Reinvigorated at 135k mi

Cool, your story does let me relax a bit more about mine, it’s a bit newer but not much.

As a TSLA shareholder, I say get a new RWD LR! It has 100 more miles of rated range. :) Glad to hear it’s holding up very well.

My 2018 says 250 miles at 100% and it’s at 79k miles. I did a battery health test yesterday and got 81%. Down 2% from 6 months ago, I’m hoping it fails before December of next year but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Figure I should start setting some money aside for a future battery replacement since I only have a year left of the warranty. Still love the car though, super cheap and no gas.

Where do you actually get the battery health. When I click on “battery health” my car just says “your battery is healthy.”

I upgraded my 2018 to FSD a year and a half ago and now I often forget that the car is still fast. I (It?) mostly drive(s) like a mildly confused grandpa now.

You have to run the test. Start when your charge is very low.

Love this story! Keep it till the wheels fall off or the battery dies!

Can you talk a bit more about the various repairs you did, what is on your list to check, etc.? I anticipate keeping my Tesla for a long time, but at 34k miles, I'm still at the beginning of the adventure.

Same bro. Same. I drove my model 3 after 6 months of driving my CT straight. Had to replace the 12v battery but once fully charged, I took it on a joy ride. Brought that first drive smile back to my face.

Yeah, I was pretty early '18 so there was some new-model in-warranty things (a few harnesses, lighting fixtures, etc) early on. The early skid plates over the motors were basically cardboard so it rained hard once and those were toast, replaced with after market aluminum one (~$550). A/C started getting weak around year 6 (live in SouthWest US so it's NEEDED) so I paid Tesla for an AC tune up and deseecant change (~$500) and it's mostly back. 12V battery died once (~$120). Normal cabin air filters (absolute pain to DIY on older models) and wipers n everything. It also took me a while to cool it with the driving style and to realize I need to get better tires, so I'm on my 6th set. Found Michelin Defender series has been holding up the best relative to it's warranty (80k) than anything else so far. Factory assignment was also pretty bad, so got that fixed at some point. For future, I expect to have to do the brakes at some point but honestly so far they're still totally fine. I barely ever use them, burnish them about 2x/yr per recommendation from a Tesla rep after a visit about brake squeaking. From reading online, I'm sure I'll have to do the control arms at some point, but they seem fine for now. Otherwise.. I mean I mostly only expect normal consumables (tires, wipers, 12V) and continued battery degradation.

M3P, this fucker cures depression...

Just a note on the A/C getting weak. I have had that issue and just needed to clean out the radiator. Its a bit of manual labor but works to get the A/C cooling well again. Seems like a bit of a design flaw though.

Ooh can't believe I didn't even think about that. Have any easy pointers for doing that? Sounds like a good idea for me to do regardless

Just did it last week it sucks, watch a YouTube video get a hand held vacuum cleaner

There is a hidden clip on the lower right that's not obvious. That clip allows you to make a bigger gap between the two panels. Wrap the frunk actuators (one on the left and one on the right) if you use water to spray between the panels. While doing that I was leaning over the side of the car and accidentally trigger the garden hose nozzle. A few weeks later the frunk started to fail to open before eventually dying. When I replaced the actuator (takes about 20 mins) there was water in the original unit.

I have a 2021 LR now 328 full charge. The only thing I would trade for is another Tesla even though I can't stand the CEO and I know FSD will never happen.

I second this!

I have similar miles on a 2019 stealth. One thing I wanted to mention is that this car is solid. When I did the same thing on my 129k mile wrx wagon, I blew the radiator and found out I also had a cracked head gasket. Costing me $5k to fix. Having an EV is saving my butt from expensive repairs so far... Until battery death. I also have 263mi at 100% on a stealth with 19" rims. I highly recommend the hankook evo ion AS for improved efficiency and tire noise reduction. I went from 265wh/mi to 245wh/mi.

As a TSLA shareholder with 69 shares (literal number as reported by my broker), I second this. Buy another car and keep the old one. Race them from time to time or put the old one on someplace like Turo

I got my invigoration via a bad inverter and died on the driveway

I am making the transition on my 2018 to FSD next week (just bought the 2k upgrade today and have a service appointment next Thursday for the HW3 computer). How big of an upgrade did you feel this move was (2.5>3 & and EAP > FSD)? Do you notice a big difference in visualization accuracy? Auto summon confidence and abilities? Auto park? etc.

Awesome to hear! Curious what the repairs were besides tires? I’m guessing normal suspension component wear?

