When the cult of personality is being a big jerk to the well-to-do tech workers at one of the biggest companies for them, that's pretty close to home. (It's easier for someone to seem fabulous when they're only stepping on other people.)
"Might want to be selling that Muskmobile soon. Value falling at 2-3 times the Car Guru index. Look at the fall between 30 and 90 days. Much, much steeper than, say Mercedes or Toyota"
Shows Model3's off almost 16% in the last 90 days.
So... sure? If you're owning a Tesla as a form of value store, you might want to sell? If you're owning a Tesla as a car, then these don't look like the right numbers - you'd need the spread for buy->sale price, probably for new and used (since these used prices look about the same as new prices).
Edit:
Also, on second look, the tweet links to a Car Guru chart of a bunch of gas cars. The one I'd look at is the Rav4 Prime, IMHO one of the alternatives to the Y (sure was for me), which while still doing better than the Y on these charts, not by nearly as much as the originally selected cars.
Model Y - https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price-trends/Tesla-Model-Y-d30... RAv4 Prime - https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price-trends/Toyota-RAV4-Prime...
The drops for 2021 models are almost identical, although I'd probably look at the 2022 numbers since the Rav4s in 2021 were heavily marked up by dealers ($10k+) due to rarity that year.
While I can't sell my Y for more than I paid for it, I can sell it for more than than the outstanding balance on the loan (by... 25%?) sooo
(Note: totes agree that the recent stuff is having / will have an impact; but; it doesn't look like it's this impact)
For example: Both the Rav4 and the Model Y show ~10% drop over this time period according to this website; but, non-EV staples show a ~2% drop. And the Y shows a bigger drop than the Rav4. So, could be interpreted as Federal changes causing the 10% drop in EVs and the Musk shenanigans causing the additional 5% drop in Model Ys.
Imo, this could be attributed to a few factors all compounding each other.
1. Most Tesla owners/interested consumers are more "online" than average. (no evidence, just my experience)
2. Tesla recently asked the FCC to withhold docs on a newer radar system. [0]
3. The Model 3 has also been rumored to have a refresh next year. [1]
But also I think they are just cherry picking data points to try and make a claim. [2]
Other brands are down worse than Tesla but not mentioned.
- Tesla is down 9% YoY or 15.03% in the last 90 days.
Now let's compare to some others in the list...
- Lexus is down 24.56% YoY or 5.69% in the last 90 days.
- Wagoneer is down 28.92% YoY, or 5.99% in the last 90 days.
- Infiniti is down 9.44% YoY or 6.76% in the last 90 days.
While others are still down similarly (within a few % points), but not worse than Tesla.
- Scion is down 6.45% YoY or 7.76% in the last 90 days.
- FIAT is down 5.95% YoY or 8.84% in the last 90 days.
- Dodge is down 7.04% YoY or 6.63% in the last 90 days.
- Chevrolet is down 6.19% YoY or 4.97% in the last 90 days.
I think what we're actually seeing in the numbers here are just signs that people are slowing on buying used cars, but also slowing on buying more expensive vehicles in general (at least until you hit the other side of the curve, where rich people are still buying ex ferraris).
[0]: https://insideevs.com/news/625502/tesla-alerts-fcc-new-radar...
[1]: https://www.carscoops.com/2022/11/tesla-working-on-model-3-r...
[2]: https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price-trends/ (9/13/2022 through 12/10/2022
Now that the delivery time for new Teslas is down to a month or two depending on model, of course used prices are dropping like a rock.
That said Telsa is still probably the most common vehicle on the roads here, but not quite as dominant as a few years ago.
All car manufacturers end up having to redesign/restyle their cars because they literally become unfashionable. People look forward to redesigns and then when the new design is out, older models look dated. Tesla hasn't gone thru that cycle that I'm aware of and all of their models, sans cybertruck, look exactly the same. I imagine there is significant cost to redesigns and re-tooling manufacturing processes while keeping old design parts, etc. still available.
Some people probably can't get Musk out of their head whenever they see a Tesla. But the company has an independent brand as well, so many people just associate it with EVs, environmentalism, fast cars, etc.
The experience was completely fine, especially compared to the last two cars I purchased, which previously made me swear I'd only deal with tesla, specifically to avoid dealerships. The biggest problem was that the online EV inventory was completely out-of-date, so I had to physically show up to browse cars.
The whole process took less than 5 hours end-to-end (roughly 2-3 in the dealership). I paid a fair price vs. other local sales of similar cars. I'm not sure how much of the good experience was due to being at a luxury car dealership vs. them copying off of tesla and other online-only dealerships.
Presumably most sellers would be happy to drive and have you sit shotgun without a license.
But if you don't want anyone to make a copy of your drivers license, you have the options I laid out: buy without driving, or be a passenger.
The move to Texas and the embrace of antics that play well with conservative social media is an attempt at getting free marketing to a new segment of buyers.
It is beneficial to Tesla if it wants to expand into the middle American auto market - which is probably bigger in size - where buyers are probably skeptical of adopting EVs and would otherwise be hesitant to trade in their gas powered F150/Hemi for an EV Cybertruck.
I get the appeal of the Cybertruck and Rivian, but they're completely impractical for use as pickup trucks. I hope they find their niches and everything, but there's no way they'd replace a conventional full sized pickup that was actually being used for truck stuff.