Tesla wants to sell you a used Model S

http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/06/tesla-wants-to-sell-you-a-used-model-s/

by crapshoot101 • 12 years ago

62 51 12 years ago

larrys3• 12 years ago

I want someone to explain HN's obsession with anything Tesla related. Is it the technology, the disruption or just Elon Musk's involvement?

I understand articles appear that get upvoted I'm just wondering why this type of news would get upvoted.

dmishe• 12 years ago

Great car, great company, lots of good publicity lately, obviously tech related.

arenaninja• 12 years ago

I'm excited for the advancements in battery technology. Personally, I upvoted this one because it could put it in my price range

pkorzeniewski2• 12 years ago

Affordable to buy, but to maintain? It's not like you can go to the first mechanic around the corner to fix something in Tesla, and I'm quite sure original parts are ridiculously expensive. It's the same thing as with luxury, old cars - you can buy, for example, an old Porsche 911 quite cheap, but you will pay twice the price for repairs.

TezzellEnt• 12 years ago

I'm excited for the battery technology as well as their AC Induction Motors.

seanflyon2• 12 years ago

Is it the technology, the disruption or just Elon Musk's involvement?

Yes, yes and yes.

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

In increasing order of importance to HN'ers, I think.

gutnor• 12 years ago

Well except that this article has nothing to do about technology or disruption ( that is a recognised business model used as noted by the article Tesla direct competitors ), and indirectly about Musk.

That is so banal, AFAIK almost all brand have some sort of certified second hand channel, that I don't even know what sort of on-topic discussion it is supposed to bring.

The article itself has nothing else to offer either - no idea on the pricing or what happens to your access to the supercharger network with a second hand Tesla.

Very weak for a HN article.

general_failure• 12 years ago

If I had a downvote button I would.

I think the main reason is that people think the mere fact of associating themselves and reading anything Tesla and anything Elon Musk related makes them feel cool and modern. It's basically like a cult. How people who know "music" will always disparage pop music and think this random indie alternative band is the best.

grecy3• 12 years ago

I genuinely believe everything Musk is currently involved in (Tesla, Space X, Solar City, Hyperloop) is changing the world.

mkehrt2• 12 years ago

...hyperloop?

hahhahahahahahahaha

funkyy• 12 years ago

The company that changes one of the oldest and most established industries.

People were hating them and here is change.

Old companies protected by government just for a reason that there is no alternative got in people nerves.

001sky• 12 years ago

People were hating them and here is change.

The financial system very efficiently bankrupted the Auto industry, no problem.

bramp324-08• 12 years ago

The Nissan Leaf came out a year or two before. They somehow managed to galvanize public support better than Nissan

IkmoIkmo3• 12 years ago

I really can't stand Elon Musk, I mean, awesome guy, for sure, I'd love for him to be my boss. But 9/10 times he's doing an interview and he's just rehashing the same story. He has a way of telling the 'reason from first principles' story and jamming it into the interview despite nobody asking any question for which this answer would be relevant, I've heard it a dozen times now.

So no, for me it's definitely not Musk. Cool guy, but you can only hear Martin Luther King have a speech so many times before you're like 'I agree, but I'm getting sleepy.'

For me it's really just the tech and disruption. The things Tesla and SpaceX and SolarCity are doing really are very cool, and they sit at the heart of some of the biggest problems and challenges of the 21st century. An inevitable shift to green energy and the final frontier. For Tesla it's just a cool startup with a slick product, some ballsy moves, frequent run-ins with local/state competition and media clickbait journalists, and a product that for me is a bit like the iphone: not the very first smartphone, touchscreen, mobile os, app store, not the thing the average western consumer will have let alone the average person on the planet, not the cheapest or the most inclusive, but a frontrunner with a huge and lasting impact that will drive everyone else, a company that sets a bar. That's exciting.

And for SpaceX, well, that's just really exciting. This notion we're regularly shipping all kinds of stuff to a freaking permanent space station and returning safely and making multiple trips with the same vehicle over and over, is insane. A one-time planned crash on the moon and on the earth is one thing, but we seem to start to really grasp real control in space, where we can comfortably do lots of different things at an accelerated pace, cheaper and cheaper, and renew the interest, investments and plans in space that laid dormant for a few decades. SpaceX being a part of that, as a private startup company that again is making ballsy moves, is a hugely compelling story.

SolarCity is the least exciting for me personally, but I think it's also hugely important. Generally sits in the top 3 solar companies in the US, doing cool work, like building the biggest ever US solar farm. Creating a solar security, solar leasing options and retrofits (a not so sexy but very important part of our energy discussion). I don't follow the company too much, oil prices have been low recently and shale gas has exploded on the scene, so I expect it to be the most difficult company to run as it's hard to get it cheaper than coal/gas. As solar only has a 'moral' benefit to consumers, and the average customer isn't willing to pay a large premium for something that's moral (because green) especially with all the rhetoric on climate denial, the company is in many ways limited to the growth in the industry. While Tesla and SpaceX can outpace competition, SolarCity probably can't very much.

hnnewguy• 12 years ago

who want to forgo gas and buy a Tesla but cannot afford the high price of a new Model S

I love the idea of someone concerned about costs and prices buying a $50,000 used luxury vehicle with an unproven long-term reliability track record.

