Auction houses provide a detailed inspection sheet of the cars they are running through, so interested buyers can bid intelligently.
They use a sliding scale, like 1-100 points and buyers can adjust their bids, knowing the condition of the vehicle they are bidding on.
Perhaps Tesla could do something like this for their CPO fleet.
Yep. For those who haven't seen ones before, Manheim (who has partnered w/NMAC, for example:
Manheim partners with nissan motor acceptance corp. And infiniti financial services to create a better, faster way to turn off-lease inventory into sales) has an "Auto Grade" and and I've seen reports like
INSIGHT Condition Report. (This one was posted on an i3 Facebook group and funny enough, the seller was Tesla). The scale I believe is
Manheim (search for clean).
When I was shopping for a used Leaf in July 2015 (to replace my near end of lease Leaf back then), I responded to a Craigslist ad posted by a used car dealer. I contacted them (was a one-man operation, as far as I could tell) but they said they no longer had the car but were leaving their ad up and would be getting another one w/the same equipment level and approximate age. I dropped by when that car arrived (was fresh from the auction still w/Nissan and Infiniti Remarketing sticker still on it) and passed on it for a number of reasons (certain damage, missing a key fob, didn't like color, etc)
But, the used car dealer at the time would go bid on used Leafs. They told me the auctions are every 2 weeks, told me the process, would send me a list of upcoming cars and set a price of $10K for me at max (on a 2013 Leaf SV w/premium package). The Manheim list had the VIN, color (inside and out), model year, trim level, mileage, packages, if any, etc. I picked out 2 VINs I was interested in and ran Carfax/Autocheck on them on my own.
He forwarded me info from Manheim that included pics of the car and the damage Manheim found. Prior to the auction, he went to the auction lot, took some pics of the various damage/flaws he found on those 2 cars and forwarded them to me. He ended up winning the auction on 1 car and that's the car I've been driving since. Cost me $9,325 + tax and license on a ~25 month old lease return, w/under 24K miles and all 12 capacity bar SF Bay Area Leaf w/clean title in pretty good condition. A few days before going thru the purchase process, I was able to use Leaf Spy on it to see battery condition, odometer, check out car condition, test drive it, etc.
It was not a CPO car at all and it wasn't a Nissan dealer, just a used car lot. Dealer told me up front that his markup is normally $1000 above his cost. Since the $10K was a ceiling, he said if his profit was less than $1K, that was fine and he'd still sell to me for $10K. If he got it for less, my price would just be $1K above his cost. He did, as he got lucky at won it for $8K + $325 Manheim fees.
I think it's totally fine that Tesla doesn't refurbish used cars it sells, but the price should be inline w/that and they REALLY should include pics of damage/flaws and some sort of condition report similar to what I posted.
I think it's completely nuts to buy a used car in this price range sight unseen. It's not even the cost; it's that you might be stuck living with a substandard vehicle for the years that you own it. Not everything is practically repairable.
Agree.
