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Tesla will sue you for $50,000 if you try to resell your Cybertruck in the first year
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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I'm no fan of flipping/scalping but the choice of the degradation of ownership is much worse. If they really own the car then they aught to be able to resell it.
Prediction; this will extend beyond just high end cars.
Like with other manufacturers with similar limitations, the limitation for resale is only for the first year. It literally is just to try and prevent people buying and flipping the car for a profit. If you don't like the vehicle you can sell it back to Tesla outside the normal return window. Or wait a year and sell it to someone else.
The reduction in ownership rights is worse than scalpers. Not sure why you assume this is pure benevolence instead of companies making more money via their control of property you paid for.
I suppose it depends: would you like to at least have the item or be able to buy it only at a 3x price, if ever ?
Other high brand cars have even more stringent clauses (like, you cannot repaint the car in a certain color to not ridicule the brand). People are even perpetually banned from buying from the brand in some cases.
It is not benevolence, it is a try to solve a real problem that they think it could arise.
I think it is not in anyone's best interests to lessen their ownerships rights to maybe save money. Their choice is also bad for me in that it shows companies they can to it too and could become the norm.
If a manufacture has a good reason to not sell to someone that would be fine but it is none of their business what colour I paint my car, or who I can resell it too.
If they wanted to solve the problem they could make more cars to meet demand (without the needless use of microchips, if that is still the bottleneck).
While yours are valid concerns, that type of restriction works only on specific items. I don't see a car manufacturer pull the same stunt on a mass production car (or any other mass production item for the matter) because the problem this try to solve does not exist in the first place, maybe Tesla just think (true or false that it can be or based on the data they have) that the Cybertruck will be some sort of "status symbol" which would attract scalpers or the like of them.
In the end this is a battle Musk cannot win: he will be damned if he do (to ban resell in the first year) and he will be damned if he don't (and thus allowing scalpers). He can only choose why he will be damned so he choose a way that maybe is more friendly (or less enemy from your point of view) to the consumer.
I can agree with you, but the fact that the manufacturer put these restrictions and people still buy their cars means that maybe it does not really matter to the buyers since having the car is much more important that being able to repaint it pink, in their view.
People often choose what isn't in their best interests but that doesn't invalidate the criticism. I am unsure if this should/could simple be illegal but I will argue social stigma should be applied to people who don't care about themselves or others.
My concern is companies will do it anyway for their own gain, regardless of if it was actually a cure to the issue of scalping, because users will let them.
Musk's has enough variety of questionable choices but I'll damn him here for needlessly making low supply, the cause of scalping in the first place.
Agree on people. But to decide if this is illegal, we should know the term of the contract. What I can think is that this is not blatantly illegal, I am sure Tesla has lawyers that draft the contract, maybe we all are making a case where there is not since the contract state that for the first year the car is just rented. Questionable but not illegal.
The point of discussion is if Musk want to have a low supply or he just cannot avoid it.
In my opinion he cannot avoid it, at least as the production start and until it goes to capacity, which is true for every new car that make to the market and not only for Tesla, so he takes some (questionable) steps to try to solve what he deem a problem.
Only for the first year is bs. I bought an object, I own it and I decide when to put it on sale for whatever reason I want, because you know, I own it.
If Tesla doesn't like that they can stop selling vehicles to the public. Or they can come up with something creative like renting them, or only selling one of this trucks to someone who has proven to be a fan boy and have already brought 1 or 2 Tesla's before
I hate the "slippery slope" argument, but in this case...
What if the limitation was 2 or 5 years? What if the fine was $100,000 or a million? If they get away with lesser restrictions, why wouldn't they? The point is, companies already have way too much power over what a private person does with things they legally bought (Right To Repair, anyone?) and this seems like an escalation of that...
I feel like if they want to prevent flipping for profit, make the agreement that you can’t sell it for more than you bought it for, but still allow the sale. Otherwise you’re not policing the right thing.
How about the manufacturer builds enough stock so scalping makes no sense? I believe that if I buy a product I am entitled to do whatever I want with it as long as it doesn't brake the law. I hate scalping too, no1 did anything when it happened to GPUs or consoles or toilet paper during covid, so why are cars special?
Stock does not just appear out of thin air. Manufacturing takes time to ramp up. So it's often not possible to produce enough for a high demand product.
So maybe don't release a model until you have at least a decent amount of units? Still doesn't explain why cars are any different than other products that are scalped. Why are they not lobbying to create laws against such practices?