I agree that the tone of some posts here, including the initial post and some of the responses, has been over the top. But I also feel that Tesla should make significant improvements to its pre-owned program. It's understandable that the primary focus has been new car sales, and this is indeed what's propelled the growth in the stock price. However, Tesla is now a large company, and capable of doing multiple things well - remarketing is something that they need to start really doing well.
By the way, we purchased a pre-owned Model S last year, and we were happy with the experience. However, I knew exactly what to ask for, the purchase occurred near the end of Q3 when Tesla was highly motivated to show a profit, and there was no financing involved. As a result, I was able to pick up the vehicle within one week of putting down a deposit, and it happened to be in great condition.
There are only 3 ways to increase margins on pre-owned cars, pay less for trade-ins, sell them for more money, or reduce you resell costs (which includes insurance against depreciation). You are suggesting that they increase how much they give for trade-ins, the used car market is what sets the price of the pre-owned car, so the only way to increase the margin is to decrease marketing/resele costs.
I am suggesting that Tesla has the potential to increase margins on pre-owned cars as follows:
1. Sell cars for more money by selling them to retail buyers, rather than to auctions and re-sellers at wholesale prices.
2. Sell cars for more money, and reduce resale costs, by minimizing the amount of time they sit on back lots, where they depreciate, occupy real estate, and require insurance. We've read reports here of Tesla holding onto large volumes of wholesale inventory.
Here's what I think Tesla needs to do to make this happen:
1. Provide a better search engine for pre-owned vehicles, which would include actual photos and condition reports, more details, and more listings.
2. Provide public, retail listings of virtually all vehicles, not just the ones that are cleanest and/or have fewer odometer miles. At the same time, Tesla currently provides a very generous warranty on all pre-owned cars sold at retail - perhaps this could be reduced to a 12 month / 12,000 mile warranty on older cars. They could also delete free Supercharging from such cars.
3. Pre-condition used cars so that they can be purchased and driven off the lot immediately. This would increase expenses in the short run, but would ultimately not cost any more, as they'll eventually have to be conditioned anyway, if they're to be sold at retail.
Are you saying Tesla spends too much on their CPO program, and that there is room for them to spend so much less that they could offer folks like the OP another 20% on trade-in? How much do you think they spend and where do you see them cut that spending to the tune of 18K per car (just to break even, more if they want to make bigger margins)?
As detailed above, it's not a matter of Tesla spending too much; it's a matter of better managing what they have.
With a successful pre-owned program, would it be realistic for Tesla to offer as much as another 20% at trade-in? I don't know. Maybe not for higher-end trade-ins like the OP's. But even 10% more, if do-able, would be pretty significant.
Anecdotally, we have a friend who recently upgraded to a newer Model S. Instead of taking Tesla's trade-in offer of about $32K on their old Model S, they sold it to a private party for close to $40K. Their car was in immaculate condition, with little or no need of conditioning. It seems likely that Tesla ought to have been able to sell the car for a higher price, say $44K, particularly if they included at least a few months of bumper-to-bumper warranty coverage. So, in that scenario, could Tesla have paid as much as $32K + 20% = $38K for the trade-in? Probably so, if they were able to turn right around and re-sell it. However, even an offer of $36K from Tesla might have been enough to keep our friend from bothering with a private sale.
Would a better pre-owned program cannibalize sales of new vehicles? Hard to say. Either way, it would help increase EV adoption by making it easier for more people to buy EVs.