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People bought Teslas because of the vibes. They were futuristic, clean, ambitious, exciting. They were paying an Elon Musk premium, and doing so happily. (My family owns a Tesla.) Now Elon is associated with 15 kids, constant drama, denouncing sitting senators as traitors...
A lot of people thinking about which car to buy are going to buy a different car. A lot of people will try to unload theirs secondhand. And as demand softens, that means the cars are really cheap. They lose their cachet, they lose their anticipated retail value...
Is this because of the vandalism and arson (which are awful and totally unacceptable, obviously)? I don't think so - at least, not directly. I see lots of Teslas around here in Berkeley, and no one has damaged them. I think the bigger driver is a sense of disappointment in Musk.
People don't expect that their neighbors will think their car is cool. They expect to see headlines that make them feel bad about their car. Car company advertising is laser-focused on the lifestyle the car is selling you. What is Tesla selling you now?
Here's the ChatGPT deep research link. Remember AI is very imperfect - I did this to confirm a trend I'd already noticed, and recommend checking it if you rely on it. chatgpt.com/share/67e2f337
I think a lot hinges on self driving. If your Tesla can drop you off and go home or run an errand or find parking I think Elon can make a lot of other mistakes and Tesla will still win.
But the self driving jackpot is going to have a lot of people after it
I agree that's why the stock stays high. I think unless it happens pretty soon, the bottom's falling out
Tesla Demand Sinks Dramatically In US And Europe As California Prospects Dim
downsideupshot.com/posts/tesla-de
Incredible arbitrage opportunity here. Buy in blue states and sell in red states
the arbitrage with Florida didn't look huge when I checked that but if you could pull off the marketing I bet you could swing this
sure, lots of them. It could just be depreciation - since Teslas are relatively new the oldest ones on the market are fixed age. But that would be extremely high depreciation compared to what's normal even for most cars and Teslas have generally held up
IIRC a book by James Carville talks about how political campaigning is harder than retail marketing because in politics 49% is total failure while in sales 49% can be fantastic success. Tesla is now the MAGA car. Not sure how important that will be to the company but maybe very.
if this were working I think it would show up in sales data. I agree that trying to be the MAGA car is a perfectly good strategy in principle
Electric vehicles have terrible depreciation because of the battery. That - at least in consumers' eyes - gives them a limited shelf life, as opposed to gasoline powered cars that can go on basically forever. The car basically *is* the battery.
this hasn't historically been true for Teslas. notice how a used 2016 Model X with high mileage was still $50k in 2023, from an initial sale price of like $85k - only 40% depreciation over 7 years, which would be pretty normal for a gasoline car
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yeah, I tried to figure out how much to correct for that and it looks like past the 5 year mark a 5% to 10% decline is to be expected (though Teslas historically held up well), so you might expect to see 50-45-40 but not 50-30-18.
EVs in general have poor value retention because of the battery losing capacity and the cost of replacing it. I would not buy one used.
Teslas are (or were last I looked) the most popular EV brand so they’d be over-represented; how does this rate compare to other manufacturers?
Tesla used to have less intense depreciation than most EVs but the rates over the last few years are higher than normal depreciation for any brand
Prices I see in Carvana are quite a bit higher (+50%) than what your DeepResearch numbers show for same model years and high mileage
I confirmed DeepResearch's numbers myself for a couple key data points. For Model 3, for instance: Where are you seeing higher?
Worth noting that the cheapest cars are all from same years - they are getting older as we go.
Car market has also been in fits generally for a while after COVID, and is now finally normalized (I think)
Those factors don’t invalidate but do take the edge off of these numbers
8 yo Teslas? New Tesla Model 3s and Ys are significantly upgraded over the older versions. Batteries on a 150k miles car are significantly degraded and very expensive to replace. There are also generally many more new and used electric cars on the market.
The Tesla Model 3/Y produced in the 2017-2024 timeframe all have just an air conditioning vent in the back. But it would be great to turn it into a smart screen that can watch movies, play games and other controls.
It looks like the lowest-price vehicles of each type are all from the model year when production started (or ramped up to full scale), so the 2025 prices represent vehicles two years older than the 2023 prices (presumably with correspondingly higher mileage).
