Man who paid $9,153 for a 2019 Tesla Model 3 with 150,000 miles opens up on whether he made a mistake as he shares what the car's like

This UK YouTuber bought a high-mileage Tesla Model 3 for just $9,100, which sounds like a collection of red flags.

Including the biggest red flag of them all: the car used to be an electric taxi.

That’s as bad as it gets.

Still, his experience told a different story.

Teslas are capable of incredible longevity, but…

In general, Teslas are capable of incredible longevity as long as both the powertrain and battery pack are in good condition.

There’s a guy who famously ran his Model S for millions of kilometers, but he still had to change both the powertrain and the battery pack more than once.

The other issue is software.

Electric cars are like smartphones.

Your smartphone will remain usable for a long time as long as you keep it updated, but sooner or later the manufacturer will simply stop rolling out updates for that particular model and the phone will become a very expensive paperweight.

The situation is quite similar with cars.

At the time of writing, pretty much all Teslas are still usable.

But will that be in true in 20 or 30 years?

We’ll have to wait and see.

As for this YouTuber, he bought a very cheap, very old Tesla.

And he bought it sight unseen because, in his own words, he’s ‘a little bit of a gambler and a bit of an idiot’.

But things were even better than expected.

This YouTuber struck gold with his Tesla

Uk YouTuber Ben Rayne bought a high-mileage 2019 Tesla Model 3 – almost sight unseen – for £6,750, which is equivalent to around $9,100.

The car was a fruit salad of red flags.

For starters, it was sold at auction.

It had also done over 150,000 miles – which is not nothing for an electric car – and it was a former taxi, which was probably the biggest red flag possible.

And that’s for two reasons.

One, if this was a taxi, it was a basically workhorse designed to turn miles into dollars, which in turn means it was probably used and abused for years.

Second, we’re sure the owner of the cab did what they could to treat the car right, but passengers probably didn’t care as much.

Still, Ben may have apparently struck gold because the EV was in pristine condition.

Visually and cosmetically, the only major problem was the steering wheel, which was so bad Ben decided to just replace it.

Mechanically, the car was solid.

It ran like clockwork, and even the battery degradation situation was pretty good.

After 150,000 miles, this Tesla Model 3 was still capable of covering around 185 miles on a charge, which was not too bad compared to the original manufacturer quote of 220 miles.

The only downside is that range anxiety, in his case, was still real.

“People who say that they’re not or you’re going to get range anxiety are just they’ve never driven one. That’s all I can say,” he said.

Although, to be fair, that’s more of a personal take than an objective issue with the car.