Tesla starts accepting Cybertruck trade-ins, confirms insane depreciation

Tesla has started accepting Cybertruck trade-ins, something that wasn’t the case more than a year after deliveries of the electric pickup truck started.

We are starting to see why Tesla didn’t accept its own vehicle as a trade-in: the depreciation is insane.

The Cybertruck has been a commercial flop.

When Tesla started production and deliveries in late 2023, the vehicle was significantly more expensive and had less performance than initially announced.

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At one point, Tesla boasted having over 1 million reservations for the electric pickup truck, but only about 40,000 people ended up converting their reservations into orders.

Now, Cybertruck inventory is sitting unsold for months and Tesla is having to offer heavy discounts to move them.

We previously reported that Tesla refused to accept the Cybertruck, its own vehicle, as a trade-in more than a year after starting deliveries.

Tesla didn’t share an explanation at the time, but we assumed that the automaker knew the Cybertruck was depreciating at an incredible rate and didn’t want to be stuck with more trucks than it was already dealing with.

Now, Tesla has started taking Cybertruck trade-ins, at least for the Foundation Series, and it is now providing estimates to Cybertruck owners (via Cybertruck Owners Club):

Tesla sold a brand-new 2024 Cybertruck AWD Foundation Series for $100,000. Now, with only 6,000 miles on the odometer, Tesla is offering $65,400 for it – 34.6% depreciation in just a year.

Pickup trucks generally lose about 20% of their value after a year and 34% after about 3-4 years.

It’s also wroth nothing that Tesla’s online “trade-in estimates” are often higher than the final offer as noted in the footnote o fhte screenshot above.

Electrek’s Take

This is already extremely high depreciation, but Tesla is actually trying to save face with estimates like this one.

As Tesla wouldn’t even accept Cybertruck trade-ins, used car dealers also slowed down their purchases as they also didn’t want to be caught with the trucks sitting on their lots for too long.

On Car Guru, the Cybertruck’s depreciation is actually closer to 45% after a year and that’s more representative of the offers owners should expect from dealers.

That’s entirely Tesla’s fault. The company created no scarcity with the Foundation Series. They built as many as people wanted. In fact, they built too many and ended having to “buff out” the Foundation Series badges on some units to sell them as regular Cybertrucks and as of last month, Tesla still had some Cybertruck Foundations Series in inventory – meaning they have been sitting around for up to 6 months.

Now, Tesla is stuck with thousands of Cybertrucks, early owners are already getting rid of their vehicles at an impressive rate, and the automaker had to slow production to a crawl.