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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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As much as I dislike Musk, I think this is a right move, as scalpers became a real plague during Covid.
But I am genuinely curious if they will ever sell it outside the US. This design seems far too dangerous for pedestrians and I can't believe that EU authorities would approve it. Aren't car hoods supposed to be of a very soft aluminium which is supposed to soften slightly the impact on a pedestrian in case of an accident? And what about if this monster is involved in front collision with some small car, like Renault Twingo here? I guess the chance of survivability of the Twingo passengers would be near zero.
Plus correct me if I am wrong but what happens if you have a small accident? Are they going to charge you for the full cast? Why aren't people more concerned about this? The repairability of this car looks terrible.
Surely scalping can be addressed without infringing in my right to do what I like with my own damn property. Why is it better to let Tesla sue consumers than to just... limit the number of trucks a person can buy? 🤔
Lol ferrari took away Steve Wyns Las Vegas dealership because he flipped his LaFerrari for an extra million. I will never not find that hillarious.
That's a business relationship.
No one is going to fucking scalp Cybertrucks lol
This policy exists because they expect a lot of people to be unhappy with their Cybertruck, is my guess.
Which sucks because I really wanted the aesthetic of this car to bring back more 80s-sci-fi to the vehicle market, as a lover of silly-looking vehicles.
Why yes, I too would buy a deLorian look-alike with a Mr Fusion prop on the back.
The dreeeam
Useless. Here we have nominal tickets for events and that does not solve the problem by a very long shot, I suppose it would be the same for cars.
Ticket scalpers are blowing up because of collusion by Ticketmaster. Tickets are also a virtual product. Surely we can be clever enough to limit the sale of physical goods the size of cars
How ? But even if you succeed, what is stopping me from buying 1 cybertruck at X and resell it at 3X the next day ? And other people to do the same ? We all buy 1 car after all.
I think that here there will not be a Ticketmaster scenario, but more a scenario where a number of Musk haters will buy a cybertruck to resell it at a premium to a number of Musk fanboys just because.
So limiting the sale of it to 1 per person don't really solve anything.
Interesting questions; let's see:
Nothing should stop you from doing that, or at least trying. You are one person with one car, so there will be other stock available at a lower price for others to buy if they want. The problem of scalping becomes an issue when one person can buy a large portion of the product & artificially control the supply. If everyone decides to buy 1 and then resell higher, nothing is stopping consumers from also buying their 1 and getting lower prices from the manufacturer.
Cybertrucks are a large ($50k) investment, and as a physical good that's also regulated through the DMV, they are a lot more work to resell. So in this scenario you think there is such a large number of Mush haters with both the disposable income & free time for resale that they eat up a significant portion of supply. AND that there is such a large amount of consumers with disposable income & desire for a truck that they would support such a resale market. If that ever becomes a reality then... Good for Tesla? Those"haters" would be significantly contributing to Tesla's profit.
Also, here is an academic paper that looks at the effectiveness of US anti-scalping laws on ticket sales, and it concludes future policies should focus on acquisition, not resale.
Or when a high enough number of people buy each one a small number of the few items available in a low supply to resell them. True, the item should be some sort of "status symbol" or necessary item for this scenario to work out. I' ve seen it in more menial situations where just a couple of people scalped on a low supply needed items (at least until production has gone to capacity).
The cybertruck situation is different from the ticket situation, you cannot produce 50000 cybertruck and then sell them, you need the space to store them, and the production needs to go to capacity so it will start low anyway. That's because it could be vulnerable to scalping, at the beginning you have a small number of items so you need a small number of people that are willing to try to buy to resell.
Since I am talking about haters and fanboys, I would not bet that they would act rationally. I would not exclude that there are people that hate Musk so much to pull out these kind of stunts to other people that love Musk so much to be the perfect target.
Hmm, one thing I'm not understanding is that in these scenarios it sounds like every truck made is going to a scalper, and the issue is that even with one per person, the number of scalpers equals the number of cars. But why would they get dibs? A lucky scalper can't get first dibs and buy out the whole stock before others get a chance, because it's 1 per person. The real question is what is the portion of scalpers vs long-term owners.
Let me know if you have better numbers, but this article from back in January suggested 10k cybertrucks to be filled in 2023. Let's say there are 10k potential scalpers, and 1M potential long-term buyers. That doesn't mean the 10k trucks will get scalped by the 10k scalpers, it means we would expect 100 to be (again, individually) scalped, and the other 9,900 trucks to go to long term buyers. Additionally, since those scalpers only have 1, they will be competing against each other on resale price.
