Yep, thats right. With all the hoorah about the P85D, Musk and the Tesla team quietly retired the P85 today. No longer will cars be built with a P85 badge, but rather a P85+ with dual motors, which is a P85D now. The real wheel drive performance car is gone, obsoleted, and retired.
Glad I leased my P85. I figured technology advances with a car manufacturer that just started a couple years ago building the Model S would come out with something bigger and better and cause a crash in depreciation.
All us RWD P85 people now drive what will be referred to as the "Old P85"
I am kind of bummed, but it is expected. Just surprised that the P85 itself was simply retired which I am sure no one will want in a year down the road when people are selling their P85D's.. so the resale market just softened more than a wet noodle for the old "performance" model.
Totally disagree. In fact, I think the resale value of P85 and P85+ just went up a tad, precisely because there is no comparable model that one can buy new. Not everyone wants/needs dual motors for either the performance (and price!) or the AWD handling. I don't! I'm *extremely* happy with my P85+ I got as an inventory car at less than the price of a new P85. None of that changes just because TM retired the P85. And in real snowy/icy weather, I have an ICE I can drive through, as even if I had an AWD MS, I wouldn't take it out in the snow because of all the salt, dirt, ice, and really bad drivers out there in weather like that. If I'm going to have an accident in the snow/ice, I'd rather it be in the ICE than the MS.
Also, since there's no "New P85", why would the existing fleet of P85s be called the "Old P85"??
I'm glad I bought my P85+. I plan to own and drive it for many years to come. It's still a total kick-in-the-pants to drive. And I don't have a perpetual lease payment (incl interest) either, just to keep the option to upgrade in the future which would just reset the lease payment clock.
Will I trade up in the future? Sure, when there's a bigger/better battery and/or lots of other MS advancements, but I don't see that happening for about 5 years. And I'll still have the Tesla smile during all of those 5 years.
My cup runneth over.
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One possibility that I have been thinking about is that the RWD P85 series motor was being mechanically taken to the limit and that is why drivetrains have had to be replaced for milling sounds and what not.
That's a pretty small number of cars with that problem...and those people have been more vocal than the thousands of people without any problems. I drive the crap out of my P85+ and have never had any drivetrain issues. And IIRC, the milling sounds and other problems with the early motors wasn't due to them being taken to their mechanical limits. In fact, IIRC, the inverter is the limiting factor, and there's still more headroom for the motor to produce even more power than the P85 or P85+ currently allow.