If you’re a regular driver, you might put 10,000 miles on your car a year. If you’re really busy, maybe 20,000. But could you do 90,000 miles, or more? Because it appears one Hyundai owner is out there doing just that.
This Craigslist post comes to us from the Mileage Impossible group on Facebook. The car in question is a 2022 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid Limited, posted by “Bob,” and it’s up for sale for just $12,995. That’s wildly cheap, given Kelley Bluebook suggests you should be paying closer to $25,000 for such a vehicle. But, oh wait—there it is. This one has 273,000 miles on the clock. But why!? More on that in a second.
Let’s be generous. Given it’s a 2022 model, it could have been sold sometime mid-way through 2021. The car industry is just weird like that. Thus, somehow, the owner has driven 273,000 miles in just three years. It’s no typo or joke, either. So let’s crunch the numbers on this exceptional beast.
The ad states one simple reason for the huge mileage. “I drove the Tucson from Phoenix to the California boarder [sic] 5 days a week.” Okay Bob, that’s great. Any particular reason why? Well, he doesn’t say, but I’ve reached out to him to ask. I’m super curious as to what had Bob and his Hyundai out on the road racking up so many miles.
Let’s run the numbers given what we have. Don’t trip over the wording—he drove the Tucson (vehicle) from Phoenix, Arizona to the border with California, and he did so five times a week. Based on the location, the most direct path would see Bob driving from Phoenix, AZ to Blythe, CA. That’s a distance of 150 miles, or a 300 mile round trip—given he’s repeating this feat five times a week. Oh, and the round trip time is around four and a half hours, in case you were wondering.
300 miles times five trips equals 1500 miles a week, or 78000 miles a year. Multiply that by three years and you get 234,000 miles in total. This suggests that Bob did indeed buy this vehicle at some point in 2021. However, it also suggests Bob is still doing a lot of other driving, too, given there’s a further 40,000 miles or so that are going unaccounted for. That, or he’s driving to a different spot on the California border. That’s entirely valid, as Bob is allowed to drive where he likes.
So what of the condition of the vehicle? Well, Bob tells us he’s the original owner, and that the car is in great shape. He’s done all the maintenance on time, including the 100,000 mile service as the 100,000 mile and 200,000 mile marks passed by. He also says been changing the oil every three weeks—a sage move given the mileage he’s racking up. As per the ad, Bob says the car has “no issues at all” and that “the car drives like new and is in excellent condition aesthetically.”
The photos aren’t particularly sharp, but they seem to support Bob’s claims. The exterior looks clean and shiny, without a whole lot of rock chips or scuffs that you might expect from 272,000 miles of driving. Tires appear happy and with plenty of tread.
The interior, too, looks fresh and clean. The carpets in the back seem to be factory fresh. The dash and console are a little dusty, as is typical for the piano black finish, but the buttons all look tidy, and none of the markings are rubbed off or worn. What about under the hood? It’s free of dirt and grime. You could easily believe that’s the engine bay of a 20,000-mile car.
Let’s just remember, here. This thing has 273,000 miles on the clock. Over three years, that’s an average of 91,000 miles a year, or 1,750 miles per week. Now, we’ve all probably driven 1,750 miles in one week. That’s not exceptional. But to do so every week, for three years straight? There has to be some evidence of that somewhere on the vehicle, right?!
The only piece of wear or use I could really find was on the rear doors. Both have some kind of water spots or dust or something on the top of the door card.
I don’t know quite what we’re looking at there. Is it a scuff? Or just some surface marks? It’s possible this was just left behind by a careless detailer, who washed the windows without wiping away the drips on the interior sill. In any case, it’s really the only hair out of place I could find on this whole car.
Overall, though, the condition is really good. With the caveat, of course, that I’m going off photos, and haven’t seen the car in person. It’s also worth noting this is a nice spec. The Limited model comes with lots of bells and whistles. It’s a 1.6-liter turbo hybrid with all-wheel-drive, and it’s even got that awesome Hyundai feature where the blind-spot cam pops up in your dash when you change lanes. It’s glorious.
