Buying a tesla at the bottom end of the market?

[yopzetta]

I see there are plenty on model s' and model 3's for sale around the £10k mark. I know this could be a real disaster, but i'd like real world opinions on the reliability of a cheap tesla.

[TheDrownedApe]

Batteries will be OK but it's the rest that will bite you in the.....

As an EV owner I would rather buy a 10k ICE than EV

[CG2020UK]

Batteries are fine it’s the suspension you need to worry about.

My car is 5 year old 50k miles and has had a total of £4k of suspension work done. 50/50 under warranty.

Admittedly I drive my Model 3 extremely hard and reckon it’s just not made for my driving style but not impressed all the same.

Insurance also high.

Everything else the cars brilliant.

[dhutch]

yopzetta said:

I see there are plenty on model s' and model 3's for sale around the £10k mark....

Yeah, I keep looking at these, having decided a £8k eGolf is probably just a bit short of real-world winter range to be usable as an every day commuter for days I go via somewhere else on the way home.

Guy across the road from us has a 5 year Model X and some of the tails of woe for bills, door motors, etc are enough to put you off buying one on finance let along cash sale on a used car!

[Snow and Rocks]

Yeah, as above.

Our Model Y has needed all the suspension arms redone twice by ~130k, it's also had the rear hubs replaced.

We also had the low voltage inverter fail which bricked the car and locked my parents inside. The resulting bill including replacing the smashed side windows was £4k...

The parts are expensive and the supply is pretty crap - was almost 6 weeks wait for the suspension arms last time which is pretty ridiculous on a fairly mundane volume car. Thankfully the car was still OK to drive.

The independent guy we now use to look after it reckons they're probably about on par with Land Rover. Love having an EV for day to day stuff but wouldn't have another Tesla.

[dhutch]

Snow and Rocks said:

The parts are expensive and the supply is pretty crap - was almost 6 weeks wait for the suspension arms last time which is pretty ridiculous on a fairly mundane volume car.

Surprising really nobody has taken up the mantle of supplying good quality pattern parts for these cars?
Based on this thread alone, and the amount of them out there, you would have thought it a solid market opportunity.

[dhutch]

Snow and Rocks said:

We also had the low voltage inverter fail which bricked the car and locked my parents inside. The resulting bill including replacing the smashed side windows was £4k...

That's verging on alarming really. Always seems off the EVs have a little 12v lead acid running the radio and body control systems, but with a story like that you can see why some 12v capacity to allow the windows/doors to carry on functioning is nice.

[robsa]

Parkers have published a fleet reliability index and the Model 3 came sixth. After cars like the BMW 3 series and Toyota Corolla. I think 1991-on cars are meant to be better built, and the Highland is better still, although you won't find them for £10k yet

https://www.parkers.co.uk/used-cars/most-reliable/

[CG2020UK]

robsa said:

Parkers have published a fleet reliability index and the Model 3 came sixth. After cars like the BMW 3 series and Toyota Corolla. I think 1991-on cars are meant to be better built, and the Highland is better still, although you won't find them for £10k yet

https://www.parkers.co.uk/used-cars/most-reliable/

Model 3s typically aren’t bad.

My car also wasn’t off the road for any days for repairs.

And the Tesla is miles better than every car on that list apart from the 3 series.

Guy in work got promoted and his bonus went on covering a £3k bill on a 5 year old Golf GTD where the turbo went.

Also need to weigh up total ownership cost. How much is spent on annual servicing and fuel on equivalent car. A BMW m340i or Audi S4 at £10k would be a money pit as well with dated tech, worse handling and less performance and practicality.

[charltjr]

dhutch said:

Surprising really nobody has taken up the mantle of supplying good quality pattern parts for these cars?
Based on this thread alone, and the amount of them out there, you would have thought it a solid market opportunity.

Suspension is all available aftermarket as are a lot of other parts.

I imagine it will be a long time, if ever, before the electronic modules are available aftermarket though, same as most cars.

[stevemcs]

charltjr said:

Suspension is all available aftermarket as are a lot of other parts.

I imagine it will be a long time, if ever, before the electronic modules are available aftermarket though, same as most cars.

Some bits are but the ball joints on the rear hubs are not which means replacing the upright, the biggest nightmare is actually getting the parts. You should be able to call someone and order parts not go through an app

[charltjr]

stevemcs said:

Some bits are but the ball joints on the rear hubs are not which means replacing the upright, the biggest nightmare is actually getting the parts. You should be able to call someone and order parts not go through an app

Autodoc seem to have pretty much everything, although I’m no expert. They list rear ball joints from two sources although to be fair both are out of stock at the moment.

Can’t remember the last time I spoke to someone in a parts department, much prefer online myself, but that is just a matter of preference.

[stevemcs]

charltjr said:

Autodoc seem to have pretty much everything, although I m no expert. They list rear ball joints from two sources although to be fair both are out of stock at the moment.

Can t remember the last time I spoke to someone in a parts department, much prefer online myself, but that is just a matter of preference.

The ones we were after were not available as a garage it’s just about impossible- we’ll probably impossible to order direct from Tosla, everything that we looked at seemed to point to having to be linked to the car through its app.