I am just here to give my fellow Cougs my review after driving a Tesla Model 3 Long Range for a while. My HCBW pushed me to get it. I have never spent money on things like this and we always buy good value used cars. Sadly, I sold it because it went up in value over $10k. I am happy to wait for the craziness to end and for cars to come back down to earthly pricing. This was the first car I every owned that made me a modest chunk of money.

In a nut-shell, it is the best car I have ever driven, let alone owned. I will buy another for sure.

My Tesla had full self-driving, which was cool but since I value my life I did not use it much in the city. I tested the latest updates each time. It is good, but not good enough. For freeway driving, it is nails. I paid attention of course, but almost always turned it on when getting on the freeway. It made for a more relaxing drive.

Here are my opinions by category:

Fun: If you honestly cannot buy one, don't test drive it. I had interest from a nerdy perspective, but it is not in my nature to blow money on stuff like this. So, I test drove it... yea, it is fun. I enter a freeway onramp and floor and hit 90 before the merge. I let my good friends and family take it for a spin. Naturally, they all had to go 0-60 in 3.x seconds. I loaned it to a close friend for a longer drive but as a joke I set max speed to 55 mph. He thought he might have broken it somehow. lol.

Are you a muscle-car guy? I have friends that hate Teslas... or better said, the idea of an electric car. That is fine. They will simply long for the Internal Combustion Engine when it is simply a classical collector vehicle. The performance of electric cars will surpass the gas engine in every meaningful way in the near future. They are simple inside and out and therefore will become very cheap. It is true, a Tesla is a glorified golf-cart.

Features: I miss it a lot. I live in Utah, so a couple of phone clicks and the seats and air are warm. My wife took it skiing a couple of times. It is amazing on bad roads with all-wheel high torque motor. She got a nice parking spot near the front for electric cars. She did not need it though. When she was 2 minutes from going home, she just set the car to warm up and it was ready for her. I don't need a key. I can control all the access I give out ( My wife of course and older son / daughter etc ). I specifically wanted the model that was released in mid-2020 so I received the big computer upgrade.

Quality Issues: I had no quality issues at all. Earlier models did suffer from the growing pains of Tesla being new to everything, but my 2020 model was top notch.

Funny Screen in the middle of the dash: I did not love not having a good dash in front of me while driving. Teslas should have a first-rate Heads Up Display, but Elon is against it. I did get used to having the screen in the middle, but that is far from ideal. Other than that, the interface and controls are top notch.

Reliability: I did not own it long enough nor is it old enough to have problems but I had no issues. I let the computer control the charging and the battery life should be solid for the life of the car. I talked with owners with a few years driving their Tesla and they had less battery degradation than they expected (~4% a year I think).

Range: I have the long range with over 300 Miles per charge. I never had any issues with running low on battery. Obviously, I never drove 300 miles. A long day driving I could put 150 miles I suppose. I simply never worried about it. I did not get it to do the once-a-year trips anyway.

Safety: My daughter was spared from a close-call accident when she did a maneuver where she was going to hit another car. My SIL was prevented from driving into the wrong lane on a left turn when there was a car speeding up behind her. All of these would have been their fault and cost me.

Storage Space: Tons! There is just not much to an electric vehicle. I could lay the backseats down and camp in it. It has a camping mode where it will keep the car to a set minimum temperature all night long. Youtubers have plenty of tests in cold weather. The battery drains 15-20% in colder weather. This means I could travel 100 miles to camp, keep the car comfortable all night and drive home.

Charging: You must install a home charger from Tesla. It requires a 220 line (like your dryer). It will likely cost about $500 to have a pro do it. Tesla can charge on a 110 wall outlet, but it will take 30 hours from low. With the 220, it takes about 5-6 hours to charge from very low I think. I simply rarely had it that low since I only drive around town. I would generally be fully charged each night in ~30 minutes. I never really needed to charge at a charging station around town, but I tried it a couple of times for fun. Make sure you buy the common adapter and keep it in the trunk. The car comes with a portable charger. I also bought a longer charging cord and a dryer plug adapter so I could plug into my brothers dryer plug when I visited.