Ultimately, I’m hoping Bob gets back to me with some background here. I’d love to know what has him bouncing back and forth to California so often! My money was initially on delivery of some sort, but the car looks far to clean to have been hauling much cargo. I’m really at a loss. All I know is there’s a story here, and that Hyundai is one of the main characters. What could it be…
Update:Â Bob got back to us in the comments! Nothing about why he’s been driving so much, but he’s told us why he sold the car.
Hey everyone!
I’m Bob, the owner of the Tucson.
Some people are asking why I’m selling the Tucson.
Well, the battery under the back seat needed to be replaced.
The battery was nationally backordered, and the ETA was 2 months.
So, I needed a car and bought a 2024 Nissan Pathfinder Platinum.
Of course, the battery showed up the next week and was installed in the Tucson.I believe the car can get to 500,000 miles if maintained properly.
There aren’t any issues at all.The Tucson replaced a Murano that was getting 17 mpg/the Tucson’s EPA 37/36 mpg
It has saved me allot at the pump.It’s been a great car.
Image credits: all images via Craigslist, except Google Maps via screenshot
Also, what kind of mileage does this get? The only Tucson I’ve driven was a diesel hybrid (with a manual!) that got 40mpg over two weeks of mixed driving.
Bob could have saved himself a lot of money by taking the 3:10 to Yuma.
Maximum Bob.
Probably a medical courier. A legitimate one. They rack up some seriously high miles quickly.
I was thinking that god I hope the driving IS his job and that’s not the drive TO his job. It’s one thing if your job is to drive all day, but if you’re spending 4 hours just getting to and from work that sounds like an incredibly miserable situation.
Some SF Bay and LA area folks have pretty gnarly commutes, though a lot of it is stop-and-go.
Used to know someone who commuted from Saugus to San Jose for a while, built computer controlled robot arms for movies.
Thats 600 miles round trip.
When I worked at Chrysler, one of my colleagues had previously worked at the Ford plant at Wixom, and had a co-worker there who commuted from *Oscoda*, which is 175 miles each way. Nuts.
Living in LA, I commuted 90 miles round trip and that occasionally took 4 hours. I don’t live there anymore in large part because of that.
My main question is the why? Not about the driving, but about the selling. It looks to still be in great shape. Just pony up for another 100,000 mile service and keep on truckn’. Makes me wonder if his mechanic pointed out something concerning at his last visit.
Either that or he’s heard “…believed to be a dark-colored late model Hyundai Tucson…” come across his scanner one too many times.
Having just dropped off a rental Tuscon, I was already sick of hearing the turn signal clicker. Not sure why, but it’s off-putting for some reason. After 273000 miles, it probably drove Bob insane.
Yeah, some people just dislike cars for a weird reason that doesn’t sound logical to anyone else.
My parents got a Leaf in 2013. My mom can’t stand it. Why? Because it doesn’t have a passenger seat belt alarm.
When your job requires that you drive 1750 miles per week, you can’t take chances on dealing with major repairs. At nearly 300k miles, the odds that the engine or trans could call it quits are pretty high. I’m surprised he kept it that long.
Nah, depreciation. I think some of the other comments are right about Bob being a medical courier, they put on some serious miles. Using the IRS standard mileage rates for medical use, Bob has approximately $52k (assuming equal usage each year) of deductions for his mileage. Given the 2022 Tucson hybrid limited trim level has a MSRP of $38k, he fully depreciated the asset almost a year ago, and it’s time to buy something new to take more tax write-offs on.
That make sense – if it’s been mostly paid for via tax-deduction, may as well pick up fresh one.
He went a hair over the mileage limit on his lease? Three years went by so fast…
Updated!
Bob thought the battery was back ordered for two months.
As someone who puts 6-7k miles on my vehicle per year. This is a mind boggling number of miles in 3 years.