Edit: Wow, downvoted twice before I could even fix my typos. What a community.

arjie• 12 years ago

I wonder what the effects are of buying a luxury car cheaply. Surely at least some portion of buyers are buying it because it's cool to have a Tesla. I guess it matters how big a portion.

eridius• 12 years ago

What are the effects of buying a used BMW or Mercedes-Benz? I'm not aware of that having any detrimental effect on those brands.

TallGuyShort• 12 years ago

In fact I've heard BMW commercials that tout their cars' ability to retain resale value better than anyone else.

IkmoIkmo3• 12 years ago

Same with every brand ever... Look at Apple, extremely strong second-hand market that retain value for years, coupled with an extremely strong tendency of customers wanting the 'latest one', whatever it is. It works really well.

It's not like a high fashion item that goes out of style once everyone has it. And Tesla sells very, very few cars, to be honest. It'd be a great benefit I think to see an order of magnitude more of them before they even come close to 'going out of style' because everyone has one. And frankly, when you've gotten there, you pretty much already won, anyway.

jonah• 12 years ago

What I wonder is why people are turning in their leases/selling their cars so soon?

What are the ratios of, gets a new car every couple years, more car than they could realistically afford, wasn't meeting their needs (range, passenger, luggage, person capacity), etc. etc.

Moto7451• 12 years ago

I have some friends that only lease cars because they want a new one every two years. It doesn't matter if the car is perfectly OK and in great shape, they want a new car. They'll even lease the same car again.

I imagine car companies love them :).

r00fus• 12 years ago

Is there some tax-favorability to leasing cars?

http://www.businessinsider.com/tax-loophole-on-luxury-cars-2...

IkmoIkmo3• 12 years ago

It's pretty surprising to me, too. It's not much like a smartphone which quadruples in performance and efficiency at higher resolutions, with a better camera while being thinner and lighter every two years. And I'd imagine that cars stay quite fashionable for at least a decade before a layman could recognize the car as being from a wholly different generation of cars cosmetically.

I mean if range (battery life) and repair requirements suddenly spiked down and up respectively, sure.

But from what I've heard, range stays pretty good, financially you're better off just replacing the battery than buying a new car every 2 years (ditching a $70k car at 50% value means you're paying about $1400 a month for your car on just depreciation costs!) and cars are much more reliable over time these days (with obvious exceptions recently).

alistairSH• 12 years ago

Lots of 2-3 year leases while consumers felt out the product?

The Model S was released in mid-2012. So, the timing is right to ramp up the certified program by mid-2015 to catch vehicles that were leased for 3 years.

In the DC region, there are TONS of 2-3 year old vehicles for sale as certified, many of them off-lease. 3 of my last 4 vehicles have been bought that way. With the 30-40% discount from new and the 100k mile warranties, it works out pretty well.

ericabiz• 12 years ago

"Elon Musk previously guaranteed the resale value of the Model S. Announced in April 2013, those who financed a Model S are allowed to return the vehicle after three years for 43 to 50 percent of its sticker price — just in time to buy a new Tesla vehicle."

I wonder why those numbers are so low. For reference, I recently leased a 2015 Mercedes C400, and the residual (programmed into the lease) is 61% after 3 years. When you're looking at a $70,000+ car, the difference between 43% and 61% is pretty dramatic.

I'm wondering if Musk/Tesla believes that the technology will change so much that in 3 years no one will want the older Teslas, or just that people who want to buy a Tesla will not care about residual value. Perhaps both?

duckingtest• 12 years ago

I wonder why those numbers are so low.

The difference is probably battery degradation.

dweinus• 12 years ago

From a buyer's perspective though, a guaranteed 43% retention in value vs a gamble on 61% seems like a logical trade-off.

jasode• 12 years ago

Not sure why you're comparing a lease residual to a Tesla buyback.

The lease residual is a price for the buyer to buy the car outright.

The Tesla resale guarantee is a price for the buyer to sell the car.

I wouldn't expect those % figures to be the same. I would expect the buy-to-own price to be higher than the sell-back price. Same concept as trading in an old car to the dealer for one price while the same dealer turns around and sells that used car to another buyer for a higher price.

Btw, when I turned in my car after a 36-month lease, the leasing company immediately offered to ignore the lease residual specified in the contract in an effort to entice me to buy the car. They immediately lowered the price because the leasing company didn't want the car back!

Tesla wants to sell you a used Model S

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