It’s Impossible to Get Rid of a Tesla Cybertruck. I Want to Cut My Losses and Move On, but I Can't Give This Thing Away. I’ve Lost So Much Money Already; Help.
A Cybertruck owner shares his frustration following multiple failed attempts to sell his truck. After losing more than $20,000 in 2,800 miles, the owner says, “I want to cut my losses and move on, but I can't give this thing away.”
The Cybertruck owner listed his truck for sale for $89,000. He thinks this is a fair price [...] if you added every optional extra that Tesla currently offers for the Cybertruck, given the $7,500 tax credit and the $2000 referral discount, (a brand new 2025) Cybertruck will still only cost around $86,000.
Nobody with a brain would pay more for a used vehicle. It's not a collectible. "Founder's edition" nowadays means "beta version" and it's not something that's worth more.
...he has driven and sold over 40 exotic cars, and the Cybertruck is the one vehicle he is having the most trouble finding buyers for.
Not saying the Cybertruck is a good thing, personally IDGAF about it, but calling this guy merely "a cybertruck owner" is bullshit. He's a guy who makes money buying and selling expensive vehicles, and he's whining about a deal that hasn't worked out for him. Poor baby.
“I've owned it for 8 months. It is depreciating like a rock. I have already lost over $20k in 8 months. I want to cut my losses and move on, but I can't give this thing away unless I lower the price to probably $79k. Sucks.”
This right here sums up the unrealistic expectations of the average Tesla owner. Cars immediately depreciate the moment you drive them off the lot, no car is immune to this. The average new car loses 10% in the first month after buying it. It loses over 20% in the first year. For those who are playing along this track's with exactly how much this doofus has "lost" on his truck.
Also funny that he talks about the price depreciation, while complaining about not being able to sell it. How do you want to sell a buyer on "this will depreciate quickly in price, but please pay a price notably above current market prices"
The average new car loses 10% in the first month after buying it. It loses over 20% in the first year.
The theory behind this is that you'd only be selling a slightly used car if it was a lemon. The exception to the rule is resellers who already have a buyer lined up when they take possession of the vehicle.
But because Musk-o-philes are all Bitcoin brained and cannot conceive of prices ever going down, they're routinely shocked to discover that cars are for driving and not for speculating.
Though I'd say this one takes it to a whole new level because of a few extra factors:
Pre-orders were priced for exclusivity. Iirc, Tesla was having a lot of production/inventory issues when the pre-orders were collected. I'm not sure how much the deposits were, but they'd have added some sunk cost to the situation, making it harder to walk away when it might have been clear that they would be a shitshow. No one has a deposit on anyone's used cyber truck to add incentive to pay the rest.
Elon's reputation hadn't sunk so low when pre-orders were made. Iirc, it was after the whole submarine/pedophile thing, but it seems that many didn't see the writing on the wall from that event.
They turned out to be pretty bad. Other Teslas have and had issues but the cyber truck has had some particularly embarrassing ones for a truck. Like not handling rain or sand well.
It looks so unique that it doesn't really fly under the radar. The two other very hated vehicles I can think of off-hand, the PT Cruiser and the Aztec, were ugly but still looked similar enough to other vehicles that many people didn't know what they were or that they were so unpopular. People could buy one before they realized, and it was easier to not care what others thought. The cyber truck looks like a 90s video game truck in a time when memes reach many more people, to the point where openly laughing at cyber trucks you see in RL might be a meme.
Cars and trucks are expensive in general, but this one is on another level. While I might be behind on inflation, the price is comparable to a mid/low-end Porsche (~80k for a boxter, ~120k for a 911 is my benchmark, though it's old but it's also CAD, so maybe it works today for USD). A) why would someone want that more than a Porsche? B) most people can't afford a Porsche.
Not to mention the people Elon is pandering to these days either have trouble affording his vehicles without a dealer trying to convince a bank to take the loan, or can easily afford it but have money in part because they don't spend it on stupid shit like a cyber truck.
Not to mention the stainless steel it's made of is not even the type that resists rusting. Did you see the state of the Cyber truck that MKBHD sold? It look like a fucking derelict prop from a post-apocalyptic movie set.
