The Model 3 now has a battery pack guaranteed to retain 70 percent of its charge over eight years, making it a pretty solid used car buy if the rest holds up.
TeslaAs Tesla ramps up Model 3 deliveries, so does the release of information surrounding the ownership experience, the latest of which concerns the Model 3’s battery pack.
New Tesla warranty documents show that much like the Model X and Model S, the Model 3 has a four-year bumper-to-bumper new car warranty and an eight-year battery and power train warranty. However, unlike with Tesla’s more expensive models, there is a mileage limit of 100,000 miles for standard batteries or 120,000 miles for Long Range Batteries. The big news is that Tesla guarantees buyers that a Model 3’s battery will retain a minimum of 70 percent of its capacity over the course of that eight-year warranty.
One of the chief concerns of people looking at becoming first-time electric car buyers is the longevity of a car’s lithium-ion battery pack. Even more than the engine in a gasoline-powered vehicle, the battery pack represents much of the cost of the vehicle, so replacing one in five or ten years is a relatively daunting proposition. Luckily, the first few owners of any given Tesla Model 3 won’t have to worry about that.
Tesla’s guarantee sounds great, but so far, reality has been even better, according to an independent survey conducted by a group of Dutch and Belgian Tesla owners, nearly all of the 286 Model S owners surveyed are on track to hit 150,000 miles before seeing even a 10 percent degradation in capacity. Whether this trend will continue with Tesla’s increased production loads and fluctuations in material costs remains to be seen. At least from a battery standpoint, buying a used Model 3 in a few years time might be a pretty great deal.
