I am very close to purchasing a M3 LR. My current ride is a 2020 BMW 330 i X Drive that I just filled with the ever increasing price for premium fuel - getting expensive. I purchased in June 2020 and now only has 1500 miles while I telework...otherwise will be 120 mile commute when I return to my office. I've always wanted a Tesla and I'm very close to purchase after reading this and other forums and looking at reviews. My question is that I see my area has several in inventory with less than 50 miles. Is there any reason those are in inventory other than they were manufactured and shipped new. Are they vehicles that were rejected by other purchasers? (What happens to those rejected cars anyway?) Is it better to order and wait for delivery rather than taking a vehicle from inventory?
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Ready to Purchase - Almost
- Thread starter EGoCart
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I don't know if they are rejected or not - but you can bet that as time goes on, it is almost guaranteed to be rejects until the quarter ends. Earlier you buy one, better it is. Rejected cars are usually fixed up and sold to someone else. I am sure if something is really that bad, then they give up or use as a demo.
WIth that said, you can always reject it if it doesn't look good upon delivery from my understanding. Ask to be matched to another. At this point, if you aren't buying inventory, you probably aren't getting a car this quarter and will probably be waiting until june.
CapeOne
Active Member
Tesla builds a number of cars on spec in hopes of matching with custom orders for faster deliveries. There are also rejects but whether or not a particular car is a reject is an unknown. You can ask a sales advisor but they may not be willing/able to answer and may not be truthful anyway.
If your only/main gripe with your BMW is financial (rising cost of gasoline), I don’t know if trading such a new car makes sense. Premium is up around 55 cents per gallon on average versus a year ago. Even if driving 30k miles a year (twice the national average), that’s an increase of only around $600 per year for a 330iX which is far less than the hit you’ll take on depreciation. I'm not trying to discourage you from getting a Tesla but if you think gasoline is getting "expensive", the depreciation factor would be more "expensive" when trading/selling so soon.
Thanks Doc. I'm going to go to my local store and look at the cars in inventory and decide. Waiting until June is no issue...we have another car that we can use. No issue there since we have been teleworking and expect that to last at least through the summer. Another question I have is if the price quoted on the ordering site for the M3 LR AWD includes the destination fee or is that additional? Cape...agree with you on the depreciation but the offer I received for the BMW from CARVANA is insane. It is about what I paid for the car. I purchased in the very beginning of June when the dealers were just opening and had inventory that was several months "old" and few sales There were incredible rebates and the basic discount was way above what BMW typically offers. It will only lose about $750, which amounts to about .46 per mile. I'm not too worried about the depreciation on the Tesla. By the way, coming from a BMW, calling the Tesla an M3 is very strange indeed but I have seen it smoke an M2 Competition in a drag race and run close in time on the track..
This is very much not the case. Tesla builds cars in batches, on spec, and ships. When you place an order, a car isn't built "just for you." Simply, next time your specification comes up, you get matched to a car.
So as the quarter rolls on and those batches are built, some (many) are matched to open orders, and some are not. The ones not matched are the inventory cars.
Speculating that because a car is in inventory, it's a reject, couldn't be further from the truth.
Here's an example: I purchased my Model X last June out of inventory. It was actually still on a train when I placed the inventory order. It was simply built without an order match.
1. I love Carvana - traded in a 2016 BMW and they gave me much more than KBB would indicate the car was worth. probably only $500 less than what i would have gotten just selling Private Party with no hassle.
2. Depending on where you live, you may owe a lot more than what the price shows on there?
For example, my purchase price for the car was $47,990 then they added the $1200 destination fee. Then, they added sales tax (in my state, that was almost 3.5k). Then they added all the registration/titling fees + my state has a $200 electric vehicle fee. My total after all fees went from $47990 + $1200 doc/dest fee to $53k or so.
Additionally, if you are financing through Tesla portal, you cannot finance taxes/registration fees or anything. I know some like to roll it into their loan but not possible via tesla's website.
Thanks all for the info...I was particularly curious about the destination fee- I thought the price quoted, including any options chosen, was inclusive of that. So, I will need to add $1200 to the price quoted on the website to cover the destination fee to determine the actual price of the car. Then, when I pick up the car and pay my down payment, if I finance, at the very minimum the down payment will need to cover the taxes and any other state and local registration fees. Good to know.
I am not sure which number you are looking at - some estimates on Tesla's website, esp when you are finalizing your order do show the document/delivery fee. just the base config page does not.
You can finance outside of Tesla and roll in your tax/state fees but Tesla themselves doesn't seem to have a way to allow that
CapeOne
Active Member
That's good. Carvana has been known to make some generous purchase offers. Just be sure the M3 (Tesla not BMW
) is the car for you as you may or may not be as lucky in depreciation if you decide to sell/trade again in a year.Below is a 2020 M3 LR AWD with 5k miles, clean history, etc. that would've been $52,190 retail new as equipped at the time and Tesla is currently asking $43,900. Wholesale/trade value would obviously be lower than that.
New & Used Electric Cars | Tesla
Find new and used Tesla cars. Every new Tesla has a variety of configuration options and all pre-owned Tesla vehicles have passed the highest inspection standards.
www.tesla.com
CapeOne
Active Member
Also note that the price shown on a new inventory car's landing page does not include the $1,200. For example, the car below shows $58,490 but the actual retail price is $59,690......plus taxes, registration fees, etc.
New & Used Electric Cars | Tesla
Find new and used Tesla cars. Every new Tesla has a variety of configuration options and all pre-owned Tesla vehicles have passed the highest inspection standards.
www.tesla.com
HappyDude
Member
I've read of people trying to jump on the "inventory" car only to find out it hasn't even been built yet.
Inventory cars are new just like the "custom" built ones. Let's say the week of March 15th 2021, they plan to build 5000 blue, LR, with white interiors. 4000 people "custom" build with that config so that's 4000 spoken for. If you place an order right now for that same config, the sales rep will say "I have a car with your config right now in inventory. Do you want that?" The answer is yes because that car just came off the line.
That is a "Tesla forums" thing (calling this car an "M3" and calling a model Y a "MY" which sounds even more ridiculous). For anyone coming from BMW, it sounds silly, because the model 3 is a great car in its own right, and doesnt need to be attemping to take the name of some other brands halo car.
That ship has LONG since sailed here though, so those of us coming from "BMW land" just have to get used to it (and there are a LOT of people from "BMW land" who own specifically model 3s).
In Many ways, the Model 3 is more "3 series" than the FX and GX 3 series is.
All Model 3’s are built in batches based on forecasts for demand of different trim and options. Once they are built they are assigned to existing orders that match the spec. In many cases you will see a car “in inventory” that really has not been built yet. A VIN has been assigned and it has not been allocated to an order yet, so it is available for purchase once it reaches the delivery center. It is highly unlikely you will find a car with less than 50 miles on it (which means new) that has been rejected. There are some demo cars for sale now that may have some blemishes on them but the mileage is clearly marked on the detail page and it says demo car so you know you are not getting a brand new vehicle in those cases.
Telsa builds cars for US consumption during the last six weeks of each quarter. A few days ago there were zero cars in inventory in my zip code. Now there are at least 50. So they are gearing up to move a lot of cars between now and end of quarter in the US. Once they sell out, you likely won’t see any US based inventory again until the last 4-6 weeks of Q2.
Telsa builds cars for US consumption during the last six weeks of each quarter. A few days ago there were zero cars in inventory in my zip code. Now there are at least 50. So they are gearing up to move a lot of cars between now and end of quarter in the US. Once they sell out, you likely won’t see any US based inventory again until the last 4-6 weeks of Q2.
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