Tesla's have the absolute worst resale value compared to ICE, PHEV or Hybrids. Batteries degrade over time and with increased usage, so by the time you try to sell a Tesla that's a few years old, a lot of the advertised maximum capacity has escaped from that battery and the cost of a replacement likely exceeds the value of the entire used car.
Two of my coworkers got fantastic deals on used Tesla's because they go for so cheap on the secondary market and California is awash in them so there's always someone somewhere trying to get rid of theirs and usually for less that what it would normally blue book for.
Top Gear did a piece about the Aston Martin Vantage. New, £170,000 (GBP). 20,000 miles later it was worth £80,000. 90k depreciation in less than a year.
There is a Tesla dealership near my house that has a lot full of them. A ridiculous number. It seems that Tesla is struggling to get rid of them. Hard to believe that there is not a huge market for electric dumpsters sold by a conspicuous asshole.
I don't know. I assume it is either a dealership or a lot for the storage of inventory. They have multiple other Tesla models as well. It hasn't been there long and isn't labeled in Google maps. The photos in street view are years out of date and show buildings that were torn down.
Dealerships for other brands in the US are independent privately owned enterprises not owned by the major auto makers.
Tesla doesn't have dealerships in this sense. They do have corporate owned locations in some states where they are allowed to sell directly to consumers however that is only some states as laws prohibit automakers from selling directly in many.
I don't, but know I've definitely seen Tesla dealerships. They have full Tesla branding so I always assumed they were related to the company and not third party.
FTA: He's not trying to give it away. He's expecting last year's used market value for it, but it's steadily depreciating. Someone offered him 50k for it. He overpaid for a new car.
Fuck tesla in general, but this isn't even that. It's the cost of early adoption. The founder's edition of basically anything is going to be more expensive and less refined than following versions. Once production picks up, nobody really cares about used first runs because it's more of a show-off piece. He's just realizing that the number of people who fawn over his steel box isn't enough to justify keeping that piece of shit.
I believe it means "whiner". As in one who whines and complains.
I don't know where @[email protected] hails, but I just know this because I am a dad, which means I watch Bluey, and sometimes the dad on Bluey will tell the kids to "quit whinging".
Actually 50k sounds a lot closer to reasonable for a somewhat used car that currently sells new for 80k'ish. Of course, I'm saying that in the hypothetical generic car vacuum, not the actual "electric dumpster" reality.
Also, “give away” typically means $0. $89000 is to the best of my knowledge larger than $0. I’ll bet he could give it away, but he doesn’t want to do that.
Size-wise, relative to him, it's much closer to a violin than a cello, maybe slightly larger. So a viola would be the best fit. I think the picture is of a cello though, just sized strangely.
Edit: that image is strange. It's really popular, but bad. He's playing the strings from the wrong side of the bridge. How do you get that wrong?
Sledder also shares that over his lifetime, - he has driven and sold over 40 exotic cars, and the Cybertruck is the one vehicle he is having the most trouble finding buyers for.
Oh, I'm so sorry sir, it's frightfully unfair that this particular transaction has not worked out as favorablly as you're used to. Would you care for a sparkling beverage while Life figures out how to make itself better for you?
Between price drops and the cybertruck recently qualifying for the federal EV tax credit, buyers can get a brand new unit for what this guy is asking. This early adopter paid too much and got a bad deal, but there's no mystery as to why no one wants to buy at his asking price.
The Cybertruck owner listed his truck for sale for $89,000.
The same dual-motor Cybertruck AWD variant now starts at $80,000. However, starting in 2025, the vehicle qualifies for the $7,500 point of sale tax credit. This further lowers the starting price to $72,500.
Tesla is also now offering a $2,000 discount to anyone who applies a referral code when buying the vehicle. That further lowers the starting price to $70,500.
LOLOL.
Everyone expects top dollar for used shit these days.
This fucking article goes on 3 more paragraphs after that about how great the current offerings from Tesla are. Feels like the whole thing is just a Cybertruck sales puff piece in disguise.
My first thought was "Really? Even a chop shop style place won't take it?" And reading it is like "Oh he doesn't want to cut the price so much but might now" so yeah.
They are similar as far as I understand because they all want the same outcomes of the design : better aerodynamics and effective crumple zones to faculiate higher survival of the occupants in a crash (some vehicles additionally try to limit injuries with pedestrians too but less so in US vehicles).