There was a recent refresh of the hardware on Teslas which is also impacting this. Years that are likely to have the most recent hardware are still going strong
Tesla's current lease is so cheap, it doesn't make sense to buy a new one ... let alone a used one
Your point about the "Elon Musk premium" is astute. I call the inverted version of that Elon Tax
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Firas D
@firasd
I’m gonna coin a new concept: ‘Elon Tax’. People who won’t buy Teslas because Musk’s persona elicits negative brand connotations.
It won’t be a big factor probably, but at the high end (Model S) even 5,000 people avoiding Elon Tax would be 5% of sales lost to luxury competitors x.com/pbleic/status/…
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A slight rightward shift might have been smart to broaden EV appeal beyond just liberals/environmentalists. However, it seems it went too far, damaging the brand.
Used Tesla prices tanking? Seen similar patterns in enterprise data—sudden value drops often trace back to garbage data or siloed metrics. Before panicking, audit the data flow: are pricing models connected to real-time demand signals? Legacy systems + poor integration = lagging
Price of new ones keeps coming down, pushing the used market even lower. Plus, car sales overall have been taking a hit these last few years.
A lot of people just don’t want HW3 anymore. HW4 has latest FSD which is getting incredible.
You dumb? You can buy a new M3 with mid-high 20K in quite a few states due to ridiculous incentives. No shit they don’t cost what they did a few years ago when there as no supply?
??? Okay lol FSD and Waymo are so close why does weird shit like this matter in a pre autonomy world
Tesla dwarfs the valuation of pretty much all the car companies combined not including China. Great opportunity to buy the best EV w best self driving technology. lol.
I think having the government of the United States screwing competitors while giving Tesla lucrative contracts means they'll be just fine regardless of their brand.
A big part of the math by which people think a Tesla is a good buy, was the expected great resale value!
The vandalism isn't the main part, but it's also not completely disconnected. I think it's partially an attention game, and more stories about more vandalism signal to humans “this is a political thing, this is controversial, it's a vibe statement to drive it“ etc.
Literally at brunch today met someone who owns a Tesla and doesn't follow politics and wondered why people were booing him and giving him a thumbs down at a red light. Vibe shift is real
Part of this is like PCs from 1990 to 2010: every year they got better n cheaper. Teslas are good cars if you keep them, but since new ones cheaper n better you take hit if you sell.
car friend of mine says that used car prices are down across the market. may be worth asking DeepResearch to assess prius, bolt or RAV4 as control
So a 2018 costs less each year as it gets older. You’re kidding me. That’s stunning.
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Almost all used cars have plummeted in value recently minus most Toyotas and a few other cheap/reliable models. Theres an influx of tesla dumping currently due to social pressure that will plateau soon leaving a still robust consumer base. Battery and solar tech. Theyll be fine.
Second hand buyers tend to be in the Late Majority and Laggards, and EVs are just crossing from Early Adopters to Early Majority. Now is a great time to buy second hand because once the Late Adopter start buying them, the prices are going to skyrocket
Depreciation on EV's are accelerated compared to combustion. Why? Because the technology changes quickly. Those 2012-2017 era Teslas have trouble running the latest software, charge slower, and battery replacement costs are a fortune. A Tesla isn't a Toyota...
The media is purposely censoring the financial fall of Tesla. the company itself is behind in ev technology, lagging sales across the globe, numerous mechanical issues, in-house repairs make it even more expensive & HEAVILY dependent upon American tax subsidies to survive.
It’s the entire EV secondary car market. The initial Mercedes Benz EQE and EQS leases are starting to mature. They’re losing 50-70% of their value in 2 years!!!
Do you think their actual business model has had anything to do with the stock price for the last ten years?
Also have you heard about oligarchy?
These cars are depreciating relative to an initial release date.
They look better than I would expect for EVs TBH.
Doesn’t this happen to every used car though? It deprecates in value as time goes on
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@glaebhoerl
How come Elon is still CEO of Tesla? What value has he been creating for the shareholders lately?
