Here's What a Tesla Model 3 Is Actually Like After 100,000 Miles

by now you have heard all about tesla's most affordable car the fully electric model 3 which took the world by storm when it first came out in 2017 but this is what it all comes down to sure a tesla is cool but how well does it hold up over the long term and is it actually worth the cost i bought my model 3 with a plan to keep it for at least a decade and to drive the absolute crap out of it and in this video i'll go over my experience of owning this car for nearly four years and driving it over 100 000 miles i'll break this video down into three categories enjoyment reliability and cost now nothing is perfect but it's still safe to say that the model 3 is the best car i've ever owned and it's mainly because of the little things that i've grown accustomed to for my everyday driving even though it's the slowest tesla with just a single motor in the back my model 3 is still so quick and zippier than nearly every other car i come across while driving except other teslas of course which seems to be a lot these days i can merge and pass effortlessly all while having the quietest car on the road that also releases zero tailpipe emissions it's nearly dead silent at slow speeds i love only driving with one pedal for the majority of the time since the car automatically breaks when i let off the accelerator which not only helps feed energy back into the battery and improve range but it also prevents wear and tear on the brake pads it's a win-win i love that i have completely stopped carrying physical keys all i need is my phone in my pocket to lock unlock and drive my car the minimalist interior has aged really nicely because well there's not much there to go out of style the model 3 is actually considered a premium sedan but some argue that the interior and build quality is anything but premium now the interior is definitely not luxurious certain parts are quite simple and unimpressive for example this might trigger you if you are coming from a luxury car but this type of thing never bothered me because a i upgraded from a pontiac and b i don't interact with this part of the interior as a driver what i do interact with every time i drive is the gorgeous 15-inch center display which is the star of the interior now one of my fears early on was that the touchscreen might start to feel laggy or outdated after a few years sort of like certain phones or tablets but the model 3 display is still very responsive and snappy and honestly feels like it did when it was new and not only is it super useful for seeing the navigation maps but there's seriously no other better backup camera on a car and it makes parking so much easier for me the free software updates that tesla pushes periodically helps you add new features and functionality and even new layouts and icons to keep the user experience feeling fresh now as much as i love these software updates as an owner i'm at the mercy of tesla software engineers so the main downside is if a new software update changes things too much for my liking there's no way to revert back to the way it was i just have to adapt to the new changes or wait until tesla receives enough feedback to release another update that improves the changes now this latest software update seems to have taken one step forward and two steps back for me personally i miss seeing certain information on the screen so my biggest request is for tesla to allow more customization of the touchscreen and its layout but the upside always remains which is simply that the touchscreen paired with software means this car is dynamic and can always change for the better no other car has given me this much enjoyment and usefulness and having something like a front trunk has been a game changer the absence of a gas engine gives me extra storage in the front for things like my charging cable an overnight bag some shoes a basketball allowing me to save space in the actual rear trunk which is a huge benefit for a sedan of this size a front trunk or frunk as we like to call it is supposed to be a common feature with all electric vehicles but they aren't all created equal for example i was considering a hyundai ioniq 5 for my wife but that frunk only holds 57 liters compared to model 3's frunk which is 73 liters the seats are comfortable even though i wish the headrests were adjustable the glass roof really does enhance my mood when i'm driving because it gives me a spacious well-lit environment my biggest complaint about this car is probably the road noise which driving at high speeds is really loud tesla has tried to fix this with double pane windows that are on the newer models and of course autopilot has been one of the best aspects of owning a tesla sure tesla is pushing the boundaries with full self-driving by using owners as beta software testers and sometimes that comes with bugs but at the end of the day fsd is still an optional add-on i only purchased fsd because it was on sale for two thousand dollars and i mainly wanted to track the progress here on my youtube channel if i were just a normal driver with no channel i would definitely not pay twelve thousand dollars for full self driving which is the current price tag i'd be okay with just