And if it's resale value you're worried about, take comfort in the fact that Tesla is crushing the competition in that area too:
Tesla Model 3 retains almost 90% of its value over 3 years, study shows - Electrek!
Just because it's written in an article doesn’t make it true. Anyone who follows the Tesla market knows that there have been plenty of M3s listed for sale for more than 10.2% below MSRP (and probably sell for less) that aren’t even
ONE year old yet.
Also, a lot of articles that talk about resale or depreciation give a misleading advantage to cars that typically sell at or near MSRP like Tesla. When you calculate resale against MSRP, part of the depreciation is actually the initial discount/rebate which is not really a loss to the buyer. This is why Tesla's resale values can be misleadingly high when compared against cars sold at a discount.
Example:
Car "A" has an MSRP of $50,000 and sells new for $50,000.
Car "B" has an MSRP of $57,000 and sells new for $50,000.
Even if both of these cars have the exact same resale percentage, car "A" would have lost more cash value e.g., if resale for both is 80% of original MSRP, car "A" would’ve lost $10,000 while car "B" would’ve only lost $4,400.
Even if car "A" had a resale value of 90% and car "B" had a resale value of only 80%, car "A" would've still lost more in value from selling price despite its higher resale %.
It's not that some Teslas haven't had good resales but because they typically sell at full MSRP new, their resale percentage can be misleadingly high when compared against cars sold at a discount. This is the same reason why Saturn, which also usually sold at full MSRP at least in its early years, did misleadingly well in resale value comparisons. It wasn't necessarily that the cars held their values better, it had to do with how resale percentages are usually calculated.
Buyer beware when it comes to Tesla and resale values and how they're calculated!
