Opinion on 2 CPOs

iridium said:

Curious to get your opinion on the pros/cons of 2 S85 CPOs:

85 kWh Model S P16093 | Tesla Motors
85 kWh Model S P31912 | Tesla Motors

The more expensive model also has more miles, but it is a 2014 and much higher P#. Are the 2014's significantly different?

Also, the 2014 doesn't have the air suspension, does it matter? I currently have the air suspension and think it is great, but maybe I'm overstating it.

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IMHO ...I would go with P31912 just because it is 2014 and MS is getting better with build.

As far as suspension I have coil suspension and I love it. I have driven on air suspension and feel that it is better than coil on roads that are smooth. On bumpy roads coil feels lot better.

Again people may disagree with me ...just my 2 cents

I think you should look at one more pre-owned car.

Then you can get opinions on 3-CPO's! I like him better than Jar Jar, that's for sure, but R2 takes the prize.

HA!

woof said:

I think you should look at one more pre-owned car.

Then you can get opinions on 3-CPO's! I like him better than Jar Jar, that's for sure, but R2 takes the prize.

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Beat me to it

I recently sold my 2014 MS85 almost identical in value to the 2014 you've listed with similar milage for that same price, but you will get a new 50k warranty, so the price is really fair. Without a doubt I would go with the 30k VIN. My VIN was also about 34k and the car build was great and had coil-over's too. The only reason I sold it was to get the latest greatest tech. (Auto-Pilot and AWD)

Playing devil's advocate, for $8k delta...

If you plan on picking the car up, maybe best to reserve both and go drive them...

A couple yrs ago on the forums some forum seniors recommended to just plug it in and drive it. I'm a scientist and my nature is to collect data etc. So, I have logs of every single drive over every single mile and every charge. I rarely charged over 80% at 80Amps, and at 80% the "rated" milage was 200!! I never paid attention and always left the IC at % rather than rated. When the car was new it was 271mi at 100%.
At 21,000 miles the car was range charged to 256 rated. More than likely if the car gets 3 range charges in a row and "balances" the software it would probably report 260-262 miles.

My point here is, don't worry about it, the reality is the battery degradation is probably 3-4% over about 100,000 miles and Tesla does NOT warranty against that. The degradation is part of the LIon chemistry and a fact of life. Superchargers are less than 200 miles in most cases so it really is no longer an issue. There's really no way to tell what car will have worse degradation, it's a gamble, but the delta between cars will be negligible.

Here's a doc that has my data on the USA tab at the bottom under my forum name. Tesla Battery Survey (old name MaxRange) - Google Sheets

I am a new owner of a P85 inventory car (11k miles) as of last week! Others know more about VIN numbers than I, but my word of caution on using a VIN # to determine the build date or age of the car: VIN #'s are not sequential, as far as I have seen. My car has a build date of Oct/2014 - but the VIN #P26060 is way out of sequence. My DS was confused also and consensus is that number was being "held" for some reason and then released in 10/2014 and assigned to my car.

Tedkidd said:

Playing devil's advocate, for $8k delta...

If you plan on picking the car up, maybe best to reserve both and go drive them...

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Tesla does not let you drive them until you pay for them.

I have coil suspension and have never regretted (nor thought twice) about that decision.

nctalkinghead said:

I am a new owner of a P85 inventory car (11k miles) as of last week! Others know more about VIN numbers than I, but my word of caution on using a VIN # to determine the build date or age of the car: VIN #'s are not sequential, as far as I have seen. My car has a build date of Oct/2014 - but the VIN #P26060 is way out of sequence. My DS was confused also and consensus is that number was being "held" for some reason and then released in 10/2014 and assigned to my car.

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Then you have autopilot??

Tedkidd said:

Then you have autopilot??

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Yes! I understand from one Tesla rep that my P85 is one of only 375 built with AP. It has rained 6 of the 7 days that I have had the car, including the drive from Rockville, MD pickup point to home in Raleigh

nctalkinghead said:

Yes! I understand from one Tesla rep that my P85 is one of only 375 built with AP.

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Interesting! That makes sense, since they would only have been produced from mid-September through October of 2014 (before the non-D P85 was dropped from the lineup.)

High-five to another member of the 375!

nctalkinghead said:

Yes! I understand from one Tesla rep that my P85 is one of only 375 built with AP. It has rained 6 of the 7 days that I have had the car, including the drive from Rockville, MD pickup point to home in Raleigh

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Sweet score! Was Autopilot listed in the CPO advertisement?

Tedkidd said:

Sweet score! Was Autopilot listed in the CPO advertisement?

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Not a CPO car...INV car. Yes the ev-cpo site had the car showing tech package with autopilot. But when I asked my local SC guy to check it out, his info was that the car was NOT an autopilot. Phone call to Rockville, MD sales to verify the actual car and car was not there but out on loan. About an hour later my local guy calls me a the golf course to say it IS autopilot! I four-putted and put down the deposit :love: The low VIN# did not help in the search because it would have been prior to autopilot.

Reader's Digest version of the answer to your question: YES

Happy New Year!

iridium said:

Curious, how many miles did you have and do you recall the 90% charge on your battery? I worry that the battery will be more degraded on the higher mileage car, even if it is technically newer.

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My 2013 with over 30k miles gets 260 miles on a full charge
Not sure about 90% as I don't charge it to 90%

Neither. Search the internet, Ebay, cars.com, etc....

If you buy one from Tesla, you get only their warranty 4 yr/50,000 miles with no chance to extend it. There are plenty of used Tesla's out there in this general price range and those sellers WILL NEGOTIATE. The advantage is, the car is still under warranty, so if it has some minor issues, Tesla still has to fix them at no cost. So a CPO has no advantage over a non-CPO from Tesla since they're all still under warranty. With a private party sale though, you'd be able to extend the warranty another 4 years / 50,000 miles from the 4 year / 50,000 mile mark on the car, not the day you get it. So if you find a 2014 with 15,000 miles, you'll have the factory warranty for free for 2 years, 35,000 miles and a chance to extend it to 6 years, 85,000 miles versus only getting 4 years and 50,000 miles on a CPO.

The 2014's have better battery chemistry, so you definitely need to figure out the cutoff VIN for 2013 when it changed. Early 2013's are priced much lower, even by Tesla, for this reason (straight from Tesla's mouth). In the 2014 you showed, you give up the very important Air Suspension. At least for me, it was a must have. The ride quality is arguable, but if you deal with any types of steep driveways, it's well worth it to not scrape up the front or rear of your car by dragging.

I bought my first Tesla used and was very happy I did. Got a better deal than anything Tesla was offering at the time. I extended the warranty. I upgraded to a 2015, but the extended warranty added a ton to the resale value.

Can't really go wrong either way, just my opinion that you can get more from a private party sale than you can from Tesla.

For example, just ran a quick e-bay search for you. Found this 2014 with only 9,800 miles, same color you wanted. Far less mileage. Asking $68,500 and over 20,000 less miles. Can certainly offer less for it. Tesla, you pay what they list or you don't get it. Just saying, explore all your options.

Tesla Model s Sedan | eBay

This week is a light week for Tesla's on Ebay, likely due to the holiday. Only 34 listings. Usually there are around 60. So give it another week and keep checking. Unless you absolutely can't wait, I would take your time. I took a month and a half and bought my car for $11,000 less than lessor equipped cars Tesla was offering at the time.