Going from the 2.5 AP visualizations to the 3.0 FSD visualizations was a huge leap. The car is tracking a lot more details and objects. It also obviously does a lot more as far as auto-driving goes which is just the software difference between EAP and FSD. I don’t think the refresh rate of the visualization improves. It seems to be much smoother in newer cars, but they have cameras with higher frame rates. The only downgrade is speed management. ACC and EAP would go exactly the speed I asked them to. The FSD stack on 3.0 seems to pick some random speed at or slightly above the speed limit no matter what I put the speed at. I didn’t notice any issues with inaccuracy, so I can’t speak to that. I also don’t use summon or auto park at all. They seemed slightly improved over the EAP versions but still embarrassingly bad. Too slow to use with other cars around. Still just a party trick.

If it makes you feel better I had an M3 standard range that went from 226 to 202 miles in a year and a half. . . And I have to do roadtrips 1/2x a month, so it sucks. I wish they made a PHEV, I love the car, but hate that it’s electric.

I honestly still think of FSD as a party trick or fun thing to play with in my '18 model 3. I wish I could use EAP for my long road trips again.. Now it's regular AP/autosteer and manual everything else. Still nicer than nothing, but EAP was that tiny but now useful without all the parts I don't like about FSD. I enjoy being able to try new FSD things, and my opinion is that I've gotten my $2k worth just playing with it, but with the leaps they made in hardware in newer models, I don't expect this car will ever be a robotaxi. As for visualizations, way better but imo not particularly useful, just cool. Summon/park/eveything else still as functional (or not) as you've already experienced with EAP.

Put some deets here https://www.reddit.com/r/TeslaModel3/s/WChkZVXvZo Happy to answer any other questions if you have others :)

Good points from both of you about the trade offs going from EAP to FSD. Didn’t realize not being able to set a specific speed would be a thing but makes sense! One of the benefits I am hoping out weighs this hinderance is not constantly being nagged to wiggle the wheel. Glad both of you think it’s worth it tho! Hoping they take care of us “old guys” as things advance along in one way or another. Like you OP, I’ve been keeping one eye on what I’m missing out of and then I realize my car is plenty of fun and capable. Cheers!

My 2018 is faster than new. It got a 50hp upgrade after I bought it. Was pretty awesome.

Is it possible to upgrade from 2.5 to 4? I’d prob take the leap if it’s an option. I love fsd on hw3 but I really wish I could get fsd 13+. It’s FSD 14 now for some of the HW4 cars which is supposed to be unsupervised at some point. We will see though.

Not having the hold the steering wheel is a huge upgrade, but I didn’t get it right away since it was added to the stack sometime in the last year. The “pay attention to the road” notification that came with it, though necessary, is almost equally annoying, however. Don’t you dare look out a side window for more than 4 seconds.

AFAIK, no. HW4 has a different footprint and different cameras, among other things. I'd also be careful with the assumption of 14 being unsupervised at some point. I've heard that for 12 and 13 as well (and that HW2.5 could do it).

My 2019 M3 SR+ is at 78% after 80k miles. It lost 10% in the first couple of months of ownership and about 2% a year after that..

Elon has promised HW3 owners an upgrade path once unsupervised FSD is approved by regulators. I'm not holding my breath. The HW3 and AI4 platforms were designed with redundancy by having 2 nodes. Tesla used the redundancy to split the work between the redundant nodes because the model grew too large, thus removing redundancy on HW3. My understanding is that they've also had to do the same on HW4 but still hope to optimize the model to run on a single node in the future. HW3 and AI4 are very different. From wiring harnesses, to power requirements, to the resolution of the cameras. It is likely going to be very expensive if Tesla has to upgrade the hardware for FSD owners with HW3. The upgrade may even reduce the range of HW3 cars if power requirements for the upgraded hardware are greater. I'm really curious to see what Tesla does.

Wait…you drive in chill mode?!

Chill mode is great for extending tire life and people life too! LOL.

Agree. If you love it, just stick with what you got. I love my 23 Y and have no plans to buy a new one for years to come. The Junipers are nice, but not nice enough to entice me to trade up.

Yeah, I gave it a shot cause i was burning through tires way too fast. Now it's the default. Still plenty zippy, and when i want to go faster for whatever reason (usually fun), it's easy to turn off. Having gotten used to chill mode also makes not-chill even more fun cause it feels like an extra boost. Added benefit is the wife and dog get smoother starts/stops

Great story! I wish more folks could witness this revolution.

More affordable than a shrink.