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Tesla Is Starting a Certified Preowned Program
cartechboy writes Most luxury automakers have a Certified Previously Owned (CPO) program. Tesla isn't like a normal luxury automakers, in fact, it's not really like any automaker out there. It doesn't have franchises and it sells its own vehicles through its network of galleries. Now, it plans to create its own CPO program. There are a great deal of Model S sedans out there currently under lease contracts. When those cars are ready to come back, Tesla has guaranteed that it will purchase them for a figure that falls somewhere between 43 and 50 percent of the original purchase price. This is exactly how Tesla's going to create its CPO fleet. Tesla seems to do everything in an unconventional manner, so we'll have to see if its CPO program behaves like every other automaker's, or if it's different somehow as well.
I have not found the Tesla S to be all that interesting due to price. For what you pay, it is expensive, in my opinion.
That being said, if they do a lease on a 3 year old copy for half the price of a new one, the monthly payment might get into an area that I'd be interested in.
I would expect a 3 year old Tesla S to be in better shape than your average 3 year old car, the early buyers are going to likely have taken good care of it and if it comes with another 3 year warranty, then no worries.
I actually wouldn't mind owning an electric, price is the primary issue right now.
Nope, battery warranty is eight years, so you are far off the mark.
A base model S for 50k, if you're not afraid of a few miles on it? It'll depend on what they do to the car: if it's "check a bunch of boxes" I'm not so sure I'm interested. If it's "Test the car and repair defects in the drive line and battery", that may be much more interesting.
This isn't anything about owners, this is about off-lease cars. Leases are for predictable durations, so remaining battery life should be easy enough to determine.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"Pre-owned" - come on.
1. Almost all auto dealerships are franchise operations. Tesla owns theirs outright.
2. Most used cars are not sold through a dealership.
Private sales and 3rd party dealerships are common.
Even when somebody trades in used vehicle for a new one it rarely shows up on that dealer's lot. Normally it goes to auction where some other used car dealer buys it up.
Is this a subtle assault on the 1st sale doctrine, keeping the cars within Tesla's system?
I know corporations like to pretend that lease = own, but they are not the same.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
With a 'normal' car you get to see the mileage and whether "it looks OK at a glance" but that's about all you can tell about what kind of life it had previously.
With a Tesla I don't see why you couldn't theoretically pull the entire black-box history.
I'd like to buy a Tesla that never exceeded the speed limit and was only driven to church on a Sunday etc etc.
Like all leases, you don't 'sell' the car back or 'trade' the car in. Instead, your lease ends and the car returns to the owner. Despite their propaganda, if you leased a car, that means you never actually owned the car.
This is not a Tesla's assault on 1st sale doctrine. Instead, it is a common practice, which I like to call the ZERO sale doctrine. The cars - in both Tesla's program and more traditional programs never were sold at all.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Plenty of car manufacturers will offer deals that you a guaranteed buyback value of a car 'bought' on PCP over here. It's usually a hook to get you to use that money as a deposit on buying another car from that dealer. Pay £3000 to 'buy' the 4 year old car you've been driving or get £3000, put that down as a deposit on a slightly better car and keep on paying what you were for your old car and have a bit of spare change to splash out on a holiday. I know Fiat offered this last time I went into a dealer.
As always with PCPs, sounds a great deal until you hand back the car and there's a 5p per mile over-usage penalty, that mark that looks like a fingerprint is totally a scratch that costs £100 to fix, you'll need to buy 4 new tyres despite the old ones only having 5000 miles on them...
On the one hand, Musk is saying all the right things:
On the other hand, the warranty itself does not really back it up:
People are claiming they've received emails from Tesla assuring them the battery will be replaced if it drops below 70% within the 8-year warranty period, but as one of the comments on that page calls out, that leaves a lot un-answered:
I'm not surprised Tesla failed to personally respond to emails from this car-shopper, but the point is, they shouldn't have to - it should be in writing already.
It was a question, not a statement.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm not surprised at all.
If they put it in writing, you can probably sue them on it. If I were operating in the USA, known for having more lawyers than mosquitos, I would avoid absolutely anything that has the slightest chance of landing me in court.
IOW, if I planned to make a promise to my customers, but without giving a free "sue me" card to some asshole who wants to lawyer-abuse me because one i wasn't dotted or one t wasn't crossed, then a public CEO announcement would be exactly what I'd do, especially if my CEO had such a good reputation. To any reasonable person, he's honour-bound to stand true to his word, but the ambulance-chaser, he can tell to fuck off and die.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Who's going to be the first to open "Stan's Previously Used Teslas"?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Nobody's keeping the owners from selling their cars to somebody else if they so desire, so there's no "assault on the 1st sale doctrine".
You are half right - but that means you kind of misses my point. What happens to leased cars after they are returned?
Technically they revert to the leasing company, not the dealership or manufactory. In practice this means that they get dumped onto the used car market. This means when the lease holder drops off the car at the dealership (which is a franchise) at the end of the lease, they tend to have the same dance as when bringing in a trade in. Not exactly the same – leases throws in some weird quirks – but it is in the same class.
I have seen some weird conflicts of interest between dealerships and manufactures. Manufactory put out a sweet lease deal 2 to 5 years ago, and then the cars start getting returned with a high residual value, so there is a large dump of overpriced vehicles onto the used market. Nobody comes out a winner here.
Which is why I think Tesla might be doing this. It would give them greater control over their used car market.
