Elon Musk is a regular at making big announcements about the future. However, reality is often very different from what the CEO of Tesla predicted and, on this occasion, nothing has changed. Musk was wrong in 2019 when he stated that his cars would appreciate in value in 2024.
Everyone knows that Elon Musk has the ability to make bold statements about everything that has to do with his companies, regardless of whether it is a SpaceX space trip or a Tesla brand vehicle.
However, this vision of the future sometimes plays tricks and Musk knows a lot about that. For example, about the broken promises with the Tesla Cybertruck, or in other words, everything that the production vehicle promised to offer when it presented the prototype in 2019, and what was left by the wayside when it hit the market at the end. from last year.
The error in Elon Musk's future forecasts
Something similar also happened to the CEO of Tesla in 2019, when he made one of his strangest statements. Musk stated that those who bought a new Tesla then would be acquiring “an asset that appreciates, not an asset that depreciates.” These words claimed that a Tesla purchased in 2019 would be worth more in 2024 despite being a used vehicle.
But this statement has been far from reality. And anyone with a basic knowledge of the automotive market knew even then that there was no chance that Tesla could challenge industry norms and somehow appreciate in value over time.
According to Carscoops, which has investigated Edmunds, a US used vehicle buying and selling website, the average value of a second-hand Tesla Model 3 is $29,552, when the new vehicle costs $40,630 in its access version to range, to which another $6,000 would have to be added for the improved autopilot and $12,000 for full autonomous driving capability.
The oldest Model 3s even sell for less than that $29,000 on average, and these are cars with even more than 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometers).
Used Teslas have depreciated a lot this last year
Depreciation like this is common in the automobile market, and in the future, the value of used Teslas could be even more affected. In 2023 alone, the 2021 Model 3 has been devalued by 29%, going from $40,522 in January 2023 to $28,700 in January of this year. This is above the average depreciation for 2021, which was 19.5%.
The justification for understanding this enormous devaluation is related to the aggressive pricing strategy that Tesla has carried out in recent months, with price drops for its new products that have directly affected the cost of second-hand units. It didn't help that Hertz decided to sell 20,000 of its electric vehicles, mostly Tesla, from its rental fleet.
“You can think of every car we sell or produce that has full autonomy capability as something that in the future may be worth five times more than it is worth today,” Elon Musk stated again during Tesla's third quarter earnings call. of 2023.