This 2018 Tesla Model S 100D had already burned 103,999 miles of Georgia back roads before it ended up in the frozen tarmac of a CarMax auction lot.
This level of everyday driving from Uber barely exceeded the 100,000 mile limit to sell this unit on the CarMax front line. With absolutely no accidents in Carfax history and only one owner, it probably would have sold for a high price to a Tesla enthusiast. But there was a problem.
This Tesla Model S was a premium model, but it also didn’t have a manufacturer’s warranty, since the 8-year/100,000-mile factory warranty had already been invalidated by the odometer reading. Any buyer of this vehicle would wonder about the battery life and longevity of the car. What was the level of battery drain? How long would the battery last? Electric vehicles are often seen as rolling time bombs that lose their value once their batteries need to be replaced.
At auctions where car parks the size of football pitches often store thousands of cars for just a few days, it can be nearly impossible to figure it all out, especially for a company like CarMax that sells 15,000 vehicles. per week nationwide. Every wholesale auction, where millions of trade-in and non-lease vehicles are sold every year, has been glaringly slow in delivering these EV battery bases to thousands of dealers who want to buy these cars. This risk can drive down the price the seller gets at auction once the hammer has fallen.
The risk can be downright brutal with electric vehicles. Sometimes you may end up bidding on a peach of a car. Other times you’re stuck with a three-ton paperweight that will cost thousands of dollars to fix.
Electric vehicles like this Tesla end up with junk bond risk levels when they really should be blue chip stocks. Teslas currently hold their value better than most cars, but pre-auction inspections struggle to provide the same level of value.
Nonetheless, I was shocked that this one sold for $50,500 plus a $650 purchase fee. That’s a lot of money for me. Slightly more expensive than a double-wide mobile home I purchased on 5 acres on the Alabama border in 2016. I now rent this property for $1300 per month. But maybe I could get an even better return by listing this high-end Tesla on Turo.
To call that a lot would be a tough call. For one, that price is nearly $35,000 lower than the wholesale version of this particular model (just north of $83,000, on average). Sounds apocalyptically bad for the seller until you find out that this higher-mileage Tesla actually has about 80,000 more miles than the typical 2018 Model S (with an odometer reading in the mid-20s).
My personal choice would be my lavish double width on 5 acres – a purchase that also involved some risk on my part, like all choices. I would have loved to buy this car and roll the dice if I knew more, but for me the risk was just too great.
