A 2013 Tesla Model S Just Hit 1.86 Million Miles and It Is Still Going

Most drivers will never put 100,000 miles on a single car. Hansjörg Gemmingen just did it more than 18 times over.

The German owner of a 2013 Tesla Model S P85+ has officially crossed 3,000,000 kilometres on the odometer, the equivalent of 1,864,113 miles. He shared the milestone on X this week, and the numbers are genuinely hard to wrap your head around. Three million kilometres is roughly 75 laps around Earth's equator. A driver putting 20,000 miles on a car every year would need 93 years to match it.

Gemmingen is not a newcomer to this kind of territory. He crossed one million kilometres back in November 2019, and in June 2022 he hit one million miles. Since then he has added another 863,000 miles to the clock, averaging roughly 553 miles every single day. At a highway speed of 60 mph, that is about nine hours of driving before accounting for charging stops or anything else.

A car does not cover that distance without needing work, and Gemmingen has been transparent about what it has taken. The most significant area of wear has been the rear drive unit. By 1.8 million kilometres, the car had gone through 14 motors, most of them remanufactured Tesla units that failed due to coolant seal leaks, a known issue on early Model S vehicles. At that point, an independent repair shop called EV Clinic in Zagreb completely rebuilt the unit. That same motor has since added more than 1.2 million further kilometres, with only a minor shaft seal beginning to show wear.

As Gemmingen put it when sharing the milestone:

3,000,000 km. Same car since 2013.

The battery story is equally impressive. The car is currently on its fourth pack. The most recent one, installed in 2023 when the odometer was at roughly 1.76 million kilometres, has since covered one million kilometres on its own with 85% capacity still remaining and no battery repairs during that period. For context, many drivers worry about battery degradation after a few years of normal use. This pack has covered the equivalent of about 621,000 miles and is still holding up well.

For Tesla owners curious about long-term ownership costs, the story is encouraging with some nuance. The drivetrain repairs, particularly those 14 motor replacements, were significant. But several of those occurred early in the car's life when the original seals were a known weakness. Tesla has since addressed those issues in later production runs. The fourth battery pack, which Gemmingen paid for himself, has proven remarkably durable. And beyond drivetrain components, the rest of the car has held together across a mileage figure that no gasoline vehicle could realistically match without far more extensive mechanical work.

Gemmingen is not alone in pushing Tesla's limits either. His original first-generation Tesla Roadster had already accumulated over 400,000 miles as of 2022. And closer to home, a Tesla Model S operating as a taxi in Kelowna, British Columbia recently crossed one million kilometres after nearly a decade of commercial service, averaging well over 100,000 kilometres per year in daily rideshare use.

What makes Gemmingen's story stand out is not just the number. It is what the number says about what happens when an electric vehicle is maintained properly and driven consistently over many years. The fundamentals of an EV, fewer moving parts, no oil changes, regenerative braking that reduces wear on brake pads, tend to reward high-mileage drivers in ways that internal combustion engines simply do not. The motor issues Gemmingen experienced were real, but a rebuilt unit later, the same car is still going.

1.86 million miles. One car. Still driving.

Source: DriveTesla