- Tesla is now accepting Cybertrucks as trade-ins, reversing its previous policy on the truck.
- Owners are upset, with some seeing a loss of over $25,000 in less than two years.
- Other owners are unfazed by depreciation and prefer to keep their electric truck.
Tesla has just opened the door to a new level of trade-ins: the Cybertruck can now be traded in for other vehicles. Surprising? Maybe, but for anyone who’s been paying attention to Tesla, it’s a move that’s been long overdue. While the Cybertruck was originally priced at $99,990, the trade-in values today are sitting around $63,000, which is a steep drop in just under two years.
Obviously, some Tesla owners are quite unhappy. “There’s no point in trading in/upgrading with that low of an offer,” said one person on Cybertruckownersclub.com. “That’s about $25k depreciation – assuming $10k for FSD,” said another. One more person calculated a 17.2 percent hit in value over what has essentially been barely more than a year.
Read: This Used Cybertruck Just Sold For $6K More Than A New One
Of course, they jumped through a lot of hoops, counting all sorts of things to add value. A more straightforward comparison, from the original price to the trade-in value, suggests depreciation of over 30 percent in that same time period. That kind of depreciation on a ‘Foundation Series’ seems just wild. At the same time, some owners appear unfazed.
Several expressed the desire to keep their truck for good and at least one even mentioned willing it to their kids. Clearly, this situation is going to affect different buyers in vastly different ways. For Tesla though, this might be just a bit more gaming of the system.
Let’s add one more layer to this wild situation. Just last week, it became obvious that Tesla has a habit with cars that it takes as trade-ins. It told customers on lease deals that it needed their cars at the end of the term because they were going to turn the same cars into robotaxis. Instead, it flipped them for a profit. Essentially, the automaker enabled new features via software and then resold the cars.
There’s really no good reason to believe that Tesla won’t try to do something similar here with the Cybertruck. Owners who didn’t get every available software option could see their trade-in back on the market with a serious markup in price. After all, Tesla only needs to send a software update to enable some features.
All of that said, it’s an interesting situation that Tesla is now in. It’s fighting battles on just about every front while still offering what is objectively a compelling set of products. Will that alone be enough to stem the tide? Only time will tell. At least until then, the chance of getting a Cybertruck for $39,990, albeit on the second-hand market, is getting better.
Credit: Carsly / Rinoa0 / Outdoors / Cybertruckownersclub.com
