Living with an ex-taxi: is this £14,000 Tesla worth buying?

Mileage may be one of the first things you look at when buying a used car; a sky-high odometer reading could be enough to put you off. This is especially the case with electric cars thanks to fears that all those miles will have rendered the battery useless.

But do you need to shy away from a high-mileage electric car? Well to find out, we’ve got hold of a Tesla Model 3 which has had a very hard life. It’s spent the last three years as a private hire taxi, meaning it’s spent every day pounding the tarmac with people piling in and out of it dozens of times a day. It’s also covered almost 170,000 miles, so how’s it holding up?

High-mileage Tesla Model 3 price and specs

So let’s take a closer look at our car. It’s a 2021 Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor Long Range, and the odometer reads 168,900 miles. Those weren’t easy miles either, because this car served as a taxi ferrying important business people to meetings and drunk revellers home from the club.

Powering this car is a pair of electric motors putting out 351hp, and it’ll do 0-60mph in 4.2 seconds. A 75kWh battery feeds these motors, and when it was new it had a claimed range of 374 miles. The big test here will be how close it can get to this figure three years and 170,000 miles later.

Our Tesla is just as well-equipped as any Model 3. It has heated seats, a heated steering wheel and the enhanced Autopilot system. This means as well as having adaptive cruise control it can also change lanes automatically and park itself.

So how much will an electric car like this cost you? Well a 2021 Model 3 Long Range with average miles on it goes for around £20,000 when you buy through Tesla’s approved used scheme. Tesla won’t actually retail this car due to the high miles, however it told us that it’s valued at £14,000.

It’s also worth stressing that this Model 3 is still on its original motors and battery, and it’s only undergone the standard preparation process that all used Teslas go through before going up for sale. This entails a full safety check, a thorough clean and some light cosmetic work.

High-mileage Tesla Model 3 range and driving

So the burning question on your mind is probably ‘how far will it go on a charge after this many miles?’ Well it’s certainly lost some of its original battery capacity, however the range is still pretty impressive.

Over the week we spent with the car we did 302 miles, with a good split between town driving, country roads and motorways. The Model 3 averaged 3.9 miles per kWh, which equates to a real-world range of 293 miles.

That may not seem too impressive when you consider the original claimed range was 374 miles, however it’s actually better than you might think. Back in 2020 Carwow tested a brand new Model 3 Dual Motor Long Range just like this one. We drove it non-stop up a motorway until it died, and it managed 270 miles of real-world range.

Now it’s worth noting that in that test it was driven exclusively at motorway speeds, whereas we drove this used example in a range of different conditions. This explains why the 170,000-mile car achieved 23 more miles than the new one, but it goes to show that the battery is still in very good condition despite the hard life it’s had.

So what about the rest of the driving experience? Well on the whole, it drives a lot like every other Model 3 on the road. The only notable issue with this car was a knock coming from the front suspension over bumps, but this would be easily remedied with some new rubber bushes and is to be expected on a car of this mileage.

You still get great performance from the motors, with a punchy response when you put your foot down that gives you confidence when nipping through gaps in traffic. It’s a bit firm over bumpy and broken roads, but this is a complaint you could level at this vintage of Model 3 when it was new.

You can’t talk Tesla without mentioning Supercharging either, and it’s still working brilliantly. Just like any Model 3, you just pull up, plug in and you’re good to go in no time. We saw an average of around 75kW in terms of charging speeds, which is some way off the 200+kW claimed speeds, but the location was pretty busy at the time which can slow things down a bit. It still took less than half an hour to get from 20-80%.

High-mileage Tesla Model 3 interior and infotainment

So that’s the battery covered, but what about the interior? After all, this car has seen thousands of people clamber in and out of it.

Well when you first get behind the wheel, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this car had covered half the miles. There is a slightly odd smell to it, probably as a result of hundreds of air fresheners over the years, but there’s nothing obvious to suggest this car has been abused by scores of people every day.

Obviously there are a few scratches around the place, but nothing untoward on a used car, and some of the leather is a little bit shinier than it should be after a lot of sliding in and out and wipe downs. Generally speaking though, it stood up to the time and miles very well indeed.

There are no horror stories in the rear seats either. It’s probably best not to think about what’s happened back there during the car’s time as a taxi, but in the present day there’s no evidence to suggest it’s been through the ringer.

The infotainment system is also still working exactly as it should. The graphics are crisp and it’s super responsive. There aren’t any glitches either, and it still gets regular over-the-air updates to give you new features and improved software.

High-mileage Tesla Model 3: should you buy one?

So should you let high mileage put you off buying an electric car? Well a week spent with this Model 3 has shown that there’s not much to worry about. Obviously there are drawbacks, a lack of warranty being the main one, but the battery and motors can take a lot more punishment than you might think.

The other fly in the ointment is price. £14,000 for a 351hp electric saloon with this much tech may seem like a bargain, but for around £20,000 you can get a near-identical 2020 car with much fewer miles, and it’ll have a warranty as well.

The key takeaway here then is you don’t have to worry about piling miles on your Tesla Model 3, because the battery will last a lot longer than you might think. The interior and tech also hold up well, but high-mileage cars aren’t quite cheap enough to justify buying them over something less used.
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