Tesla Model S Goes More Than 200,000 Miles In One Year

Tesloop is a story about entrepreneurship. Founder Rahul Sonnad knew that a lot of people from Los Angeles like to go to Las Vegas, but getting their by plane can take almost as long as driving by the time you get to the airport, park, go through security, then get from the airport into the city at the other end. Then it’s lather, rinse, repeat on the way home.

Why not just start a limousine service that ferries people directly between both cities? Better yet, use only all electric, zero emissions Tesla automobiles to appeal to those with an environmental conscience? That’s the idea behind Tesloop, a private company that ferries folks back and forth between the two cities in a fleet of Tesla Model S and Model X automobiles. Tesloop has turned into a thriving business. Just recently one of its Model S sedans completed more than 200,000 miles of trouble free, zero emissions service. That car is one of the highest mileage cars known to Tesla Motors.

Sonnad tells TechCrunch that the 200,000 mile mark was reached in only the first year of service. Battery degradation during that time has been a minuscule 6%. The company keeps its cars fully charged, even though Tesla recommends a 90% charge.”For your daily driver, you don’t fully charge unless you’re doing a long trip, We’re doing a long trip every day. We save, like, three minutes in charging in Barstow if we fully charge beforehand. We decided that we’re gonna suck it up, fully charge, and let it degrade. We figured that if it degraded enough, we could take it off a Vegas route and put it on a local Orange County route.”

During its lifetime so far, the car has required virtually no maintenance. Aside from replacing tires and the 12V battery, the car has never even gone through a set of brake pads. “We did have a few things go wrong,” Sonnad says. At about 30,000 miles, the car was relaying messages to Tesla HQ that the motor was operating at low power. “Tesla called us up and told us that,” Sonnad said. “We didn’t notice any problems. It was super fast.” But Tesla had the Tesloop bring the car in and it replaced the front motor.

Just after it completed 200,000 miles, the range estimator began giving inaccurate readings, perhaps due to the battery degradation issue. Tesla says it has a software update in the works to fix that for high mileage cars coming in a month or so. But it decided to replace the battery in the Tesloop car anyway. Tesloop is adding more Teslas to its fleet and now offers service to Palm Springs as well as Las Vegas.

The word is getting around that Teslas are cars you can keep for the long haul. Add the benefit of free charging on trips to super low maintenance costs and it’s a win-win situation no matter how you look at it.

Source: Teslarati  Photo credit: Tesloop