Tesla discontinues resale value guarantee program

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,256   +192
Staff member

Years ago, the decision to purchase an electric vehicle was far more nerve-wracking than it is today. That’s largely due to the fact that Tesla’s future was etched in sand. To help quell the uncertainty and convince prospective buyers to make leap, Tesla a few years back introduced a resale value program in which it would buy back a vehicle after three years and guarantee you’d get at least 50 percent of the base purchase price back plus 43 percent of the value of all options (so long as you purchased it through one of Tesla’s loan financing programs).

Now, the company is discontinuing that guarantee. Depending on how you look at it, that can either be seen as a good or bad thing. Allow me to explain.

Tesla introduced the program in 2013 to help control the secondary market and reassure buyers that their investment wouldn’t drop like a rock after purchase. At the time, Tesla didn’t have very many vehicles on the road so the amount of money it needed to set aside for potential buybacks wasn’t very large.

That’s no longer the case today as it has far more vehicles in the wild meaning it has to reserve a much larger chunk of change. A spokesperson for Tesla said it discontinued the program in order to help keep interest rates as low as possible and to be able to offer a compelling lease and loan program to customers.

It’s hard not to see this as good news as it demonstrates that the market for electric vehicles has matured to the point that it no longer needs a subsidy to survive.

Those that purchased a vehicle before July 1 of this year are still eligible for the resale value guarantee program.

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Oh no, I'm going to lose all my money! Please, someone send me their banking info so I can transfer my money out of Nigeria before the banks seize it!
 
Seriously? Oh, I would recommend you look more toward China since their ever expanding real estate options include islands full of bombers & soldiers .... it will save you a fortune over buying ADT!
 
Seriously? Oh, I would recommend you look more toward China since their ever expanding real estate options include islands full of bombers & soldiers .... it will save you a fortune over buying ADT!
Well I already invested in a company that sells polymers to sex toy manufactures. The Japanese market is quite lucrative right now.
 
Seriously? Oh, I would recommend you look more toward China since their ever expanding real estate options include islands full of bombers & soldiers .... it will save you a fortune over buying ADT!
Well I already invested in a company that sells polymers to sex toy manufactures. The Japanese market is quite lucrative right now.

The Japanese Sex toy market has been lucrative since the end of WWII. They dwarf pretty much any other country in that category.
 
In the report I'd heard, Tesla also cited the current market 2nd hand prices are well in excess of their guarantee so the program was redundant anyway.
 
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