The next generation of super-chargers are amazing. A Lithium battery cannot charge a linear rate to full or it will be ruined. The first 70% charge really fast on a high voltage charger. After that, they have to slow down a lot to protect the life of the battery. I like to think of it this way. I have a range of 310 miles. If I pull into a super-charger at 25 miles of battery left, I can charge to 70% or 225 miles in an hour or so. After that, it is not worth waiting. Just drive 225 miles to the next charger. Charging stations are popping up everywhere now. Target signed some kind of deal to have charging stations at every store. Gas stations are incentivized to do the same. The next gen chargers will charge a Tesla to 70% in about 10 minutes or so. I anticipate taking 10 minute breaks every 3 hours of driving to charge. That will be a reality in the next 5 years or so.

Insurance Cost: I was very pleasantly surprised that my insurance premium dropped with the Tesla compared with the older suburban we replaced. I was told they simply don't get in accidents as much, which I suppose is not surprising.

Gas savings: You pay the cost of power, which is cheap, especially now. I have not done the math, but I seem to remember thinking it was about half to "fill" a Tesla compared to a regular car. This depends on many factors of course. If your power is cheaper at night, you can tell your Tesla only to charge overnight. If you have a gaggle of solar panels, you can set it to charge during the day. If you have an employer that offers charging, you can set it to NOT charge at home. My plan is to take advantage of the solar incentives and put a gaggle of panels up along with the home batteries when they come down in price. I have spreadsheets of information and the payoff for panels can be under 10 years if you do your homework. The batteries offered today will never pay for themselves. They need to become cheaper and have a longer life for it to be worth it, but that day is not far off. I looked into a full solution, installed that could do it all. I think I was about $50k for over 16Kw of panels and three Tesla Power walls. After tax incentives I think I was around $37k. I think it could save me about $300-$400 a month, which puts the break even at over 10 years depending on many factors.

Warranty and Maintenance: You need to change the wiper fluid. I was advised to take it into Tesla for a good going over every 18 months or so. I had a 5 year warranty from purchase I think. It covered everything expensive that could go wrong. I never had an issue. One thing that bugged me is Curb Rash. The wheels scratch very easily and I have a bad habit of putting the wheels right up to the curb sometimes. I never knew this until I owned a car where the wheels are essentially flush with the rubber. I had a guy come and buff and repaint all the tires for about $250. I had to learn to be more careful.

Battery Questions: I was very concerned about the battery life, battery care, and resale value. The truth is, if you let the computer take care of the battery and only fully charge the car once in a while, you don't need to worry at all about the battery. It will lose some range each year I suppose but Tesla owners from 10 years ago are showing the batteries are holding up better than expected. Yes, in 20 years you will have lost up to half the battery capacity but in 20 years the replacement battery will cost $3,000. In 5 years I believe they project a replacement battery to cost abut $5k.

Buying advice:
NEVER BUY A TESLA THAT HAS BEEN TOTALED! Tesla disowns totaled cars. I found a great deal on a used Tesla and thankfully called the dealership to get service information. The seller did tell me it was totaled, but I did not know what that meant for a Tesla. I would not get software updates nor can I use Tesla Super-Chargers. To Tesla, it is a bricked car. This was very surprising for me but as you look closer, the liability with the Lithium batteries after the car has been in a very bad accident is something nobody wants to touch. A new battery pack could be installed, but if the car is already totaled I don't think it is worth it. In the near future battery prices will come down where this can all change.

Don't buy a Tesla older than mid-2020 because of the upgrades and reliability improvements.
You don't need the long range version if you just plan to drive around town.
You don't need the dual-motor if the incredible acceleration is not that important. It is still fast and essentially the same car.
You don't need self-driving. True self-driving is years and years away. It is a bit of a gimmick still and adds $10k to the purchase price. It is my understanding that freeway driving features come standard or cost just a little bit.

The base Tesla right now is $44k. The model I had (Duel Motor, Long Range, Self Driving) is about $60k. I think they are back ordered about six months. I had a friend that just received his after ordering it in the early Summer. He could make at least $7k if he sold it immediately.

I would probably buy the $44k base model at this point. After all the tax and fees I am sure it costs about $50k here in Utah.