In 2019 the Model 3 outsold almost everything else in the country, helped along by the company car tax rules of the time. Those cars are now five and six years old and on their second or third owner, and what they fetch comes down to the battery and the exact version.
A great many Dutch Model 3s began on a company lease, because bijtelling, the tax a Dutch employee pays on the private use of a company car, was unusually light on electric cars in those years. The result is a used car with high mileage and a complete Tesla service record, a combination we are comfortable with. Privately bought cars from the same period tend to have covered far less ground.
Three versions need keeping apart: the rear wheel drive car, sold at first as Standard Range Plus, the dual motor Long Range, and the Performance. In late 2023 the whole car was revised, with a new nose, a new interior and different suspension, and the market treats the cars either side of that line as separate. Your plate and the register give us the year and the variant.
We will not quote a number on this page, it would be stale within weeks. These are the things that genuinely shift what we offer.
Charge it to full and photograph the screen. That number, set beside the odometer and the year, is the single most useful thing you can send us. Some loss of capacity is normal on a car of this age and it is not a fault. What we are checking is whether yours sits where a car of its mileage should.
An electric car pays a reduced rate of Dutch road tax, the motorrijtuigenbelasting, for its weight, and the Model 3 is heavy. That reduction is being scaled back in stages over the coming years, which is one of the things shaping what any used electric car is worth. You cannot influence it. It is worth knowing it is there.
Two tonnes and instant torque wear tyres out. Tell us the tread depth and whether all four match. A chip in the windscreen or a crack in the glass roof is expensive on this car, and kerbed nineteen inch wheels are common. One photograph per corner saves a conversation later.
The type 2 charging cable, both key cards, and the mobile connector if one ever came with it. Software bought for the car, Enhanced Autopilot or Full Self-Driving, is attached to the car and not to you, so open the software screen and tell us exactly what it lists.
The register covers the facts. The rest of it is only in your head, so this is the part of the request worth a minute.
Take the car off it before the handover, through the app or the Tesla website, and remove your phone as a key while you are there. Once the car has left your account the next owner can add it to theirs. Do it on the day and not a week early, because you will want the app until then.
It tells you what Tesla will allow you against another Tesla, which is a different question. Ours is a straight purchase with no new car attached to it. Ask both, compare them, and decide. There is no obligation on our side either way.
More than it would on a Polo, because panel gaps and paint matching are things Model 3 buyers look at closely. Tell us what was done and whether it went through insurance, and send a photograph taken in daylight at an angle to the panel.
At the handover, once the car has been checked and moved out of your name at the RDW. Nothing is held back and there is nothing to wait for afterwards.
Your number plate is all we need to start.