Why change the oil every 5K? I’m not sure what the recommended interval is, but it just seems like a waste of money and resources. Maybe, if he only used conventional oil, but with the turbo, he should have been using synthetic. That’s 47 oil changes at 5750 miles (every three weeks). Increasing the interval to 7500 miles drops the count to 36. I would much rather have an engine that used synthetic oil with longer intervals vs. 5k changes with conventional oil with the turbo engine.
In his ad, Bob states that the synthetic oil was changed every 5k. I think I would have invested in oil analysis during the first 4-5 changes, then adjusted the mileage upwards while monitoring every 3 months or so
It’s a Hyundai 4 cylinder. I almost have more faith a 8-6-4 GM engine at this point, almost. He was being nice to it so it lasted.
It is also being driven in higher than expected external air temps, so my weird mind says it ran hotter which is a detriment to oil, even if it is correct for the car.
Actually that does raise a good point about receipts for all the oil changes. Err on the side of caution just so in the event of an issue, there’s no chance for pushback, which H/K were reportedly that much more particular on even when it came to known defects.
Why not? He’s changing oil every 3-4 weeks, the gas engine is doing all the work on the freeway and he needs a dead-reliable vehicle. If he’s been doing this for a while it’s probably just a rule of thumb, and if he’s being paid properly for the work it’s a pittance.
I’ll bet he also has a rule of thumb about running the odo up to 300k miles and then replacing the car.
This almost certainly isn’t the first car he’s driven this much. I’m betting he’s learned the hard way that in the long run, frequent oil changes are a whole lot cheaper than using longer intervals. If he’s driving it for work he might get reimbursed for maintenance including oil changes at that interval as well which makes it a “why not” kind of thing.
owner’s manuals commonly suggest shorter intervals for dusty conditions or if you tow a lot. I think the dusty conditions may be the answer here.
Why change the oil every 5k?
Why change the tires when they get down to the wear bars? Why replace the wiper blades when they stop doing a good job?
The old advice of 3-5k miles is still true, guys. Don’t trust oil to last much longer than that. Especially in turbo cars, which run significantly higher oil temps. Bro just managed to get 273k out of a turbo Hyundai and you think he over maintained it…….
This is a great buy. Mileage doesn’t scare me as long as maintenance was mostly kept up with which it sounds like it was. A car doesn’t make it 270k miles in three years without the major maintenance taken care of.
Buyers need to be less scared of mileage and more concerned with age in general.
This kind of almost all highway use is the best kind of low-stress mileage a car can have! I’ll bet this car overall is in better shape that most rush hour commuters with 50k miles.
that might as well be true. Idling and stop & go driving can wear an engine at low miles. My previous truck showed the engine hours, I wonder if this Tucson has a similar screen menu
Drug mule!
Bob has the kind of job where it’s better to not ask questions.
Or the guys chasing them. Sounds like a Border Patrol/Customs guy making that kind of daily commute.
Kinda reminds me of a guy I interviewed…. Lived in the beaches area of east Toronto, worked in London Ontario. I get why he’d want to stay in the beaches…it’s nice there! But man…that drive. It’s about 200 kms…not as much as Bob’s commute, but he had to cross almost all of Toronto, then almost all of London. I’d guess that an hour into his morning commute, he’d still be in Toronto. Poor guy said he spent 6 hours a day in his car. And here I am avoiding my 50 minute commute and working from home.
Holy fuck I get PTSD just thinking about the 401 traffic… and I visit Toronto maybe twice a year!
I changed jobs specifically to avoid having to get on the 401. Now if I do need to drive I pay the unbelievable toll on the 407 to avoid that hell that is the 401.
You can take solace that the 407 is majority owned by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The tolls you pay are retirement savings!
I found an old 407 bill from 2009. It cost me $16 to drive from Brock to the 403 exit. That’s almost $50 today.
I don’t think I can afford to retire at these rates 🙂
Its probably faster driving from Windsor to London lol
I will never understand these types of people. Like to their “but it’s so nice where I live” I would counter “Yeah, too bad 5 days a week you don’t get to see it in daylight because you’re driving/working”.