waiting until it's really truly legally here however the one fsd feature that i find the most useful is automatic lane changing but as for regular autopilot which comes standard on all teslas now the main features when driving on a highway such as automatic steering accelerating and braking within its lane have all been invaluable to me over the last few years since i drive way more than the average driver there's no way i'd still be enjoying this car this much without autopilot i'm truly surprised that i still get this much satisfaction from the model 3 years later and that is a must when planning to keep a car for at least another six years now going from a gas car to an electric vehicle is like being an early adopter of a new technology you might hear skeptics say that they're hesitant to buy an ev because they don't want to get stranded somewhere with a dead battery or lose half the estimated range in the first few years but from my experience those are complete non-issues there's never been a single instance where i ran out of battery it's actually been more convenient to never have to stop during my daily driving because my car charges overnight while i sleep so i wake up to a recharged battery every morning i thought for sure i would forget to charge it at some point but it's hard to forget because as soon as i park in my garage and exit my car the charging cable is staring me right in the face and it takes two seconds to plug in the charger i don't even think about it at this point it's just a habit i've taken many road trips across multiple states and i've never had an issue charging the car when traveling tesla does such a great job at seamlessly integrating supercharging stops it's really just a matter of entering the address and the navigation and the car guides you to the most optimal charging stops along the way and it's eerily accurate at estimating the charging time at each stop and the arrival time i've never had to wait for a charging spot to be vacant nor have i arrived at any broken chargers up to this point so hopefully that continues but tesla superchargers were one of the biggest reasons i bought a model 3 in the first place and their prevalent charging network paired with autopilot has really made my model 3 the best road trip car i've ever driven plus it's one of the safest cars ever made which makes me that much more confident in driving it often and keeping it for a very long time but as much as i love autopilot my biggest complaint so far for that is the phantom braking most of the time autopilot works great but sometimes it will slam on the brakes for no reason and it's not fun especially with passengers in the car so hopefully it will continue to improve and the phantom braking becomes less of a common occurrence other than that autopilot has been very reliable and i use it pretty much every time i drive the other main aspects of reliability are what kind of repairs have been needed and how has the battery range held up after this many miles well i can say my model 3 has been 100 reliable so far in terms of it being available to safely get me from point a to point b i've never had any major issue that has prevented me from driving the car here's a brief rundown of all the minor repairs early on that were covered under the warranty my exterior driver door handle wasn't closing as quickly as it should have been one of my windshield wipers was making a clicking noise my cellular lte data stopped working and the board needed to be replaced and finally my driver door was making a loud popping noise when opening and closing in the winter when it got cold all of these were non-urgent repairs that were fixed for free at my location by tesla mobile service without any inconvenience to my schedule i'll get into the other out of warranty repairs in the next section but the big question for teslas and any ev for that matter is how much range have i lost due to battery degradation now if you're curious about the science behind tesla's acceleration and regen braking you should check out the classical mechanics course from today's sponsor brilliant which is my favorite place to learn about all things related to technology brilliant is a website and app with over 60 courses to help you become smarter about a wide variety of topics in the math and science fields from things like logic to geometry all the way to quantum mechanics a brilliant unique active problem-solving approach is a great way to develop a long-term commitment to learning and i recently completed their course on classical mechanics where i learned more about the principles of physics newton's three laws of motion and the common language for everything that moves which is known as kinematics if you love technology and want to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes that makes something like a tesla vehicle so special go to brilliant.org andy sly to sign up for free also the first 200 people will get 20 off their annual premium membership so click the link below to get started today when i first got my model 3 the rated range was 310 miles on a full charge and according to my tesla's battery management system after driving 100 000 miles my current rated range is still over 300 miles on a full charge 