Tesla repair expenses on older Model S / X -- PART 3: The Sweet Spot to sell/trade/upgrade

Maybe you're not comfortable owning a Model S / X that is out of warranty as the likelihood of expensive repairs goes up. I totally understand that and wrestle with the question myself ALL THE TIME. After-- literally years-- of pondering the future of my out of warranty Model S, I'll discuss how you can find the "sweet spot" for rolling your old car into a slightly used replacement without breaking the bank too much-- assuming that you've already been saving for those costly battery/drive unit repairs!
Link to EV-CPO Hunter -- a great aggregator of used Tesla listings from Tesla:
ev-cpo.com/
Follow-up conversation in 3 parts:
1-- Battery concerns
• Tesla repair expenses ...
2-- Drive unit concerns
• Tesla repair expenses ...
3-- Sweet Spot to upgrade
• Tesla repair expenses ...
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[@TheJonnyAvacado]

Excellent series of videos....thanks so much. Every single one of these videos are relevant to me having purchased a 2015 P85d this past July. Very low mileage example at 15k when I purchased it, but for any true car person as I'm sure you know, tough to say if those low miles calculate when not knowing the previous owners treatment of said car. Let alone the random factors....I'm also in PA and this year has been insane regarding rain.....christ the rain....and the car has gone through enough water in my short tenure alone to induce paranoia. I've worked on all my higher performance cars extensively including this one. Already performed several suspension parts replacements, 12v battery etc...but the LDU and the battery pack are my primary concerns as well. Good to see similar mindsets out there for these vehicles, the more knowledge the better.....great work!

[@NZCUTR]

Thanks! Amazing and terrifying to find a car that old with such low miles! LOL But there's a decent chance it's fine-- there seemed to be two groups of people grabbing up what was the first Tesla with a really astounding launch: daily drivers and "toy car" buyers who had garages deep enough to daily something else. So mileage is probably reflective of that and not reliability-- they're pretty solid cars. IIRC the half shafts were more of an issue on the early performance Ds, so given the mileage they might be older iterations-- but not hard to change. Bottom line is there isn't really much you CAN do to prevent battery or drive unit issues...other than mentally prepare and being financially ready with whatever course of action you choose. FWIW, rain and road spray are not typically the cause for either failure...that's more a worry for the panoramic roof (if equipped). heh

[@usa-ev]

Interesting take on the sweet spot. I have long wondered if the Model S would be the the first car to be able to transition to the private airplane model where the price tracks the value of the pack (+ a few $K). When a plane has a freshly rebuilt engine it sells for a premium approaching the cost of the rebuild. Then the price goes down as the hours increase toward the next rebuild only to bump up again after the next rebuild. So a good chunk of the price/value is in the engine, and the value of the air frame is more steady and doesn't depreciate all that much. The Model S is a pretty simple "air frame" that seems like it could be kept going indefinitely. Swap the pack out every 250-500K miles and refresh interior every 1M. 😉

[@NZCUTR]

That was talked about in the early days of the Model S, and was an intriguing concept to me when I purchased as well. When AP hardware and all the FSD hype/fanboism started that narrative kinda fell off a cliff because those folks all wanted the latest and greatest stuff and were trading in brand new cars because of random camera updates and rumored--- well, just a lot garbage hype... Let's call it what it is. Anyway, the early S in particular is well suited for this idea because they're just really simple. The new build cars (including 3/Y) are not nearly as amenable to this idea because their packs are very difficult to repurpose do to the foam used in them-- so we'll have to see what the core value of those packs are when upgrades/repairs start to become more common. I think really only the S/X pre-2020 have the "bones" to last in the way your describing.

[@importfanatik]

It will be interesting to see there are reliability or cooling issues as a resuly of the coolant delete

[@NZCUTR]

This is the big unknown. I have only seen reports of a few P85 variants getting the -U, so.... those are probably the first point of failure if cooling is an issue.