I do agree that we have lost some of the majesty of older variations of designs but largely I think it'd convergent evolution. To leave that behind you'd want to have a really good reason which I don't think the cyber truck really has. Different for the sake of being different rather than innovative.
idiot wants brand new value for his used vehicle. i hate these things, but this doesnt match reality on non-tesla vehicles let a lone one thats now nazi-based.
If analyzed in purelly financial terms, buying a brand new car is almost invariably one of the worst investments there is compared to other options (if you really need a car, aim for a car which is 1 or 2 years), and if you couple that with taking a punt on a Musk product on the user side (not even the shareholders' side but quite literally the side of the people the shareholders, most noteably Musk, want to extract money from, so pretty much the suckers' side) AND, maybe worse, doing it as an early adopter, pretty much adds up to a guaranteed lubless shafting.
Investing in a "I'm a sucker" tattoo for one's forehead probably has a better return.
buying a brand new car is almost invariably one of the worst investments
Because it's not an investment. There is nothing wrong with buying a new car if you plan on keeping it. You get the original manufacturer's warranty, no worries about a previous owner having been in an accident or not keeping up with routine maintenance, and often times you can lower your initial cost of ownership via dealer financing that's below market rates because they're willing to take loses there to move vehicles. Just a quick look, 2022 Toyota Corolla SE with 33k miles is selling for roughly ~$23k. A brand new 2025 Corolla SE is selling for ~$26k. If you need to finance it, you're going to get better rates on the new vehicle vs the used. You're getting 3 years worth of improvements and you're getting a full manufacturer's warranty and not just the balance of what's outstanding on a 3 year old vehicle with 33k miles on it.
You could easily be paying 19 for the 2022 and if you have good credit you might not have any difference in interest rates and paying the same payment will pay 19 off faster than 26.
Almost every purchase for oneself is an investment, not in the Financial Investment sense of putting money expecting to get more money out but in the broader sense that we buy things because they provide some kind of value to us, which can be a utility value, tge satisfaction of an actual physical need, the pleasure one derive from using it or even just the pleasure of owning it
People don't just buy things with no reason at all at any level, though often people buy things for the emotional reason that it gives them a jolt of pleasure to buy that thing (not exactly the smartest thing to do IMHO, but quite possibly one of the core pillars holding up present day Consumer Society).
So in that broader sense even the peace of mind you refer to as a justification for buying a new car has an actual value which can be expressed into a rough money range or, even better, the more personal "how long do I have to work to pay for the peace of mind of a new car instead of buying a 2 year old car".
Further once you look at it that way, you start identifying which objective/need/feeling you're trying to satisfy and figuring out other ways of satisfying it for less - for example if a car is expensive enough you can literally pay to have many possible used cars you are considering checked by a mechanic before you buy, have car histories checked, and buy an extended warranty, to get that piece mind you wish and still save up a lot of money (or, in another "currency", a lot of days of work to earn that money).
In that broader sense, IMHO, new cars are generally a bad "investment" versus cars with a year or two because you're paying a huge premium for a piece of mind you might get for much cheaper or might not even need because your fears are just be the product of being widely misinformed about the probability of problems in cars relative (I can tell you from a broader Engineering sense, the rates of problem in physical products in general tend to peak first when they're new, then go down, then start going up again when they're aged, which for something like a car would be 5+ year at least, though beware that I only know this rule as a general thing and don't have car-specific knowledge on it beyond some vaguely remembered stuff I read over a decade ago) and of imagining the worst possible scenario in your mind about what problems a 2 year old used car can give you when the reality is that scenario in your mind is incredibly unlikely and you can buy stupidly cheap insurance to cover it.
He's lost over $10 grand for every thousand miles he's driven. Or you could express that as $5 grand per month he's owned it. Might even be worse depending on his financing.
I guess this is another reminder that brand new cars can depreciate hard. Absolutely terrible way to rent a car for 8 months.
So $10 per mile? He could have taken the ridiculous Uber Black service (where you get picked up in a fancy black SUV or town car) as his only mode of transport during that time, and he still would have come out ahead. And we wouldn't have had to drive!