had 214 miles of range after fully charging it. Then, setting out on a 200 mile, mainly motorway-based trip from North Yorkshire to Bedfordshire, he managed 186 miles before the battery depleted – coincidentally, just outside a Tesla Supercharger.
While having 63% of the original battery capacity is still a significant amount of degradation, this is to be expected for a 400,000-plus miles battery, and 186 miles of range is still a perfectly usable amount. Tesla themselves noted in its recent impact report that the average Model 3 or Y battery would still have 85% of its original capacity after 200,000 miles of driving, with that figure rising to 88% for the batteries found in the Model S and X vehicles. Consumer-oriented content such as this will be crucial for convincing more to switch to EV, particularly as used EVs drop in price further – proving that cheaper, higher mileage options are still a reliable buy.
