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What happened to the cpo inventory?

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I received an email today from the Pre-Owned Advisor I've been working with. She asked me for details about the car I was looking for. The last time I heard from her was from a response about "the big purge" at the beginning of March, saying most of the CPO cars became loaners and they were anticipating an influx of lease returns and trade-ins. Hopefully, she's asking because they have cars ready for the CPO process. I've got my fingers crossed.
 
Only 2 CPOs left. But up to 420 INV cars now.
Ha. That sad little red S85 in Missouri is one of the last 2 standing. I'm not surprised. I always thought that one was overpriced. I got my CPO P85 with less miles for less cost. I don't know why that haven't re-priced that one yet. That one always caught my eye since I'm in Missouri and there were never many CPOs available in Missouri.
 
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Ha. That sad little red S85 in Missouri is one of the last 2 standing. I'm not surprised. I always that that one was overpriced. I got my CPO P85 with less miles for less cost. I don't know why that haven't re-priced that one yet. That one always caught my eye since I'm in Missouri and there were never many CPOs available in Missouri.

I guess they're using it as a loaner so they want maximum money if they're going to give it up now. Some early model X owner is provably driving it around.

Although the trade in rate should start ramping up now. They were really cranking them out in the spring of 2013. Not sure what the lease take rate was in the early days (I remember it's kind of a quasi lease).

I guess with the used values being what they are now relative to lease residuals some people are buying out at the end and selling them.You'd probably recover at least a few months of payments that way.


2013-sales-chart-final-v6.png
 
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My Pre-Owned Advisor found me a car a couple of weeks ago (P20103) and I will be taking delivery this Saturday. She found me three cars matching my criteria, none of which made it to the CPO website yet. More cars are coming. If you want it sooner, contact the Pre-Owned Advisor for your area and see if they can find a car for you like they did for me.
 
EV-CPO only shows 2.. not sure what accounts for the discrepancy but they had 4 earlier. Could be a difference in when they refresh.

There are 4 listed on EV-CPO -- 2 in designated areas (Missouri and Seattle), and 2 which are available for sale (Atlanta and Chicago), but not currently listed on Tesla's website --"Hidden" CPO cars-- so their actual availability is unknown.
 
"Hidden CPO" model may actually work well for Tesla. By interacting directly with the customer they can get exact customer needs, then can recommend either a CPO or new car. They don't need to disclose the size of the inventory or prices for all vehicles. It's a proven fact that having too much choice leads to indecision and paralysis. With 100's of CPO's to choose from, I bet a number of customers have had issues deciding, and even once they did, there is always the "I could have chosen the other one" which ruins the experience (there are psychological studies on that topic). With online visible sales, some customers may fixate on some car they saw listed for less in the past, not knowing exact circumstances, but then they feel like Tesla is trying to rip them off (search this forum what happened after in Dec'15 Tesla discounted a bunch of CPO's to prop up sales number, then in January prices went back up and angry people started venting here and on TM forum). "Tell us what you want and we'll give you 3 choices to choose from" may be a more profitable sales model than "here are 600 CPO cars, which one would you like?". So, as much as for most TMC forum members it may be cool to be able to browse through hundreds of CPO's, it may not be in the best interest of Tesla for them to be listed all in place (like the ev-cpo scraper). Just my opinion.
 
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If you want it sooner, contact the Pre-Owned Advisor for your area and see if they can find a car for you like they did for me.

How did you get that started? Around July / August I'll be in the market. I was maybe hoping to buy out the residual on my friend's car but Tesla hasn't gotten back to him with a figure after 2 months and a follow up, so I guess they really want the car.


"Hidden CPO" model may actually work well for Tesla.

I think if they were doing that they'd just change the CPO site to a contact form.
 
How did you get that started? Around July / August I'll be in the market. I was maybe hoping to buy out the residual on my friend's car but Tesla hasn't gotten back to him with a figure after 2 months and a follow up, so I guess they really want the car.

A few months ago, I went to a Tesla showroom to test drive a car and inquire about buying CPO. They took down my information and gave me the contact information of the Pre-Owned Advisor for my region. A couple of hours later, I got an email from the advisor. You can probably just contact a store and get the same information. I'm guessing the advisor didn't offer to find a car for me until they had a new batch of trade-in or lease returns.
 
AFAIK neither is actually affiliated with Tesla. They are both written by independent developers who scrape Tesla website and/or database. People create such project as a hobby, some try to monetize them as well (ads, subscriptions). Unfortunately for the developers doing Tesla inventory search, the utility of such sites has gone down now that there are no CPO cars listed. People used to monitor looking for just the right CPO at the right price, others used to visit trying to see how much a car similar to theirs sells for (trying to keep appraised of what their own car is worth) - both of these categories of visitors are now gone. Inventory cars don't vary that much in price and you typically only look through those if you decided you want a new car, but want to save time (maybe willing to pay a premium for an option you don't want in return for getting the car that is available at your local store today). Since Tesla does not negotiate on inventory cars, there is no benefit knowing that a particular location has a surplus of black 90D's for example. I'm guessing ev-cpo is experiencing much lower visitor traffic today than before all the CPO's were removed.