Per Inside EVs, Cybertruck owners are now allowed by Tesla to trade in their cars for the first time since they hit the market – but they’ll incur a heavy hit in the process.
CarGurus recently showed depreciation rates of up to 45%. Meanwhile, Business Insider talked this past week with two owners who shared firsthand what value Tesla has assigned their Cybertruck. One owner, who bought a $100,000 AWD 2024 model and accumulated 19,623 miles, received a quote for $63,100 (a 37% depreciation); the other purchased a top-of-the-line $127,000 Cyberbeast last September and was shown a quote for $78,200, which would amount to a 38% loss after eight months.
Tesla initially banned owners from reselling the vehicle – a policy typically used to prevent scalping of high-demand vehicles and to maintain brand control. In Tesla’s case, it may also have delayed a wave of trade-ins or resales from owners facing a backlash owing to Elon Musk’s high profile in the Trump administration or frustrated with ongoing quality control issues, which have included runaway gas pedals and falling trim pieces.
Worth noting: trade-in figures are typically lower than private-party sales, and EVs as a category depreciate fast. According to Wired, some brands can lose up to 50% in year one.
Correct analysis, exactly right.
The purely utilitarian value of a vehicle (transporting people, moving cargo) decreases over time as its expected remaining life decreases, which should more or less be linear in time. Transferrable warranties change this slightly.
In contrast, the aesthetic value can change very rapidly, if it is based on things like not having a prior owner, clout, aesthetic defects (minor scratches). These aesthetic factors are not tied to usable life really at all.
People paying $120k for a cybertruck are most likely placing higher weight to its aesthetic value than purely utilitarian value, so we would expect faster depreciation than for a work truck where almost all the weight is placed on pure utility.
That being said, “being associated with an egotistical bully destroying our government” probably affects aesthetic value to some degree.