Like on a smaller scale I used to work in downtown LA fresh out of college. Lots of other analysts would spend way more on rent and 2 hours a day commuting so they could live by the beach. So they spend 10 hours a week commuting to be a little more convenient on the weekends IF they wanted to go to the beach. Meanwhile I lived a 10 minute walk from the office, had cheaper rent and saved ~9 hours a week not commuting and just had to spend an extra hour driving on the weekends IF I wanted to go to the beach area(smaller than their 2 hour round trip since my beach drives were weekends and not rush hour).
Yeah, that was my same reaction to the guy on the Old German Lighting Site’s WCSIB asking for his commute from Annapolis to DC
Worked in Edmonton and we had a guy transfer in from Toronto, he was amazed at a 15 minute commute from his rental- he had close to 90 in TO, then he bought a place, an acreage, 140km from work- further out than my cottage- he also had to transport the kids to all their activities after that as the place was really rural- pretty and inexpensive but also full of meth heads too
I had a 200 mile commute. When I did have to go into the office I would drive there Monday morning, stay at a hotel until Friday and then drive home.
Assuming this guy worked an 8 hour day once getting to the border, He’s not going to have much time to deal with any home obligations for the short time he’s there.
The drive itself must have been the job?
I commuted 150 miles a day, round trip, for 10 years racking up over 370,000 miles. Eventually retired my car after 30 years and more than 500,000 miles. Apparently, those highway miles are easier on the car than lots of local stop and go.
That doesn’t sound terrible, depending on where and when. If it’s a 90 minute one-way I could live with it. If it’s near a city during peak drive times and takes 3 hours per leg I wouldn’t like it at all.
It was to and from a major city with horrible rush hour traffic, but I was lucky in that I could normally flex my schedule to arrive at work by 6am and depart for home by 2pm, thereby avoiding the gridlock. The days I couldn’t flex were a bear.
When I used to do the long commute, I could slip through before traffic if I left by 2pm. Then traffic got worse (I was once on an on-ramp for 45 minutes – no accidents or construction) and I just would finish out the day and then drive home.
I could leave three hours later and save myself almost two hours in the car.
Pretty impressive mileage, people often forget that massive mileage in short periods of time with proper maintenance is actually basically a best case scenario for most cars. It’s much easier (for the car, can’t imagine it as a person, haha) to rack up huge miles in 3 years rather than 30, or even 10.
I think the 248k mile-in-1-year Civic that was used by a medical courier still takes the cake.
I’d also be curious – what did Bob replace it with?
Updated!
Eight hours a day in a car? Just to get to Blythe? I couldn’t do that for one week.
i doubt it was Blythe, that’s just the author being conservative, but if it was Blythe, then 4 hours a day in the car, 2 each way (less if the cops are thin on the ground).
It would be more fitting if he racked up the mileage commuting from Phoenix to Tucson in his Tucson, but that’s an aside.
While I do get that some careers require significant mileage to be put on – such as couriers and salesmen – two hundred and seventy-three thousand miles in three years is a lot. I get joy from driving when I am driving and not ultra-commuting. That sounds like misery, so I imagine it has to be work-related.
Mostly, I wonder how the transmission holds up at that kind of mileage. A manual transmission/clutch would essentially last an extremely long time under such a scenario, but the automatic/CVT (don’t actually know what the Tucson hybrid used) is somewhat a question mark at that mileage.
It also seems silly to buy the hybrid version to use in a duty where the hybrid system is of such minimal benefit, but again, an aside.
I did Tucson to Phoenix 5 days a week for a year and a half. I drove a Hyundai Sonata though.
I wondered the same on going hybrid here. Assuming he went AWD only because that’s the only way Hyundai builds upper-trim hybrids, a FWD 2.5 Tucson is rated at 33 mpg highway. I ran a quick/rough comparison on fueleconomy.gov with 78k mi per year, 80% highway (think that may undercount the highway distance), default gas prices, and the hybrid’s annual fuel cost is $1200 cheaper. (Edit: those customized settings did not save on the link.) The Limited hybrid AWD was $2750 more than a Limited ICE FWD, so think they still broke even at a minimum, if not came out ahead.