303 miles to be exact so that's only a total range loss of about 2.2 percent after almost four years which is pretty incredible and it lays the bed any doubt i may have had about the battery lasting my expected 10 years of ownership of course this rated range fluctuates especially depending on the season so this might even increase when spring and summer come around but either way i don't know if i've just been extremely lucky to have such a good battery life after this many miles or if it's just the way these batteries were designed along with my driving and charging habits although i've been more than satisfied with my range i'm not going to deny that it definitely does not get the full estimated range in the coldest winter months from my experience when driving interstate speeds when it's near or below freezing i can expect to only get about eighty percent of my estimated range so that's why i have always been adamant about people getting the most range as possible when buying an ev my role was that my first ev was it needed to have at least 300 miles of range which the model 3 has and that means in the winter i plan for my model 3 to get about 240 miles on a full charge but i've driven many times in below freezing temperature and this car has never had any issue it's always handled the cold pretty well and sometimes with an ev having a good battery can be the luck of the draw but the longevity and lasting range are also because of technology advancements and motor efficiency both of which tesla excels at i don't foresee my model 3 needing any type of battery replacement during my ownership of the car if it keeps up this low rate of degradation and that brings us to quite possibly the most important aspect of car ownership the cost electric vehicles usually have a much lower lifetime cost of ownership compared to gas cars due to the cheaper electricity and fewer moving parts i bought one of the first production model 3s which were quite expensive at the time since it's a single motor rear wheel drive for the same price i paid out of pocket which was around fifty thousand dollars you can actually get a much better model three now that has dual motor all-wheel drive and about 50 miles more range than mine so a 50 000 car is not cheap from the start and it's concerning to think about the insurance on an expensive car like that the good news is tesla has some of the safest cars ever made and i'm a pretty safe driver so my cost for full coverage insurance on my model 3 is 755 every six months which comes to 125 a month which is not bad at all and the cool thing is tesla is rolling out their own insurance that is currently in a few states already and since teslas have built-in lte connections and are capturing data from their cars their insurance can be pretty competitive if it's based on real-time driving behavior which is good news if you're a safe driver now even though less maintenance is usually required for evs there is one downside and that is tires evs are heavier than gas cars and they have quicker torque so that leads to more frequent tire replacements however since i have the slowest tesla and don't punch it off the line too often i've only had to replace my tires once so far around the 40 000 mile mark i paid 638 dollars for new quad track tires from tire rack which were sent directly to my local tire shop who installed them for free and that same tire shop has given me free rotations as well so i've had good fortune with tires so far even though i'll probably replace these soon this year a tesla doesn't require service intervals for the model 3 but in the manual they do recommend some service at the two year mark now i chose to only do the brake caliper and brake fluid service which cost me 390 dollars and that is the only time i had to take my car to the tesla service center all other repairs were done at my location by mobile service and if there's one thing that tesla should prioritize it should be to expand their service centers there are certain things that mobile service cannot do and it's not uncommon for a tesla owner like myself to have to travel three hours round trip just for service because currently service centers are not as widespread as their superchargers luckily tesla is installing more service centers and in fact they are putting one in my city of louisville kentucky which is awesome so hopefully we'll see that trend continue for other areas fairly quickly now as for the two year checkup i chose to do the cabin air filter replacement myself which cost 36 for an air filter from amazon now here are the rest of the repairs that came after my warranty expired which were completed by tesla mobile service at my location but came with out-of-pocket cost my driver door window button area sort of caved in and wouldn't let me roll it up i could only roll it down and this is where i loved having the tesla mobile app which i purposefully chose not to talk about up until now not only is this app so useful for controlling many aspects of the car and also seeing helpful information such as the current speed and location if someone else is driving the car but you can also use it to schedule service and of course this was a lifesaver when my driver window wouldn't roll up