Tesla Used Car Price Crashes – Model Y, Model 3 Deals Explode

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2025/03/09/tesla-used-car-price-crashes--model-y-model-3-deals-explode/

by bentocorp • 1 year ago

57 38 1 year ago

Additionally, used Teslas are lingering on dealer lots at a similar rate to other EVs…marking a shift from a year ago when Tesla models moved more quickly than their competitors

Sounds like used Tesla prices are returning to normal rather than crashing to some other unexpected level.

dawnerd• 1 year ago

It’s a crash when they’ve been propped up for years as only lightly depreciating. Like ya they should be down this low. If you recall Tesla once even promised to pay back model S owners if their cars were worth less than a BMW? Used.

The number of people I’ve heard justify their purchase as an investment is bonkers. Just that alone I’d say calling it a crash is fair. Gonna be a LOT of people underwater.

zfg• 1 year ago

They bought into the lie that their car would be an "appreciating asset":

https://www.businessinsider.com/musks-claim-teslas-appreciat...

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-claim-that-tesla-c...

TheAlchemist5• 1 year ago

I will just quote the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk from 2019:

"If you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset, not a depreciating asset."

And the reason: "Musk's prediction is based on two assumptions: Tesla vehicles will be able to drive themselves without any human input by the end of 2019, and customers will be able to make money from their vehicles by including them in an autonomous ride-hailing service Musk says will be ready next year."

As Elon would say "Let that sink in".

This is one of the major reasons he's in the White House now. Otherwise he would be in prison.

Freedom2• 1 year ago

Thanks for the quote! Do you happen to have a source for that quote?

Other than that, you suggest Musk would otherwise “be in prison.” Under which legal framework or statute should a CEO face criminal liability for a failed technological prediction or delayed product rollout?

TheAlchemist5• 1 year ago

It's from this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI

I think he also repeated that on an investor call later.

As for prison, just ask Trevor Milton or Elizabeth Holmes.

heartbreak• 1 year ago

Regarding prison, OP is making a reference to an interview of Elon Musk by Tucker Carlson.

https://youtu.be/k89aYdZOC_I?si=didH8UhYUIz7Y1zy (link to the video snippet on the Tucker Carlson YouTube channel).

majormajor3• 1 year ago

Musk would not be in prison if Trump hadn't won - these claims happened before, and failed before, Trump lost to Biden, after all - because nobody really gives a shit about the sort of false advertising/bullshit that Musk spews. There's a general "good faith" assumption that you have to REALLY blatantly be breaking like Theranos to get in trouble. Being irrationally stupidly optimistic is seen as OK compared to knowingly dishonest.

Hell, Trump isn't in prison and he's had more failed businesses than Elon, and made just as many or more political enemies.

But maybe we should care more about that. Irrationally optimistic claims that people believe - cause how would they know you're full of shit before the second, third, fourth, fifth time around - still influence a ton of decisions, and it would be easy to not make them until the tech is actually there.

A world where lying has no consequences only increases the burden on everyone.

TheAlchemist5• 1 year ago

Well, if the CEO of a company says that the product is being released by the end of the year, we can reasonably expect that it is, or at most the next year. We can definitely assume that they are really close.

He said such things since 2016. This is almost 10 years, and they are nowhere near close to have a Full Self-Driving. In the meantime, they sold milions of cars who supposedly have all the hardware necessary for FSD. Except they already admitted twice that it's not the case and they will need to upgrade them once they solve FSD. But that's not an issue, since it will take another 10 years.

But yeah, this is not 'blantantly lying'.

PS. He's so optimistic about Tesla's future, that he sold $40B worth of shares at the peak in 2022, and so did most of the board.

aetherspawn2• 1 year ago

Investors love to hang engineers when things don’t go according to plan, but the reality is that R+D means doing something where the outcome is totally unknown.

Time blows out and things don’t go the way you expect: it’s nearly unavoidable. Something like 30% of projects (anecdotal) are never finished and 85% (from a study) go over time and budget. The whole time, the end of the line seems like it’s just around the corner.

It’s super scary, yes, but that’s why deep tech investment is at an all time low in western countries. China’s dominant attitude - not being scared of it - is also why China is winning across the board in EVs and deep tech.

Perfection isn’t a human trait: actually, holding others to perfection but not yourself is a sign of diagnosable narcissism. Therefore when someone seems to be trying their best, I think it needs to be interpreted in good faith and not as a criminal offence if they don’t meet their mark.

majormajor3• 1 year ago

How much of the Tesla failure to catch up with Waymo in self-driving is because of a Elon-dictated limitation on the tools and technologies they can use? Elon threw out a lot of the "R" part of R&D and said "just develop this approach I chose."

The critiques of Tesla self-driving are not saying it isn't a hard problem, they are the:

* Elon acts like it's an easier problem than it is in terms of constraining how his company approaches it

* Elon ALSO acts like it's an easier problem than it is in terms of his claims about when it will be done, in a way that offers potential harm to purchasers and investors

It's hard to say he's "trying his best" to be honest about the timelines when they've slipped this many times.

rsynnott2• 1 year ago

I mean, come on, if you believed that, you'd believe anything. Surely no-one _actually_ believed that?

TheAlchemist5• 1 year ago

I'm sorry what ?

Elon Musk is the richest person on earth, because millions of people believed him.