Also, not knowing anything about traffic on that stretch of road or for their driving at either end, if there was a lot of traffic congestion maybe there was more value still from the city/combined gains after all.
It’s a six speed planetary automatic, so driving down the interstate all day in top gear lockup isn’t all that much different from a manual.
Amateur numbers:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15348454/really-long-haulin-what-its-like-to-drive-200000-miles-per-year/
But honestly, medical courier is my go-to guess now with these super high mileage cars.
Or a courier for a different type of medicine entirely.
That is also possible.
I remember reading about that guy. What’s amazing is that car had the infamous DPS6 transmission, better known as the Powersh*t.
I wonder if he was able to repeat that achievement with the Subaru XV 6 spd he got after that Fiesta
Damn and I thought having almost 55k on my 2022 was bad…
I’ve driven that stretch of HW 10 many, many times. It’s pretty much a straight shot. There is some elevation heading East that makes my car work hard (especially with the A/C cranked). The other out-of-the-ordinary stresses on a car making that commute would be that damn heat and sand.
Am I the only one who thinks $13k is still too high? Like, sure, it still looks good, but that is a LOT of miles.
There probably aren’t a lot of comps for a 3 year old car with almost 300k miles on it, but it does sound high.
I think we have to assume his family is established in Phoenix, kids in school, partners job etc. and he works out that way. Still, I’d probably be looking for a cheap rental for the week or getting the company to do so to cut down the number of trips. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy driving but 4+ hours daily to and from work would break me pretty quickly.
On the flip side, if the mileage is directly for work, such as shuttling cargo of some sort and there’s a reimbursement on the cards, he’s going to be raking in some serious extra cash. Companies I’ve worked for have had somewhere in the region of $0.50-$0.60/mile, which would have pair for the Tucson several times over at this point. At least I sincerely hope that’s the case for this guy, because the cost to do that mileage on your own dime is insane.
According to the browser search function, there are eight misspellings of Tucson as “Tuscon” on this page – some of which are in the tags.
Yes. As a native Arizonan, the headline is causing me pain.
Well maybe Arizona shouldn’t have made its cities so tricky to spell. I’m counting Phoenix in here also.
Forgive me. I apparently had no idea how to spell this model until today.
When I lived in the Houston area, this type of mileage on a newish vehicle was pretty common. My work commute once shifted from driving 19 miles each way to work to driving 97 miles each way from the west to the east side of the city. I had coworkers who lived way out in the far suburbs (they weren’t suburbs then, but they are now due to the continued growth) and they would drive 250+ miles each day to and from work. I had one coworker who lived so far away that he would average 100,000 miles a year on his vehicles. Me? I moved closer to my job when I could, and then after a decade I took a voluntary transfer to another office in a smaller city to avoid spending half of my life sitting in traffic.
I’d be in a padded room within a year if I had your coworker’s commute.
That’s what I said too, though my own commute drove me nuts by itself. He inherited his family’s farm and still worked on it part time while his brother worked it full-time, so moving wasn’t really an option for him, but neither was farming full-time. We had flexible work hours, and the bosses had some sympathy for his commute, so he would work 4/10s and come in at 4am so his commute to and from wasn’t so bad with traffic. He had been doing it for almost 20 years when I transferred to the new office, but there was no more sure-fire way to make him mad than mention his commute.
Damn, I’ve got 90,000 on a 2022 Ioniq, and I thought that was a lot
In fairness, I do split mileage over 3 cars, but even if I didn’t, it would still be less than half of that Tucson’s total
16 year old me would have put that amount of mileage on if there was a girl involved.
My first thought was that Bob here is splitting time between families. But I am also inclined to think all men a pigs and people are the worst.
“Come over.”
“But you’re 150 miles across the desert.”
“My parents aren’t home….”
(Distant sound of door slamming—and the wobbly sound of the suddenly unstuck beer coaster circling to a flaccid halt in the corner…)