As for not owing the car – technically correct but that misses some points. In some ways it is better than owning a car. All auto leases have option for you to buy the car at the end of the lease. This puts the leaseholder in the proverbial driver's seat. I have seen people execute the option, buy out the car, then turn around and sell the car for a higher price. I have seen other people return the car and then buy it back from the dealership for thousands less. (Personally, I don't like leases because I think they have a higher total cost of ownership. But that would be a different thread.)
All auto leases have option for you to buy the car at the end of the lease. This puts the leaseholder in the proverbial driver's seat. I have seen people execute the option, buy out the car, then turn around and sell the car for a higher price.
My local GMC dealership is even easier to work with...
If the truck is worth more than the lease end value, they don't make you bother with buying the car and trading it in, they'll buy it and credit you the difference in value and apply it to the next truck, or write you a check.
Saves a transaction and having to have the cash to pay for the buyout value. One of the services they offer.
Well, no – not directly – that is why I said subtle. An analogy might be made to Apple's iPhones. Apple can't legally prevent you from going to a 3rd party repair shop. However, they do make things difficult. If you do so you void the warranty, they use special screws, they don't publish repair manuals, etc. I think this might be more akin to a nudge than a full out assault.
So let me ask a follow up question. How do you and your dealer know that your leased car's residual value is less than the market value? Answer – because there is a robust 3rd party market for those vehicles. Compile the national data from the auction sales, extrapolate the differences between sold cars and yours (basically mileage and options) and you have a pretty good idea of what is happening.
But what if Tesla grabs a good portion of that data because they are running the leased cars through their own system and not sharing that data. Thinner public sales means you need to kick out your confidence intervals. This strengthens Tesla's hand because they actually know what is going on.
I am pushing things a little, but I can see this giving Tesla a slight advantage.
Leases usually overcharge the 'renter'. The renter is pushing off risk from themselves to the leasing company and they pay HIGHLY for that.
Let's face it, those situations where people turn in and buy or buy it back then sell it at a profit mean the company screwed up somehow - or intentionally overpriced things.
Basically, leases are designed by the companies to make THEM money. They throw in added complexity which always makes it harder for a person to make decisions.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Are all the owners beginning to sell just prior to the batteries reaching the end of their life?
batteries don't expire, they degrade over time. so it's not like there will be a day that is one day away from when the batteries go bad so you better sell by that day or else you'll be stuck with bad batteries.
the most important spec that defines a luxury vehicle: $90k.
I see your point, and it is a fair one...
The same issue exists of course with any low production item... Try it with a Ferrari for example, some models are made in the hundreds of copies only...
Tesla will have control, until they start building hundreds of thousands of cars a year, then they'll lose it.
Personally, If it was my company, I'd want the details clearly in writing and not subject myself to trying to explain in court what the CEO means in his public statements. It seems like it would lead to less abuse by lawyers. You can never avoid such abuses though, all you can do is make it as hard as possible to be found liable for more than you intended. Best way to do that is to draft an airtight warranty document.
So that leads one to believe that this whole discussion was more of a bait and switch technique, where the customer thinks that the single most expensive component of his car is fully covered, where in reality, Tesla is reserving the right to refuse replacement for any number of reasons that suits it at the time. Typical used care selling...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I don't see anywhere where it blocks the sale of Teslas by other people. In fact, right now, you can buy used Tesla Model S', but they cost MORE than from the factory.
If you wanted to trade your Model S at a dealer to buy a new Ford or whatever, you certainly can do it. No one said you have to sell your used Tesla back to Tesla.
And lots of dealers have "certified pre-owned" programs - walk into any luxury marque's lot and if you can't afford new, they'll show you their certified pre-owned ones. Lots of dealerships have pre-owned sections of their lots - they may auction off the off-marque cars they took in, but they probably just service their own and put it up for sale.
Start at 1:49.
Let me know when you've succeeded to sue a company in court for some marketing statements they made to the press.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I never understoof the fascination of leasing a car for an individual. I can understand for a company, but most cars are worth something at the time the lease is over. Why give it back or have to go through more tortuous negotiating to buy the car then?
If you can't afford to buy a car, perhaps you should look into a cheaper car.
(I'm discounting those that lease $15K cars, since most leases are for more expensive models.)
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
I think in this case it was a mid-level manager at SpaceX who thought they knew more about labor laws than might actually be the case. Even if it was Elon Musk himself who pushed these guys out the door, it really is just a dispute over money and how much is owed to them... based upon a technicality of labor laws and not upon actual hours worked.
My own opinion is that SpaceX screwed up here, but doesn't mean that SpaceX is a slimy company to work for either. If anything, it just shows the growing pains they have been going through from the rapid increase in employees they have had over the past decade.
in California, I see on average one every few days in NYC. Tesla sales are very asymmetric, they have deep penetration in certain markets and almost none in others.
All of the original Big Three car makers and many other car makers offer their own lease programs. In that case the car IS reverting to the manufacturer, or at least to its financial branch.
Are you sure? I thought that GM and Chrysler had to sell their finance division when they slid into bankruptcy.
Red Bull. Apparently, it does not in fact give you wings. If you have had one since 2002, you are eligible for compensation under a successful class action suit: http://www.energydrinksettlement.com/. I almost wish I were making this up.
It's not yet successful (hearing in 2015), and anyone can bring a lawsuit for any stupid reason. But if they succeed, I'll lose what's left of my faith in humanity.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Ah. I should have read the details. My coworker presented it to me as if it were settled. Serves me right. :)
She said, "If you've enjoyed a Red Bull since 2002, you can get ten bucks..."
Me: "Enjoyed?"