Just as a lot of people believe we're going to Mars soon.

jamesy0ung• 1 year ago

That is insane value for money, if you don't mind the stigma of owning a Tesla.

It seems like a used Tesla would be a better deal since most of the parts don't wear out and require maintenance like a petrol car. You can even check the status of the battery from service mode. Reddit seems to suggest high mileage Model 3's are pretty good in terms of reliability.

sharkweek• 1 year ago

Have seen a few in Seattle where people have replaced the Tesla branding with Honda or Totoya decals.

Obviously not fooling anyone but gave me a chuckle.

bluGill2• 1 year ago

tires, shocks, and other suspention parts still wear out. the body still rusts. The battery won't last forever. Mice can still chew your wires. The seats still wear. As do door parts.

prepend2• 1 year ago

I’m not sure the number of wires chewed through by mice really affects the maintenance costs of any car. While possible, it’s rare enough not to register things like oil, filters, coolant, sparkplugs, etc and the massive amount of things that require maintenance in ICE vs BEV.

It’s not they there are no costs, it’s that costs are exponentially lower.

bb882• 1 year ago

I just checked consumer reports and Tesla 2023/2022/2021 model 3's didn't have very good reliability scores.

That said, it's not the powertrain that has the issues with the Teslas (battery/motors), it's build quality and steering/suspension that appears to have the biggest problems.

rurp• 1 year ago

Tesla is notorious for a slow and difficult repair process. An older car will always be at risk of unexpectedly being out of service for weeks or months, which isn't a risk many people have the luxury of taking with their vehicle.

streptomycin• 1 year ago

The average price for a used Y has dropped more than $6,000 over the last 12 months to about $30K this month, as shown in the CarGurus chart below. If you go back even further to March 2023, the bottom has dropped out of Model Y pricing, falling more than $20,000.

Is much of that driven by the price of new Model Ys declining? I bought one last year and (after accounting for rebates/incentives) it was less than half the price of a few years ago. That may suck for people who bought at the high price and want to resell, because of course they won't be able to sell a used Model Y for more than a new one, so that puts a hard upper limit on the value of used ones. But it's kind of awesome for the rest of us.

prepend2• 1 year ago

“ Tesla Model Y average used price has dropped”

Wouldn’t this chart be more likely due to just Model Y being a relatively new car and more used coming into the market, off leases, etc.

It seems silly to compare overall prices without comparing similar models like what a 2018 with 40k miles cost last year vs a 2019 with 40k miles now.

Ys came out in 2020 and really got popular in 2021-2, so it makes sense that initially used car prices would be higher for 1 year old cars vs when those care are 2 and 3 and 4 years. And depreciation is high in early years so this seems kind of normal.

duxup2• 1 year ago

Has there been a situation where a company leader has potentially tanked sales because of themselves in this very non business related manner?

This is a strange timeline.

pestatije• 1 year ago

sure it has, a company called Twitter (now not no more) comes to mind

duxup2• 1 year ago

Well being silly and over bidding does seem to happen.

Not exactly the same as Tesla, but I get what you’re saying.

nunez• 1 year ago

My Pillow?

rsynnott2• 1 year ago

Ratner’s Group, previously a major (market cap ~1bn pounds in 1990) jewellery chain; the CEO gave a speech in which he pointed out that it sold cheap crap, resulting in a loss of 500m pounds, its near collapse, and his firing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner

That was a one-off really stupid comment, tho, so a little different.

I mean, realistically, this situation, where the CEO of a large public company has become a public official and is running around doing Nazi salutes and calling people the r-word on twitter is kinda unique; nothing like that has happened before. Even just a CEO of a large public company becoming a public official while keeping the CEO is pretty deviant; that's really not done.

sleepyguy• 1 year ago

One can look at the Model S trajectories to see where this is all going. I was looking at a 2018 Model S 75d with 100k on it in very good condition (Texas car). Owner was asking for $18k with lifetime SuperCharging Free. With the additional Gov Tax Credit ($4k) on the used Tesla, the car is a good deal (S14k).

But if I were to consider a used Tesla, I wouldn't pay more than what a battery replacement cost. I could deal with the other problems like control arms and coolant leaks, but the replacement of the Battery/BMS is a risky proposition for me if it is no longer under warranty.

jerlam• 1 year ago

With the new Model Y ‘Juniper’ being delivered to the first customers on Saturday, expect a sell-off of the prior generation Y

Do people often sell their current, functioning vehicle to buy a slightly facelifted vehicle of the same model? Sure people will buy a bigger, faster, or more fuel-efficient car. But I don't know people who will spend 20k or so to get pretty much the same car. And if your previous (less than 8 year old) Tesla had significant problems, I wouldn't be buying another one.

mingus88• 1 year ago

The sell off is not due to anyone trading up for the newer model; those aren’t selling either.

It’s folk selling off what they have because the value is in free fall so they need to get what they can before the value drops even further.

cjoelrun• 1 year ago

They chose to focus on Model Y because a new design just came out. Apples to apples comparison 90 day change of prices Model 3: -4.41% to Ioniq 6: -3.38%. Both mid range electrics. I'm always looking for a deal. Nothing spectacular yet.

https://www.cargurus.com/research/price-trends/Hyundai-Ioniq... https://www.cargurus.com/research/price-trends/Tesla-Model-3...

Tesla Used Car Price Crashes – Model Y, Model 3 Deals Explode

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