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Could a guy part out a SRplus and break even?

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I think this a poor idea. Keep in mind the value of the individual pieces is probably less than they are selling the car for. Labor obviously accounts for cost. Lots of the value is in the software too! If the car works well, just sell the car. SR+ are 8+ weeks out so there is definitely a market to sell your car. In the private market you could probably do just fine. Not saying you pay off your whole 43k loan, but you can probably get close.
 
That depends entirey on your ability to find folks who will buy your used parts at fairly high prices.

There's a moderately famous study out there where in the 90s they went to the trouble of pricing every part in a Taurus from the dealer, and the $18k car required $90k in parts at retail price plus assembly.

While the differences aren't likely quite that vast, undoubtedly Tesla charges more for all the parts that make up the car bought individually than they do for the car itself.

The question is, can you find buyers for all the parts? It's not something I'd want to do, but there are folks who can make money doing it I think.
 
Given the relatively low numbers of them on the road requiring parts, it could be a long process.

We used to do this with (far more common) cars when we were doing demolition derbies years back. We'd sell our straight panels to people in trade for a low cash amount and their bent ones (that would go back on ours) to help fund the costs (plus air conditioners, glass, lights etc that we didn't need). Even with the far more common vehicles we were destroying it was slow going getting rid of panels and glass. Engines and transmissions went quickly.

TLDR: I think you'll be sitting with a partial SR+ for a long time with far less cash from the process, compared with selling it whole.
 
I think it’s pretty unlikely. The overwhelming majority of these cars are under warranty, meaning there just isn’t much of a market for the pricey mechanicals. The battery is probably worth more than almost anything else, but extremely few have driven enough miles to be out of battery warranty.

I haven’t heard of someone that had a failure out of warranty. If you were asking this two years from now, it might be a different proposition.
 
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