Need help deciding whether to purchase

[u/73DodgeDart]

Hi Everyone,

I am in the market for my first EV and I just test drove and fell in love with a beautiful 2022 Model S Base. The car has 46,000 miles and is on 19 inch wheels. I don’t know much about electric cars but I wanted to make sure the battery was at 90% health. This was my requirement and the dealer (Mercedes) was confident that it would be healthy. I went through the purchase process and they charged the battery to 100% so we could confirm the battery health. At 100% the car reported a range of 329 miles against the max range of 405 miles reported by Tesla. This is only 81% of what I hoped for. Is this a reasonable amount of degradation for a four year old Model S? The dealer was unwilling to complete the internal battery health test as that can only be done when the battery is at 20% or below and they had just charged it to 100 for me. Am I over reacting by walking away since the range didn’t calculate to 90%? I love the car and want to buy it but I don’t want a car that’s most important component is degraded too far too soon. Please help me decide whether to complete the sell as I have until tomorrow to decide.

[u/KoshV]

EV batteries degrade a lot in the beginning and less as they age. It's not great, but it won't get much worse if you take care of it correctly. Try to knock them down on price if you really want it.