I think that's an ok assumption, but the question is more about the number of people who would act so outrageously. It seems very odd to me that there would be so many people who hate Mush and are ok dropping $50k and have the bandwidth to resell, in such numbers that they significantly match or outnumber long-term buyers.
I am thinking that the proportion will be, at least at the beginning, more in favor of scalpers. Not that every cybertruck would go to them but I think that the first batch would go to scalpers and other people who want it just for a variety of reasons but will not be a long term buyer.
In the end my idea is that Tesla want to make sure that while the production goes to capacity, all the cybertrucks (or nearly all of them) is sold to long term buyers. That even assuming that like you said, the problem with the scalpers exist in the first place.
They don't need to match the long-term buyers, they just need to be able to get some and then sell them to people who maybe is on the waiting list for a late 2024 delivery and it is enough fanboys to accept to pay a higer price now instead of the right price in a year. And if only the 10% pull the stunt, haters will have something more to hate Musk (and Tesla) for or to point as a failure for EV cars or Tesla itself (in their haters mind).
If there's more people buying cybertrucks who don't like them than the people who want them long-term, how would a scalping market sustain itself?
I don't know man, I'll believe it when I see it.
I suppose we only need to wait to see how
all this will end, but in the end tesla probably is making choices based in data we have not, so they think they are right.
Let's see how it ends...
Doubt suing will do better
It's in the terms and conditions when you buy the vehicle. I'd say that Tesla is within their rights. If you don't like the terms don't buy the car.
Simply referring to terms and conditions when complaining about a company move is such a weak argument. Honestly half of the terms are void by European laws anyway.
In this specific instance we are talking about a luxury item that absolutely nobody needs. Anyone who would be buying this would be buying it out of choice. I think this is an instance where terms conditions set by the company of such a niche product is reasonably fair.
Flip it over and apply terms and conditions like this on mainstream consumer goods then we have a bigger problem. If this works I think you may find a lot of luxury car makers initially follow suit, you can bet that companies like BMW would absolutely love to take a cut of all second-hand sales.
It's a slippery slope.
Doesn't matter what kind of product it is.
ToS holds no weight in the EU.
If Elmo sues, he will just get denied. Because it is a garbage statement.
The majority of what you buy is by choice. Why is it ok to violate your rights as a consumer, as long as the product is expensive enough? Isn't that the real slippery slope here? "Houses are luxury items that absolutely nobody needs- just rent an apartment. "
Terms and conditions that are illegal ate not valid and this goes against the first sale doctrine
Imagine applying this argument to an employment contact. "Tesla's contract says you don't get bathroom breaks & have to work in unsafe conditions. If you don't like it, don't work there". Clearly doesn't hold water. In the US, we need stronger consumer protections - right to repair, right to be forgotten, and right to safely do what you like with your own property.
Terms and conditions have been voided before, including NDA clauses. It's why they always have a severability clause, stating that if any parts of the T&C are found invalid, the rest of the T&C remain in place.
There's no way this sticks
Tesla have no right to sue somebody selling their own property. This is just another attack on the concept of personal ownership by corporations.
If the car is leased, fair enough, but the fact Musk thinks he can do this shows how all the power is with the wrong people.
If it's leased, they can't sell it anyways
Scalpers will find a way. Only normal buyers will be hurt by this move. Also car companies are putting in more and more proprietary stuff that only they can repair practically, and charge a fortune for it. Tesla is leading in that too afaik.
Maybe it'll stop scalpers. More likely it has made the scalper's market at least 50k pricier to offset Tesla's desire to double dip on these trucks
I expect Cybertruck will sell in places with a big truck culture. The US, Canada and Australia probably I think they will sell terribly in Europe where trucks are generally quite rare and disliked because they're not practical on public roads. I also foresee that the EU might get pissed off with Tesla's laissez faire attitude to safety critical stuff like - "unbreakable" glass, door releases, position of indicators, pedestrian safety and force them to change design to comply with more stringent regs.
I don’t see this being very popular in Australia. It misses the mark for why people buy a Ute or dual cab here.
The lawsuits won't succeed due to the first sales doctrine
It’s basically the Sun Crusher of cars
I don't think anything about any car is designed to soften the blow for a pedestrian. They usually have a crumple zone to dissipate energy in a collision but that isn't designed with pedestrians in mind. Also they would likely repair this like any other vehicle since the body is made up of several panels.
They absolutely design cars with some pedestrian safety in mind. That's why hood ornaments went away and bumpers moved away from solid steel.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but they have a metric along the lines of "X% of pedestrians survive impacts up to Y speed" that they need to meet.
I can't find this rating anywhere. It was proposed this year but that's all I can find.
Yeah, I'd love to see the cars safety certificate.