Electric car maker Tesla has added Model 3 inventory to the used section of its website, offering two different warranty options.
Tesla has been selling second-hand Model S and Model X vehicles online for some time now, and the past week has seen a number of Model 3s also added to its secondhand car pages.
Currently available only in the US, vehicles are now available in areas such as the San Francisco Bay area, San Diego, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles.
Anyone in the USA can buy them however, as Tesla also offer a nationwide transport fee of $US2,000 (around $A2,900 converted).
As the EV maker states on its used inventory pages, each vehicle undergoes a rigorous inspection and there are two warranty options available:
Every used Tesla vehicle has passed a 70‑point inspection and comes with either a 4‑year or 50,000 mile warranty or a 2‑year, up to 100,000 mile warranty
Interestingly, the models available have only limited kilometres on them, suggesting that they are in fact demo models.
The pricing is not far off that of equivalent new Model 3s either, in part due to the fact that because they are not brand new vehicles they are not eligible for the US federal tax credit.
However, as CEO and founder Elon Musk noted on Twitter on Wednesday (US time), the tax credit for Tesla electric vehicles is halving again to $US1,875 ($A2,717) from June 30, 2019.
Reminder that US federal tax drops by $1875 for any Tesla delivered after June 30. Order online at https://t.co/46TXqRrsdr.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 19, 2019
It last dropped on January 1, 2019 from $US7,500 ($A10,869) to $US3,750 ($A5,434 – the tax credit currently halves for every 200,000 new EV sales made by any one carmaker).
Whether the vehicles are demo the pricing is not that far removed from private used Model 3 sales either, such as on US used car sales site iseecars.com or onlyusedtesla.com.
The fact of the matter is that Tesla Model 3 electric vehicles hold their value very well, a fact that has been noted by US car valuation experts Kelley Blue Book and reported by Cleantechnica.
Despite concerns from certain sectors that interest in Tesla vehicles is waning, Musk was clear at the last shareholders meeting held on Wednesday (Australian time) last week that demand is not dropping for the pioneering electric car brand.
In fact, Musk believes there is a good chance of Tesla delivering a record quarter before June 30, having appealed to staff to do their utmost to ramp up deliveries this month in order to be able to tick off as many deliveries, and therefore sales, as possible.
It must be noted that deliveries of the secondhand Model 3s (or S and X for that matter) would not go towards this projected profit which is based only on new car sales.
The reduction of the tax credit however could have a negative impact on sales going into the third quarter of 2019, which has been reported as a driver for production improvements and cost cuts by the EV maker to keep its Standard Range Plus Model 3 – the successor of the now off-menu $US35,000 base Model 3 – in the price range of the mass market.
At the same time, Reuters reported in April that bipartisan lawmakers in the US introduced a bill that proposes to increase the limitations on the US electric car tax credit from 200,000 per carmaker to 400,000.
If the bill is passed, Tesla customers will again benefit from the top tax credit of $US7,500.
Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model Y and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.