because all i had to do was use my app to roll my car window up in the meantime until they fixed it and that's just another example of how tesla's tech is ahead of many other cars right now but that door window button repair cost 94 now the most expensive repair i've had was something i kind of saw coming the model 3 charge port door has always stood out to me as the most finicky part of the car and i wondered how well it would hold up over time especially in a climate that gets all four seasons like here in louisville well the time finally came where the chargeboard door stopped opening and closing automatically so i was forced to open and close it manually and although that was inconvenient it still didn't prevent me from charging or driving the car but that repair did cost a whopping 311 dollars hopefully that doesn't become an ongoing problem after more years of cold winters and hot summers my lte connectivity stopped working again for the second time but the connectivity card was actually covered under the hardware 3 computer warranty so tesla fixed that for free which was nice and the last repair i've had done was a bad seat occupancy sensor which made my car act like it was not recognizing me as being in the driver's seat and caused my screen to stay black when i closed my door again this never affected my ability to drive the car because once i fastened my seatbelt it was fine but that cost me 99 to repair and finally due to the convenience of having them come to my location i decided to pay for a tire rotation from tesla which cost me fifty bucks so i spent a total of sixteen hundred and twenty dollars for all maintenance and repairs and over half of that total cost was for an optional two year checkup and for something that all cars need at some point which are tires i'm definitely okay with that number especially given that my model 3 is the first generation of its kind and the fact that i've never been without my vehicle however the fun part of cost is looking at how much i've saved on fuel my odometer shows that my car has used 24 768 kilowatt hours of electricity to travel 100 000 miles my off-peak electricity rate at home when i charge my car was 6 cents per kilowatt hour when i first got my car and now it's eight cents per kilowatt hour so it's safe to assume my average home charging cost has been about seven cents per kilowatt hour but only about 94 of charging was done at home and we also have to remember that not all of the electricity makes it to the wheels some is lost to heat and other factors as it travels from the grid to my car and this is called wall to wheels efficiency and teslas are estimated to be around 90 efficient so that is an estimated total of 25 868 kilowatt hours for home charging which comes to about one thousand eight hundred and ten dollars spent on electricity at home now the remainder of my miles were from traveling away from home now even though i have free supercharging miles from the referral program i actually didn't have any for my first year of ownership and that year i spent 54 dollars on supercharging so i'll assume 60 per year for supercharging if i didn't have free miles which makes my estimated supercharging cost around 240 for the first four years that means if i didn't have free supercharging my total charging cost after 100 000 miles is just over two thousand dollars and it's actually less than nineteen hundred dollars in reality if we compare that to a gas car that gets 30 miles per gallon at an average gas price of three dollars and thirty cents a gallon for one hundred thousand miles that's eleven thousand dollars for gas and most new gas cars only come with free oil changes for the first 24 to 36 000 miles so that's at least 10 oil changes to pay for after the free ones end at around 100 per oil change that's another 1 000 for a total of 12 000 for fuel and oil that means i'm saving about ten thousand dollars every four years by avoiding gas and oil and if i keep my model 3 for 10 years that comes to an estimated 25 000 in savings as you can see my model 3's cost of ownership is really attractive when compared to an internal combustion engine vehicle overall this car has probably been the best purchase i've ever made i get so much enjoyment and use out of it and i hope you get to experience owning a car like this yourself if you haven't already if you like this video give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more tech and tesla videos in the future let me know your thoughts about the tesla model 3 in the comments below thank you so much for watching my name is andy i'll talk to you in the next one

Channel: Andy Slye

Views: 466,306

Keywords: tesla, tesla model 3, model 3, tesla model 3 review, model 3 review, model 3 review after 100000 miles, tesla model 3 100000 miles, tesla model 3 review 100000 miles, model 3 review 100k miles, tesla model 3 100k miles, tesla model 3 2022, tesla model 3 performance, tesla model 3 long range, tesla model 3 after 100k miles, tesla after 100k miles, tesla cost, tesla battery, model 3 range, tesla model 3 range, model 3 battery, tesla model 3 battery, tesla autopilot, tesla fsd

Id: Sveg7IyGzQI

Length: 19min 10sec (1150 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 01 2022